by Mukti Masih
It was the third week of the nationwide lockdown in India, the second wave of COVID-19 had hit my country hard. I knew it was a bad idea, but every day I would just check news on YouTube to hear death statistics and heart-wrenching stories. Apparently I was not alone in this, every other news story on the BBC was going viral: one of them being an aerial shot of funeral pyres in a Delhi crematorium.
My first thought in those first few weeks was: God let us not be in such a situation. I prayed for the safety of my parent’s life, my brother’s, my cousins’, my friends’, in that order. I didn’t realize at all that my prayers were mainly for the safety of my family first.
Also, the list of grieving families I was praying for, and those struggling for their lives, kept getting longer with each passing day.
I knew binging on news would take a toll mentally, but I did it anyway - until the day that finally numbed me.
In one day, I heard the news of four deaths in a family I knew. I wasn’t exactly fearing my own death. I was fearing the day my family would be in the situation thousands of families were in during that time: running from one hospital to another in search of beds, standing in queue for 12 hours to get an oxygen cylinder, or worse, video calling a family member isolating in a hospital ward, without food or comfort of the home.
That day I just prayed for my parents and my brother. It was as if I had lost all the energy, the words, or the motivation to pray about anything else or anyone else. It was only the next days of coming to my senses that I reflected on the uncomfortable truth about my state of being human. My first instinct was selfishness - to save my own family. I found it hard to fight this basic human instinct. Even though I knew that as believers, we are always at war, the reality of the difference between my true self and my transformed self somehow became more pronounced.
On one hand, Philippians 2:3 convicted me: "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves".
On the other hand, I was dealing with another reality: when I prayed for others, God heard my prayers more quickly. I have been praying for a few things for many years now, and none of those prayers has been answered. In my eyes, these are some pressing matters that I have been asking God about, and I haven’t got any replies yet.
In my journey in Christian life, nothing has frustrated me more than this: God hears my requests for others more quickly. Of course, it means He wants me to learn and practise self-denial. But when I see the prayers for other believers answered, and many of mine still unanswered, I struggle with resentment.
In those periods of wrestling with God, I have felt an acute sense of “not enough”. Am I not faithful enough? Not godly enough? Not praying for my needs enough? And sometimes it has launched me in a spree of praying for just my needs for months. Satan does win, sometimes.
What does the Bible say about this? Is there a way to overcome this?
The Bible of course has many answers and verses and passages. But none of that would talk to me unless I am willing. I need the willingness to acknowledge: Yes I am not enough, I never was enough and I never will be enough to match God’s goodness or His holiness. Yes, I would never be enough to fully reciprocate the infinite love of God.
And I would never be enough to have the heart to pray for others or accept that God in His wisdom may hear my prayers for others’ needs before my own. For practising each of these two things I need the help of the Holy Spirit.
God did not grant Jesus’ prayer in the way Jesus wanted it, when He cried out to Him in Gethsemane: “Abba, Father,....remove this cup from me.”
In the same breath that Jesus expressed this desire, he said, “yet not what I want, but what you want.”
Jesus trusted His father God regardless. And he meant it when he said: Thy will be done.
As believers, we say this often without meaning it because we trust in our own wisdom of understanding both our God and His word.
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
[Hebrews 11:1. KJV]
Things that we don’t see we often don’t understand. If we begin to fully understand, we won’t be walking by faith but by sight. Jesus walked, talked, and did everything by faith.
I need to believe that God loves me equally. He cares for me in the same way He cares for that other believer friend of mine. He cares for the non-believers in the same way.
“Do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die?” says the Lord GOD, “and not that he should turn from his ways and live?
[Ezekiel 18:23 KJV]
Every soul matters to Him. So instead of comparing, I need to focus on God’s infinite love and His wisdom. It’s okay to not understand many things. Just as Paul says: “For now we see through a glass, darkly but then face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know even as also I am known.”
[1 Corinthians 13:12 KJV]
Praying for others without selfish ambition is unachievable without the intervention of the Holy Spirit. Witnessing those prayers for others coming true is all the more something that we cannot do without God’s help.
May we, even before praying for others, pray for the preparedness of our hearts, that God may grant us the Holy Spirit to both pray and be happy for others when our prayers for them get answered.
Mukti Masih is a freelance writer from Indore, India. She partners with her brother Abhishek in taking the Gospel to their clients, friends, and the youth. The siblings take Bible studies among the young people and produce Gospel songs in Hindi. Mukti studied Mass Communication at university, and she accepted Christ when she was 17.
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