“David,” said Grandfather, looking at me – for once – without the suggestion of a twinkle in his eye, “the day you learn to be publicly specific in your prayers, that is the day you will discover power.”
I didn’t quite understand what he meant, partly because I was just twelve years old, and partly because I was instinctively afraid of the idea. To be publicly specific, he had said. That meant saying, in the hearing of others, “I ask for such and such.” It meant taking a risk that the prayer would not be answered.”
From cover to cover, David Wilkerson’s book, The Cross and the Switchblade, is a gripping read. There are parts that are more fast paced and suspenseful than this but it was here I paused, turned back the page and re-read the words.
A Familiar Fear
The ‘instinctive fear’ young David Wilkerson felt was easy to relate to.
David was afraid to pray specifically and so are many of us.
Just recently, a friend told me that the Lord has been convicting her on this very point. “Sometimes I hesitate to pray boldly and specifically,” Katie said, “because I feel that if God doesn’t answer how I asked Him to, I won’t be able to trust Him anymore. I pray ‘safe prayers’ because I don’t want to damage God’s reputation.”
I hadn’t ever thought to categorize prayers as safe or dangerous before, but I’ve applied the principle. I’ve strategically avoided certain prayers while praying others with ease.
I have to agree with Katie, I’m far more likely to avoid specific prayers than general ones.
God has said, “Ask and it will be given to you.” (Matthew vii.7), “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do,” (John xiv.13), “whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” (Mark xi.24) and the list of promises goes on. But there’s a risk involved in that ask.
What if God doesn’t come through?
David’s Public, Specific Prayer
“It was by accident that I was forced, one dreadful day, to discover what Grandpap meant. During all of my childhood, my father had been a very sick man. He had duodenal ulcers, and for more than ten years he was not free of pain.
One day, walking home from school, I saw an ambulance tear past, and when I was still more than a block away from home, I knew where it had been heading. From that distance I could hear my father’s screams.
A group of elders from the church sat solemnly in the living room. The doctor wouldn’t let me in the room where Dad was, so Mother joined me in the hall.
“Is he going to die, Mom?”
Mother looked me in the eye and decided to tell me the truth. “The doctor thinks he may live two more hours.”
Just then Dad gave a particularly loud cry of pain and Mother squeezed my shoulder and ran quickly back into the room. “Here I am, Kenneth,” she said, shutting the door behind her. Before the door closed, however, I saw why the doctor wouldn’t allow me in Dad’s room. The bedclothes and the floor were drenched with blood.
At that moment I remembered Grandfather’s promise, “The day you learn to be publicly specific in your prayers is the day you will discover power.” For a moment I thought of walking in to the living room, where the men sat, and announcing that I was praying for my father to get up from his bed a healed man. I couldn’t do it. Even in that extremity I could not put my faith out where it might get knocked down.
Ignoring my Grandfather’s words, I ran just as far away from everyone as I could. I ran down the basement stairs, shut myself up in the coal bin, and there I prayed, trying to substitute volume of voice for the faith that I lacked.
What I didn’t realize was that I was praying into a kind of loud -speaker system.
Our house was heated by hot air, and the great trumpet-like pipes branched out from the furnace, beside the coal bin, into every room of the house. My voice carried up those pipes so that the men from the church, sitting in the living room, suddenly heard a fervent voice pouring out of the walls. The doctor upstairs heard it. My father, lying on his deathbed heard it.
“Bring David here,” he whispered.
So, I was brought upstairs past the staring eyes of the elders and into my father’s room. Dad asked Dr.Brown to wait in the hall for a moment, then he told Mother to read aloud from the twenty-second verse of the twenty-first chapter of Matthew. Mother opened the Bible and turned the pages until she came to the right passage.
“And all things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer,” she read, “believing, ye shall receive.” I felt a tremendous excitement. “Mother, can’t we take that for dad now?”
So, while my father lay limp on his bed, Mother began to read the same passage over and over again. She read it a dozen or so times, and while she was reading, I got up from my chair and walked over to Dad’s bed and laid my hands on his forehead.
“Jesus,” I prayed, “Jesus, I believe what you said. Make Dad well.”
There was one more step. I walked to the door, opened it, and said, loud and clear:
“Please come, Doctor Brown. I have…” (it was hard) “I have prayed believing that Dad will get better.”
Dr.Brown looked down at my twelve year old earnestness and smiled a warm, compassionate, and totally unbelieving smile. But that smile turned first to puzzlement and then to astonishment as he bent to examine my father.
“Something has happened,” he said. His voice was so low I could hardly hear.
Dr. Brown picked up his instruments with fingers that trembled, and tested Dad’s blood pressure.
“Kenneth,” he said, raising Dad’s eyelids and then feeling his abdomen and then reading his blood pressure again. “Kenneth, how do you feel?”
“Like strength is flowing into me.”
“Kenneth,” said the doctor, “I have just witnessed a miracle.”
My father was able to get up from his bed in that miraculous moment, and in that same moment I was delivered of any doubts about the power of going out on a limb in prayer.”
To Pray or Not to Pray
As David knew, praying specifically is fraught with risk.
If you ask for something general, who can say whether or not God answered. But as soon as you get specific, the answer, or a lack thereof, becomes plain for everyone to see.
The same is true of praying publicly.
If you ask for something in private and God doesn’t answer your faith may be shaken. But if you’ve prayed publicly that unanswered prayer could shake the faith of others as well. It could cause you to look presumptuous or foolish.
There’s a lot at risk.
What about God’s reputation? Do public and specific prayers put God’s reputation at risk?
“I pray ‘safe prayers’ because I don’t want to damage God’s reputation.” Katie said. “But,” she went on, “God is perfectly capable of protecting His own reputation.”
This is a truth I so easily forget.
God is God. He is faithful, He always has been and He doesn’t need my help to remain so.
Praying Boldly
“I hesitate to pray boldly and specifically.” Katie said and I think she hit on something important when she paired those two characteristics together.
Boldness and faith go hand in hand. We are told to approach God’s throne with boldness (Hebrews iv.16) and with faith (James i.6).
If God promised, and God cannot lie, then He will answer when we pray.
He must for His very nature is to be faithful and true. He might not answer, even a specific request, in the way we expect Him to, or in the timing we may be expecting. But answer He always will. Thus, we can come to Him in confidence – with boldness and with faith.
Generation after generation, God has used the specific prayers of men and women to demonstrate His glory and faithfulness in this world. If we avoid His command to ask, we will rob our generation of the opportunity to see His faithfulness and His incredible ability to answer prayer.
So, the next time you’re faced with the risk of praying specifically or praying boldly, ask yourself what is at risk if you don’t!
In Christ
Quiana
*All quotes and excepts were taken from David Wilkerson’s book, The Cross and the Switchblade.
*Scripture references in ESV unless otherwise noted.
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