Healing Prayer

Writing a sermon on healing prayer challenges me. I am reading Philip Yancey's book "Prayer." He has good and interesting things to say and is, I'd judge, biblically and theologically sound. It's good to hear stories of people who've waited their whole lives for an experience of God, praying faithfully all that time, and only really 'connected' once. Good also to hear stories of people who weren't healed in the way they thought.

I prayed for years to be released from appetite for overeating, and for the polycystic ovarian syndrome that either arose from or caused that appetite (no one knows). Never happened. Still hasn't. But what I've learned is that I play a role, smaller some days than others, in releasing the raging appetite that plagued me for years. Perhaps that's an answer to my prayer for healing. Knowing that sugar sets me up for the desire to binge is helpful. Knowledge alone, though, hasn't proved enough.

What I've learned, I suppose, is that one never stops needing to pray for healing. For me, for the chronic nature of my dis-eases, healing comes with constant contact, with connecting to others who share the struggle, with honesty and with self-denial. It's not a sudden thing, but a constant thing.

The other thing is that, after a while, you get tired of praying for your own healing. It's boring listening to yourself beg over and over again. Pretty soon, I turn to praying for others, those I perceive as worse off (who but God can judge that), those whose faces or names come to mind. Strange, but that brings more relief, more wholeness than anything else I do in prayer.

I am not sure what it changes. Prayer isn't really about problem solving (as much as I wish it were). Prayer doesn't solve anything. It is more like entering a different world, and letting yourself become enculturated to that other place.

Whatever else can be said, James is pretty clear that if we're in need, we pray (and not alone). Jesus tells us 'When you pray' not 'If you pray.' So we keep at it, and try to ask faithfully, and once again fall on the merciful Spirit to translate our prayers into something intelligible to God. We are promised that when we pray, we will receive something good (Luke has Jesus telling us we'll receive the Holy Spirit,r regardless).

Nothing to lose, then, is there? Which doesn't make it easy, but that's another day.