From the book “The Power of Stillness”. . .
When was the last time you knelt down, breathed deep, and then begged God to make something stop or go away or change? This kind of plea for God to DO something is not uncommon: “Help my wife to . . .” “Guide us to know what more we can do . . .” “Soften his heart.” “Take this away!”
In these moments, we think of ourselves as being fully present with God. After all we’re focused, we’re petitioning His attention, and we’re very sincere in our request. So why does God feel so far away at such a needful time?
Perhaps God seems distant because we’ve fallen into using prayer to get what we want—and as a tool to make our own agenda happen. This kind of subtle aggression involved in trying to get God to “do something” for us also demonstrates an underlying anxiety and limited trust in Him. In this state, author Richard Rhor cautions, “you will not access the Holy because the only thing that gets in is what you already think, what you already agree with, and what does not threaten you.” In that state how can we possibly expect to receive more? And as he puts it, “if you aren’t ready for more . . . how can you possibly ready for God?” 19
Instead of opening ourselves to His will in this moment, we sometimes end up treating God like a genie in a bottle, or like a Santa Claus: if we can just convince Him that we’ve been very, very good, maybe He will deliver that blessing we want so much. Noticing this tendency in one of our families, five-year-old William asked after a prayer, “Why do we keep telling Jesus what to do? Are we Jesus’ king? I thought He was our King?”
Rather than treating God (through prayer) as a means to an end—like a kind of tool for our purposes—we’ve found that our prayers substantially change when we start focusing on being a tool for His ends.
19. Richard Rhor, Silent Compassion: Finding God in Contemplation (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2014), 55-56.
Jacob Z. Hess, Carrie L. Skarda, Kyle D. Anderson, Ty R. Mansfield “The Power of Stillness” (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2019), 51-52
(Posts with a preamble asterisk * are for a more general audience, and not specific to teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)
