Are You a Prayer Warrior – Or Prayer Worrier?

Prayer is at once one of the most intriguing and most intimidating parts of the Christian life. We’re talking to a God we cannot see – at least in the physical, visual sense. And we approach Him with mixtures of praise, petitions, pleas and perplexities. Sometimes we feel the need to pray but have no clue about how we should pray or what we should pray for.

 

Preachers offer us prayer acronyms like ACTS – Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication – but we’re tempted to shortcut through the praising, confessing and thanking portions so we can get right to the asking part – presenting our needs, concerns and desires. Praying, many of us agree, is hard.

 

Within our family of faith, there are those who are called “prayer warriors.” They have a God-given passion for praying. Some of them designate literal “prayer closets” or “war rooms” where they engage in spiritual battle with prayer as their only weapon. The Kendrick brothers even produced a movie called “War Room” about one such valiant woman.

These prayer warriors receive little acclaim – and do not seek it – but who knows the difference their faithful prayers have made within their families, churches, communities and even the nation? It’s said that at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, England, where renowned British preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon served for more than 30 years, in the basement there was a “boiler room” (with no boiler, only chairs) where hundreds of people would gather every Sunday morning to intercede for him as he preached.

 

We sometimes hear folks speculating about whether we all have a guardian angel. Would that we each had a faithful prayer warrior to daily approach “God’s throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16) on our behalf.

 

But there’s another kind of praying person, one I would call the “prayer worrier.” I’ve fit this description at times. Prayer worriers are those who tend to turn to God in prayer only as a last resort, after they’ve exhausted all possibilities in trying to resolve their anxieties, concerns and worries. Then they don’t even pretend to go through the first three steps of ACTS. They plunge straight into Supplication, opening their prayers with something like, “God, it’s me again. We’ve got some troubles here…!”

 

This isn’t to ridicule such individuals, partly because I’ve been there. But the problem with prayer worrying is that we pray, presenting the dilemma to God, perhaps submitting a request as we entrust the matter to Him. Then, moments after our “amen,” we snatch back the concern and resume agonizing, trying to figure out how to solve it ourselves.

 

We don’t want to release the worrying part – at least it makes us feel like we’re doing something.

 

I haven't met many genuine prayer warriors, so I don’t know if sometimes they slip into prayer worrying. But worrying about something is about as effective as attempting to stop a raging river with the palm of our hand. That’s one reason we’re admonished in Philippians 4:6-7, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

 

We want to protest, “Yeah, but what about…?” As one Bible scholar put it, when it says “everything” in the Greek, it means…everything. No exclusions, no exceptions. Not the coronavirus, not the political scene, not when our children aren’t always making the best decisions. Everything.

 

But how can we make the leap from prayer worrier to prayer warrior? I’m hardly the expert, but I suspect a very short, simple Scripture verse can point us in the right direction. Writing to the ancient church in Thessalonica, the apostle Paul exhorted them, “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Or as another translation expresses it even more concisely, “pray continually.”

 

If we strive to stay in continual contact with God – like calling someone on the phone but never hanging up – the stresses and befuddlements of life are far less likely to consume us. When a little problem or major crisis arises, our first reaction is to pray, not to panic.

 

In introducing what we commonly know as “the Lord’s prayer,” Jesus said, “And when you pray, do not babble on like pagans, for they think that by their many words they will be heard. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him” (Matthew 6:7-8).

 

Do we truly believe that? Do we pray not to inform God of what’s happening, but to approach Him in reverence and trust, believing that in His time and His way He will answer our prayers, often in ways we could never have imagined? 

 

I love His promise from Jeremiah 33:3, “Call to Me, and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things that you do not know.” I’m all in favor of that – aren’t you?