Heart of Prayer

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

- James 5:16

I've (clumsily) stepped into the role of Lead Pastor of our Special Needs Ministry at our church, and as exhilarating as a new position and an unexpected turn in the journey can be, I am also, admittedly, overwhelmed. A dark cloud of doubt had filled my mind this weekend and I found myself debating with God in the prophetic tradition of Moses, Ezekiel and Jeremiah: Lord are you sure you've called the right man for the job? There must be some kind of mistake here.

This morning I met up with a group of men with developmental disabilities at the entrance of our church sanctuary. We briefly caught up with each other, breathing in shared laughter and the joy of being together, and then walked into the sanctuary as the worship service had already begun, all ten of us smiling to ourselves with one of those so-wrong-that-it's-funny-moments, and sat down about as indiscreetly as ten men waving and shaking hands with strangers can be. 

I settled down into familiar comfort and conventionality and found myself going through the liturgical motions of worship: stand up, sit down, sing, listen - all properly staged and managed - but I found my doubting heart far removed from the heart of God. 

The man sitting beside me fumbled through the chair pocket in front of him until he found what he was looking for: a "communication card" to welcome newcomers to our church. He carefully wrote down his name, then wrote down "Mom" and scribbled "Mom" one more time to emphasize the point. He looked over at me, leaning in front of me until he was sure that he had caught my attention, pointing vigorously and smiling widely - I nodded in turn to his satisfaction. He began pointing at me next. I looked at him foggily, and then finally caught on that he was asking for my name on paper. I took the sheet and wrote my name under "Mom". 

With another big smile he took the sheet from me again and copied my name, slowly, painstakingly, letter by letter, "D-A-L-L-A-S". When he was finished, his eyes lit up with an ever-brightening smile, and pointed even more assuredly to my name. I smiled back again, but somehow I felt compelled to take a closer look at the sheet, perhaps it was the inner prompting of the Spirit or maybe just his eyes that happily refused to let go of mine, I can't be sure now. 

I assumed he was merely scribbling names, but this was a much more meaningful exercise than writing practice. I realized then that he had written my name under the category "Prayer Requests". He was communicating something God wanted me to hear that day: I'm in his prayers. This time tears filled my eyes as we smiled together.  "Thank you brother", I thought to myself", "I need your prayers now." He stuffed the "communication card" into his pocket, smiling again with quiet, inner confidence in God - almost knowingly of the prayer breakthrough I had just received. 

God answered my doubt, as He always seems to do, in the least likely and most unexpected places. Am I inadequate for this job? Of course. But the question is also irrelevant. All my inadequacies faded into irrelevance under my friend's prayer coverage, as "(God) stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in" (Isaiah 40:22b).