"You Shouldn't Have Prayed. You Made It Worse"

The forecast called for rain on the day we were throwing my husband's surprise birthday party.

 

My whole plan revolved around the outdoor space at our Georgia home. The party's success seemed to hinge on the weather and each day that inched closer brought worse news. I made adjustments so that people wouldn't be eating in the rain and sent up sincere prayers that God would give us a small window of reprieve.

Almost immediately after I prayed, the weather got worse. Our guests arrived in the middle of downpours...the worst of the day. Water piled up in front of our garage and we had to pull out a pump to get rid of it. My son and I eventually gave up on trying to stay dry. I looked and felt like a drowned rat.

And in that moment, I had this thought "You shouldn't have prayed. You made it worse."

I'd had run ins with this thought before, especially this year when I've felt God call me to pray more specifically and to track my prayers. Often when I pray, things get visibly worse. And I'll be vulnerable enough to tell you that it's made me scared to pray at times. Maybe I'm not doing all the right things to make God hear me. Maybe my prayers are weak or selfish. Maybe I just don't have enough faith. Maybe I need to leave the praying to the warrior saints...the ones who are perfect and do nothing but fellowship with God.

Or here's one of those religious diddies... What if my prayers are only drawing God's attention to what is important to me, and He doesn't want anything more important than Him in my life, so He sabotages the thing I'm asking to see if my heart is totally surrendered to Him? Confessions of a recovering legalist overthinker.

These thoughts haven't stopped me from fighting for communication with God, but they have made me hesitant. I've allowed doubt to interfere with my requests before I've even offered them. Worse, I've fallen into the trap of turning my relationship with God transactional where He's my banker instead of my Father.

Maybe you can relate to some of this. Why do things sometimes look visibly worse when we pray? Why do even seemingly stable situations begin to blow up? Why does something we only needed a broom to sweep up turn into what will now require a whole commercial vacuum?

Every prayer begins a battle. The Bible tells us in Ephesians 6:12 that we are wrestling with all kinds of demonic activity in the heavenlies. Satan is not one to give up territory without a fight. When we begin that prayer battle, he sends in reinforcements. We have stirred up a hornet's nest, so to speak.

But our prayers gather the forces of light to this battle, too. They push back the darkness and reclaim more Kingdom territory. The enemy is a defeated foe in every sense. He can put up as much of a fight as he wants. He will not win the war.

He wins battles, though. He does this by convincing us that our prayers are useless...that they don't matter...that they are falling on deaf ears...even that they make things worse. When he is successful in stealing our prayers, darkness takes ground here on this earth. We are the light of the world, but the fuel for that light is our connection to the Power Source.

To the devil, every prayer you pray is about more than the thing for which you are praying. It's also about how much you will fight him, how much you will continue to pray, and how much you will believe in prayer after the battle. He works to discourage us, dissuade us, and distract us from prayer, because it defeats him.

By the time that my husband showed up to his surprise party, the rain had stopped. We had a reprieve for the rest of the celebration, and it was a great time. Do I think God changed the weather for a party? I'll have to ask Him when I get to Heaven. I only used this example because it's the one that led to the epiphany that things getting worse does not reflect negatively on my prayers. As a matter of fact, it might just be the proof that my prayers have started the work.