Conduits of Prayer      | page 1 of 5 | next>

by Lynne Hybels

Shortly before my son, Todd, graduated from high school and drove to California to start college, two guys and a girl from our church had the same plan. But in Colorado their van went off the road and the two young men were killed. Several weeks before their trip, I had spent an afternoon with one of the boys; we were rehabbing an apartment building in an inner-city neighborhood in Chicago. I knew that both he and his friend were from God-fearing families and that their mothers had been praying for their safety.

On an early Sunday morning, as the taillights on Todd's truck drifted around a corner and out of sight, I too prayed, and I knew I would continue to pray. But I also knew there were no guarantees. At the very moment I prayed for his safety a patch of ice could be sending him over an embankment or an oncoming driver could be crossing into his lane of traffic. Prayer would not make his safety a sure thing, at least not in any sense that satisfied me. Still I prayed.

I’ve discovered that nothing drives a person to prayer like having kids and nothing produces more questions regarding prayer than having kids. When you love your kids as much as most people do, you have a vested interest in believing that prayer works, that it makes a difference. When you see model young men (whose mothers had been praying for them) cut down by a car accident, you wonder what prayer means. What does it accomplish? Why do it?

Prayer Changes Me

The movie Shadowlands tells the true story of C.S. Lewis’ romance and marriage to Joy Davidman, an American divorcee he agrees to marry in order to give her the legal right to stay in England. He values their friendship, but doesn’t realize how deeply he loves her until she is diagnosed with cancer. He prays for her passionately and when she appears to ente remission a friend says, “I know how hard you’ve been praying, and now God is answering your prayer.” Lewis looks almost disgusted and answers, “That’s not why I pray. I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I am helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.” 

That’s why I pray too. It’s not the only reason, but it’s one of the biggies. Prayer changes me. It helps me see things differently. It reminds me that life is about eternity and that people are about more than physical bodies and that this earthly life is not the main point for me or for my kids or for anybody else. In recent months I have been following the e-mail reports of a man whose young son has been battling cancer. In prose, poetry, and prayer this anguished father has chronicled the journey of his heart through faith and doubt, hope and despair, confidence and fear. His words have been honest—about “unfocused anger, even rage,” about loneliness and depression, about exhaustion and fear. But most every note ends with something to this effect. “I find myself praying for God’s perspective on sickness, loss, healing and death. I don’t want to try to change God’s mind. God’s thoughts are perfect. I want to learn to think God’s thoughts.”

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