Before We Even Ask

The door opened half-way through our weekly Bible study on a frigid February morning in Chicago. We had all braved the bitter cold and icy roads to be there.  One of our regular attenders slipped into the room, really late into our meeting. She sat in the back of the circle, as if willing herself to be invisible, like when our children were small and would whisper, “Don’t see me.”

When the Bible lesson was over, we shared prayer requests.  “Anything more?”  our leader asked after a while. 

“I was reluctant to come today,” the woman started to say.  “It seemed like everything stood in the way.  And I have a prayer request that seems both ridiculous and unattainable.”  She began haltingly to share about a refugee friend who was about to lose his job loading trucks because he could not pass a company-mandated English language test.”

“So how specifically can we pray?”

“He has less than a month to attain proficiency in order to keep his job,” she explained.  “It would require not just a Turkish speaker to help him, but because of the short timing, one who has experience in tutoring non-English-speaking refugees from a different culture.  And,” she added, “because he is Muslim, the tutor would have to be a man.”

I gasped.  She said, “Yes, I know.  Ridiculous.  Like what can God do with that?”

I chuckled out loud. “No, not ridiculous at all,” I said.  “God has already provided a solution, far more specific than you can imagine.  I have a friend who just moved to the area, a male teacher who just returned from 25 years as an educator in Turkey. And he has a flexible schedule.”

Little did she know that four decades before this moment, for just a semester, God placed me in a dorm next door to a woman with whom I continued to correspond after I left that college.  That friend, years later married a man who from an early age felt called to be a teacher in a foreign land.  They served faithfully in a country where they learned the language and loved the people. Their professional situation strangely derailed, or so they thought, and they returned to the States, nearby, not yet settled into full-time employment.

I made the introductions.  A month later, her refugee friend passed the proficiency test and was able to keep his job.

Little do we know how God redeems.  Most often beyond our radar, God weaves our lives delicately into the history of His Kingdom.

God specializes in impossible situations.  He goes before us.  God does not just “show up.”  He is already there.  We are the ones late to the party.

My friend’s prayer request did not result in a singular solution, but a testimony of God’s sovereignty that encouraged the rest of us, always to pray and to not lose heart. Luke 18. 1.

Why are we hesitant to come before Him?  Why are we reluctant to bring our prayer requests before others – even the “ridiculous” ones?  May God surprise us all by His provision, precise timing, and His Presence.  And to remember that your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.  Matthew 6.8

God always plays a long game, seamlessly woven in eternity.  We think we see the answer unfolding before us, but what we observe has been built in layers and infinitesimal details over history and the lives of people we don’t even know.  And through prayer, God allows us to see Himself.

Things don’t just happen.  Things don’t suddenly appear just because we prayed.  We did not set anything into motion.  We become aware of the Almighty. 

And sometimes God gives us a glimpse.  A wow moment.  Others may discount it as a coincidence.  But we lose something profound and life-changing by explaining away what only God can do....  and His Presence in it. 

When we pray, God listens.  He has been waiting to show us what He has already been getting ready.

For He will complete what He appoints for me, and many such things are in His mind.  Job 23.14

Our prayers are all linked together, the seen and unseen, and never in singular outcomes. Praying to God, and even asking for prayer, is never ever insignificant.

Dare we ask God?  Are we willing to accept His response?  What can God do with what is before us today?  With this?  God redeems.  God multiplies.  Far more than we can imagine.

And sometimes He uses us to make it happen.