When I started to pray in earnest for my family members, I realized I did not know what I needed to pray for. I was desperate to know what was lacking in my prayers, and what God desired for me to understand. I now see in hindsight, that God placed me in different surroundings, moved me out of my comfortable Christian world of many years, and put me in a new place a different country and language, a new city, a new church family.
At the time it was disorienting and I lacked the support of familiar community. I had no choice but to listen to Him through His Word, and through new friends and teachers and as I listened, He faithfully, lovingly taught me.
He taught me the gospel. I thought I knew all about that. But as I listened to Him, and began to pray to understand that gospel more deeply, my prayers started to change because I began to realize the reason I didn’t know how to pray was because I didn’t know my Heavenly Father intimately, experientially in relationship. I only knew Him in a rational, doctrinal way.
God wants me to make Him my hope. My own heart’s desires no matter how good can all too easily become my hope, instead of God’s. So the more He compels me to pray, the more my heart is pulled toward Him. If I pray out of my emotions of the moment, I am confident and at peace one day, then filled with anxiety and fears the next, depending on what the circumstances of my loved ones are. But if I root my prayers in God’s word to me, I can know I am praying his heart’s desires, by responding to what He has first told me.
I started asking God to show me in His Word: what He wanted me to know about Himself, what He wanted me to see about my own heart, and what I should ask Him for myself and my family members. What is His heart’s desire for them, rather than mine?
And He began to show me. I started writing down things that I felt the Holy Spirit was pressing on me to pray. Every day as I meditated on His Word, something new went into my notebook. So I prayed. Then I heard a teacher who taught about prayer from the encounter Moses had with God after the people had worshiped the golden calf. God was angry with the Israelites’ unfaithfulness, and He told Moses that He would no longer go with the people. Moses began to plead with God: “Teach me your ways so I may know you.”
SPECIAL COVERAGE: The power of prayer: For America's future
And then Moses interceded for the people, praying, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us from here What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” God answered him, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.”
When Moses next pressed upon God, “show me your glory,” God answered, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence.”
It was the presence of God that we needed more than anything else. And I heard for the first time that the purpose of prayer is to open our hearts to God and experience His presence through His Word. My own heart needed to be ready to pray by seeing in the gospel the beauty of who Christ is and what He has done for us and that’s what my family needs most too and then we will be ready to receive the many good things God desires for us.
I’m so very thankful for how God has faithfully and patiently led me to this point. I also have come to realize that if He cares about my relationship with Him this much, then He will take the time needed to bring my loved ones into that same relationship in the way He knows is best for each one. He continues to awe me again and again by showing me new things He desires in His goodness to give the best of all being, knowing Him and His presence.
Sharon Tanaka is a wife and mother of four. She and her husband have raised their children overseas as well as in the U.S. Sharon co-leads the prayer ministry at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.