(The late-night phone call relays the tragic news that a cherished member of the church has died unexpectedly. A woman knocks on your office door and tearfully reports that her husband is gone, and she doesn’t know if he’s coming back–or if she even wants him back. A seminary student asks you to pray about the inoperable tumor discovered in his brain.
They all want you to pray. But the words of prayer don’t come easily at such times.
What should you ask God to do in such situations? What do you say in the presence of deep suffering? What words do you use when you don’t know how or what to pray?
We asked former pastor Steve Harper, one of the co-founders of The Shepherd’s Care, Inc. (a resource ministry designed to help pastors cope with the pressures of ministry) and recently a professor of spiritual formation at Asbury Theological Seminary, to help explain the ministry of prayer in seemingly hopeless situations.)
THE DYING
When I haven’t known how to pray, I’ve often asked the person, “How would you like me to pray for you today?” They’re often in the best position to know their own needs. They are the ones lying in the bed, living with the tubes, enduring the surgeries. If they say, “Pray that I won’t suffer,” or “Pray that I’ll get well,” that’s exactly what I’ll do.
In addition, when I’m called to the bedside of a person given little hope of recovery, I tend to pray for two things.
First is for the person to experience the presence and comfort of Christ. I’ve never faced a situation where I could not pray, “Thank you, Lord, that even in the midst of this darkness, you remain with us.”
Second is to pray for the person rather than about the disease. I can say, “Thank you Lord, for Mary’s long, good life. She has raised five beautiful children.” Or, “Thank you, God, for my friend Jim. I’m so blessed to have him as a friend and to be his pastor.”
Am I thereby consigning them to the grave?
I would never wish to give that impression. However, on several occasions I have had people say, “Don’t pray that I’ll be healed. Instead, pray that I will experience a peaceful death. Pray that in the not-too-distant future I can be with Jesus.”
Apparently, these individuals had a deep sense in their soul that they wouldn’t be healed. They understood the concept of holy dying as well as holy living. Such people are often way ahead of me in understanding the realities of their situation.
But how should we pray for those who don’t wish to die but who, in all likelihood, are dying?
I always honor their request to pray for healing. Jesus never said to a person, “No, you’re going to die so I’m not going to pray for you.” That’s entirely foreign to the spirit of his ministry.
So I always pray for healing. Even if the person’s plea for longevity flies in the face of medical realities, I can still pray, “Lord, display your sovereign power in this situation. Demonstrate your power as the Great Physician,” or “Continue to offer your constant and comforting presence,” or “Jesus, be Lord for my friend.”
THE IMPOSSIBLE
When it comes to praying for people with difficult medical problems, I am careful not to impose my perspective, or even the doctor’s perspective, on the patient. I’ve been in situations where the doctors said, “He’s going to die.” But he didn’t die. I’ve learned not to take my cues from the medical chart.
For example, my wife worked with a woman who went in for a routine check-up and discovered a massive tumor. The doctor’s prognosis wasn’t encouraging. Nonetheless, we began praying for her recovery. We chose not to treat her as if she were a dying person (she would have picked up on that quickly).
Instead we held out the hope that by our prayer and faith God could heal her, and we related to her as if she was going to recover.
Again, we prayed for her as a person rather than simply about her disease.
One day, while undergoing examination, the doctor discovered the tumor had vanished.
When it comes to praying for the sick, I must ultimately take my guidance from God. On more than one occasion, I’ve sat in a hospital parking lot asking how I should pray for the person I was about to see. My job is represent Christ and pray as Christ wants me to pray in that moment.
A SOUND PRACTICE OF PRAYER
“Is any one of you sick?” James 5:14 says. “He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up.”
This passage troubles many people. Is it a blanket promise to heal everyone who follows the instructions? Or is it a description of a spiritual principle calling us to pray for the sick because God answers prayer (much like the descriptive promises found in Proverbs)?
I was interested in becoming a doctor during high school. My theology of anointing with oil, laying on of hands, and calling the elders has been influenced to some degree by how I’ve watched doctors practice medicine.
If two patients in two different rooms are suffering from the same disease, medical wisdom dictates you treat both those people in essentially the same fashion. They ought to receive the same drugs and undergo the same procedures.
Yet, doctors will tell you the same treatment can yield entirely different results. But it’s still a sound medical practice to treat the same disease in the same manner that’s been effective in the past.
That principle also applies when calling the elders to pray and anoint with oil. Where would doctors be if they said, “The last time we administered penicillin, it didn’t do any good. If word gets out, I’m in trouble. Let’s not use it anymore.”
I cannot allow my ego to get in the way of practicing “good medicine,” or in this case, good ministry. When people ask, “Could we have an anointing ceremony with the elders?” I respond, “When do you want us there?”
