The Prayer that Changed Everything
I sat at my kitchen table, staring down at the booklet sitting in front of me. Pop music blared from the radio behind me, but I scarcely heard it. Over and over I read the words on the page. I was about to go through the most profound change of my life. Before I tell you of it, let me first tell you how I got to that point.
I married at the age of nineteen. Although a believer, I was living life on my own terms, and I didn’t seek God’s wisdom regarding the man I married. That failure led to years of tremendous pain and suffering. On this particular day, I was still in the midst of that pain. In fact, it would shortly grow much worse. The child of divorce myself, I didn’t want my own child to have a broken family so I hung in there. Life became of a matter of simply getting through the day. I found ways to distract myself, to mentally escape, to dull the pain. Praise be to God He never allowed me to slide into drug or alcohol abuse. My escapes were more mental than physical. I became an avid runner, played the piano for hours a day, composing my own music, and when I wasn’t playing I almost always had the radio on.
I can’t speak for others, but for me secular music had a very negative impact on my spiritual life. I listened to Pop and Soft Rock. I lost myself in the music, dreamed of becoming a music artist myself, used it to mentally escape for awhile and imagine myself in a life that was not characterized by pain. God was not my comfort in this time, running and music were. Although temptation to find comfort in the arms of another man came my way, God protected me in my vulnerability and I remained faithful to my husband, a fact for which I will be eternally grateful.
All through this, God never let me go. I had first come to Him as a teenager. Now as an adult, I was too afraid of losing the only things that gave me any relief from the pain to completely give myself to Him. But the hunger remained. I needed Him, and somewhere, buried under all the pain, I knew it. One day, while browsing in a Christian bookstore on my way home from my daughter’s gymnastic class, I stumbled upon a series of Bible Studies by Campus Crusade for Christ called “The Ten Basic Steps to Christian Maturity.” I picked up the introductory study, took it home, and promptly forgot about it. I’d get to it someday, I told myself.
That day came about six months later. We’d returned to the Seattle area after a two and a half year stint in Colorado. We were settled into our new house, my daughter had started preschool, and for the first time since her birth, I had a few hours alone in the mornings. I dug out that book and started to go through it. Although I had tremendous knowledge of Scripture do to my upbringing, particularly the New Testament, I decided I would look up each passage and study it rather than just answering the question based I what I already knew that passage said.
I worked through the introductory study, found a Christian bookstore that carried the series, bought steps one and two, and worked my way through those. Step three was the one that changed my life. It was entitled “The Christian and the Holy Spirit.” After establishing Who the Holy Spirit is, the booklet discussed the need for the Christian to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit in order to have any ability to live the Christian Life. The part of the study that had me so mesmerized the day my life changed came in the fourth lesson. The life application had a prayer for me to say. I quote it in its entirety below.
“Dear Father, I need You. I acknowledge that I have been in control of my life; and that as a result I have sinned against You. I thank You that You have forgiven my sins through Christ’s death on the cross for me. I now invite Christ to take control of the throne of my life. Fill me with the Holy Spirit as You commanded me to be filled, and as You promised in Your Word that You would do if I asked in faith. I pray this in the name of Jesus. As an expression of my faith, I now thank You for taking control of my life and for filling me with the Holy Spirit.” (The Christian and the Holy Spirit, page 34)
I read that prayer over and over. I knew it was exactly what I needed. But that wasn’t the prayer that changed everything. It was the one I prayed next. As I read those words, I knew I didn’t mean them. I was too afraid. Running and music, although not inherently bad, had taken God’s place in my life, and I was terrified that by surrendering control I would have to give those things up. How would I get through the day? Yet I knew I needed to do exactly what that prayer directed me to do. I decided to be perfectly honest with God. I knew He knew anyway.
“God, I don’t mean this,” I prayed. “I just don’t mean it. But I wish I did.” And in that moment of weakness, God did what I couldn’t do. Suddenly, I did mean it, with everything I had in me. I stood up, marched over to the radio, turned it off, and returned to my chair, excited to finish the lesson. I didn’t have the strength, the courage or the will to surrender myself to God’s control. I only wished that I had it. I learned in that moment that my loving Father never expected me to muster what I needed on my own, He simply wanted me to confess my inability to do so. His strength was truly made perfect in my weakness.
From that day to this, my life has never been the same. I’ve stumbled, I’ve failed, but through it all my life is my Lord’s to do with as He sees fit. He takes my strengths, my weaknesses, my successes, my failures, and uses them all to do what He wants to do in me and through me. Blessed be the name of the Lord!
