When you don’t know what to pray
When you don’t know what to pray yet your heart is still crying out- take heart. God still hears you. In fact Romans 8:26 ESV says, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes with groanings too deep for words” . Sometimes when we pray, we cry out in the anguish of the circumstance and don't even know how to pray except to just say “help”. This was the cry God heard in Egypt when the Hebrews were unjustly enslaved as told in the book of Exodus. This morning when my seven year old was reading the story out loud for our family devotional I was shook by the familiar tale. So first, God’s people who the Egyptians didn’t like because they were “icky shepherds” were multiplying so rapidly that they were enslaved by the Egyptians. When Pharaoh decided he wanted to shrink their population even more he ordered all males be murdered as soon as they were born… Imagine explaining that one to a 5, 7 and 8 year old over cheerios and orange juice.
But the graphic story really got to me when the story doesn’t talk in generalizations but zooms in on one mom, with one baby boy. As a mom, I can easily imagine the risk and stress I would endure in order to save my child from death. I can see her crying over her baby, “please God, I don’t even know what to pray but I can’t let the Egyptians kill him and I can’t let him go. Please do something!” We don’t know the whole story but I imagine a frantic mom, covering the baby's mouth when he cries like some Egyptian “Quiet Place” prequel. When she finally gets the baby to sleep she weeps ugly tears, unable to sleep herself. I imagine a much more dramatic scene that looks nothing like the idyllic art work in our children’s bible. Then maybe in faith, maybe at the end of her rope or maybe as a last resort she makes a basket and sends baby Moses afloat in the Nile. If I were his mom I would have my face to the floor screaming “please God just do something” the whole time his big sister watches over him… this scene is gut wrenching and I am shocked everytime we gloss over it like a story we should read to our children before bed. But then the story turns and we see the reason why we want to teach our children the story about a God who responds the way he does to this woman’s faith. God comes to the rescue of Moses and to answer the prayers of this faithful mother.
In my Christian journey and more recently as I have deepened my habit of prayer I have seen God shock me many times by answering my prayers with the solution I couldn’t even dream of. Sometimes his answers to my cries have even been better than I could ever imagine. This case is no different. Not only did God save baby Moses, but he was also miraculously returned to his mother with the princess’ promise of protection and even payment to nurse the child for the next few years, at which time the impoverished child would be raised as a prince in the house of the Pharaoh. If you aren’t shocked please read those last two sentences as if they are bolded and underlined with exclamation marks at the end.
So when we pray, we pray to the same God, with the same heart and the same power as the God who not only saved baby Moses but delivered the entire Hebrew people from the grips of the most powerful kingdom on earth at that time. Does that change the way you pray? If all you have is tears, he still hears you. He is there with you, knows your heart, and has the power to fix it. Deliverance may look very different than you think. But pray bold anyway.
And don’t expect small solutions- ask for the ones only the all-knowing God of the universe can come up with.