Dangerous Prayer

I have been learning that there are some very dangerous prayers out there. Prayers that, if answered can wreak havoc in your life and send you running for cover screaming like a little girl. The particular prayer I have in mind is this one:

“Lord, help me to love people with Your love today.”

What a dangerous prayer!

If you like your life basically the way it is, if you are looking to simply enjoy the green pastures and quiet waters of life, or if you avoid introspection and self-examination like you avoid needles, bad coffee, and outhouses, then you might want to think twice before praying this prayer.

You see, when you pray that prayer, God does not usually answer it by giving you the ability to easily, effortlessly, and naturally show godlike love to people. What He does (99% of the time) is present you with opportunities to be learning how to love people in the same way He loves you. Or to put it another way, the answer to the prayer is not to endow you with some superpower that makes love effortless; the answer is an invitation to enter into training in the art of love with the Master of Love…to learn it in the ring of life…to learn it by trial and error, to learn it by facing its difficulties and overcoming our natural inclinations to let our selfish good be more powerful than the Christ-like inclination to keep the other’s good most powerful, to learn it by practice.

And so, instead of things getting easier, instead of finding relief and respite when we pray that prayer, more often than not things get harder.

A for instance…We try to eat as a family as often as we can at our house. Life can be chaotic, and therefore this does not happen as much as we would like. And sometimes (especially if you have been praying that prayer or others like it) when you do get to the family dinner—that rare and blessed time of family together goodness that is supposed to be an oasis of Christ-like tranquility—you realize that instead of an oasis of love, you get a tsunami of strife.

Me: God, What the heck just happened?

God: What do you mean?

Me: At the dinner table! What happened to my girls? It was like they were possessed or something.

God: Really? I didn’t notice anything different…

Me: Are you serious?!?

God: I’m God, I’m always serious (he, he, he).

Me: Well, is it me then? Did I do something to tick you off?…Don’t answer that…

God: Dan I have been answering your prayers. You have been asking to love more like Me. That is a prayer I love to hear and love to answer.

Me: Yeah, I know. I am not finding it any easier though.

God: Love isn’t easy. Love doesn’t take away or lessen the hurt that sin causes.

Me: I sense a big piece of humble pie coming on…

God: If I am going to teach you to love people, especially your family, the way I love you, then you need to see it and feel it and commit to it as I do. There is no sin, offense, struggle, or situation you will ever find yourself in where I will stop loving you or even love you less. For you to love like Me, you need to understand what that means.

Me: Keep talking, I’m getting a fork….

God: My love continues when it is not seen or appreciated or reciprocated by you, so for you to love like Me you need to show love even when it is not seen or appreciated or reciprocated by your girls, the every people who should love you the most. Don’t look at tonight’s dinner as a punishment, it wasn’t. Look at it the way I intended you to look at it: as answering your prayer to love others the way I love you.

And so I come away realizing:

1. The dinner table strife made me see what it is like for God to love me. How often do I fight, resist, and insist on my own way instead of responding to His calls and showing my love by respecting Him and obeying Him?
2. That God loves me, is patient with me, is good to me, and is committed to me in spite of my lousy track record. He chooses to look at me through Christ as forgiven, as His son.
3. That for me to love my girls as He loves me, I need to be learning to love them, be patient with them, be good to them, and be committed to them in spite of their lousy track record.
4. I need to consciously choose to love them not based on what they do, but rather as who they are in Christ; and through Christ they are forgiven, and I need to join God in that forgiveness. I need to love them not only as my daughters, but as God’s daughters. So they need see in what I do and say that my love for them is a rock they can count on, no matter how hard they may hammer it.

As usual, God was right. He was answering my prayer.

So be very careful what you pray for. Because the answer to your prayer may come in ways very contrary to your own design.

PS: If you are coming away from this post thinking that I do not think you should pray that God would help you to love people the way He loves people, you need to read it again. Just sayin’. =)