Knowing whether or not the person is going to be healed is completely immaterial. Good ministry is following what James says we ought to do and leaving the results with God.
If I were to judge if we are too reckless or too cautious in praying for healing on the basis of James 5, I would say we err on the side of timidity. One reason is the influence of scientific rationalism on the church. Science and technology can’t accept supernatural healing. Yet, when Jesus sent out the first disciples, he commissioned them to preach the Kingdom of God and to heal. I have to take the example of our Lord seriously.
The other reason we tend to shy away from healing services is the bad name false “faith healers” have given healing ministries. We fear guilt by association.
The third reason is ministerial pride. A pastor is never more on the spot than when he or she stands beside the bed of a critically ill person. The potential for embarrassment or sense of failure is enormous.
How do I deal with the troubling questions that arise when a person doesn’t get well?
First, I take a serious look at the depth of my prayer life. It may not be all that it should be. The “failure” may propel me to seek a deeper level of communication and intimacy with God than what I’ve settled for.
I also try to steer clear of allowing my ego to be so wrapped up in the experience that I won’t risk “failure.” The apparent certainty of the James passage contrasts sharply with my thirty years of ministry in which some people I’ve prayed for have gotten well while others have not, but this difference must not keep me from practicing good ministry.
It’s helpful to remember that all physical healing is temporary at best. I think of Lazarus, the man Jesus raised from the dead. You’re not going to bump into him today, because the next time he died, he stayed dead. Undoubtedly the second time Lazarus got sick the prayer chain kicked in, but to no avail.
Why would God heal him once and not the next time? I can’t answer that. It’s all wrapped up in the mystery of God. So when someone asks me to anoint someone with oil and pray for their healing, I do. I just don’t know what God will do.
FAITH AND FUNERALS
When called to a family who has just lost a loved one, particularly when it’s an untimely death, I pray the reality of the situation, “Lord, a great tragedy has occurred here today. We are stunned and saddened by this unspeakable loss.”
In my prayers I avoid the facile explanation I heard in one sermon. The family had lost an infant. “God needed a little rosebud in heaven,” the minister began. “So he looked down and found the most beautiful rosebud on earth and took the flower to heaven.”
I was so angry with the insensitivity of the pastor’s remarks that it was all I could do to remain seated. It was absurd theology. God doesn’t need rosebuds in heaven. He’s the one who said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. If he wanted a garden, he could plant one without infants perishing. Such sentimental explanations of a tragic loss only add embarrassment or fury to the suffering.
The first funeral I performed was for a 16-year-old girl from my youth group. She and her mother had driven to a lake cabin to pick up her dad’s car. They knew he was in the cabin with another woman.
As the young girl drove behind her mother on the dirt road back home, the dust boiled up, and she lost her sense of direction. She veered to the other side of the road, and a car hit her head-on.
In that situation, I could do nothing but acknowledge the depth of evil that claimed her life. That was the reality of the situation, and that’s how I prayed.
When I’m not certain if the deceased was a believer, I shy away from any comment regarding their eternal state. In my prayers I bear witness to the gospel: “Jesus said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die'” (John 11:25). While I express appreciation for the deceased because they were a unique human being, in the final analysis God alone knows the spiritual destiny of people. Apart from the saint who dies with the Twenty-third Psalm on her lips, it’s best I stay away from passing judgment.
When someone loses their lifelong mate, even though the death might not be considered untimely, I show sympathy: “Lord, it would have been wonderful if Roger could have been with Doris for just a few more years … “
I go on to present death in the larger context of eternity and God’s desire for us to experience fellowship with him forever, saying, “But thank you God, that life on earth is not all there is. There is much, much more.”
THE MYSTERIES OF SUFFERING
When I was a professor, a student in my theology of prayer course stopped me after class one day.
“My cancer has come back,” he said. He was a young man who had undergone treatment for a brain tumor four years earlier, and the therapy appeared successful. The tumor had disappeared.
“I’m in seminary to become a preacher,” he said, “and it looks like I’ll never get to be one.” He asked me to tell him if he had heard God’s call correctly.
Prayer is often linked with profound questions about the will of God and the mystery of suffering. Such issues force us into a position of humility. I could not answer his question with any final authority.
Nevertheless we talked that day about how deeply the will to live is ingrained in all of us, and I prayed with him for his complete healing.
In the crises we regularly encounter, we always have a prayer. Not because we can always find the right words. I don’t have to utter a “Dear God” and an “Amen” to be praying. I simply have to be living in a relationship each day with Jesus Christ. If I’m doing that, even when I don’t have a prayer, I know I’m being heard.
Copyright (c) 1994 Christianity Today, Inc./LEADERSHIP Journal
Copyright © 1994 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
