Difficult or Challenging Prayers

People have written some difficult and challenging prayers over the years. For example, a British fellow in the 1800’s named Thomas Arnold prayed – “Gracious Father, be pleased to touch our hearts in time with trouble, with sorrow, with sickness, with disappointment, with anything that may hinder them from being hard to the end, and leading us to eternal ruin.” And John Wesley from the 1700’s prayed “Lord God . . . let me be employed for you, or laid aside for you, exalted for you or brought low for you . . . .”

Why do I classify these prayers as difficult and challenging? Because they express a complete surrender to God. Most of us pray for blessing, peace, happiness, prosperity, and so on. Who of us would invite God to bring sorrow, sickness and disappointment? Someone who wants to be rid of a hardened heart and avoid ruin at all costs. Someone who believes that God’s plan to make His people holy is more important than us getting our own way.

In the second temptation of Jesus recorded in Matthew 4, Satan absolutely opposed such a spirit of submission to God, appealing to Jesus to attempt to make God the Father submit to the Son’s will, instead of Jesus, the Son of God, submitting to His Father’s will.

In the first temptation Jesus showed He trusted His Father so much that He would rather starve than disobey the Father’s will, even if that meant He would be deprived for a time. So Satan sought to capitalize on that trust, twist it, and transform it into a misshapen version whereby “trust” would actually be used as a license to glorify oneself, expecting the Father to come behind and agree to support the narcissistic person Satan wanted Jesus to become.

Satan even (mis)quoted Psalm 91 which says that God “would give His angels charge over you,” and “in their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone” (Matthew 4:6). Satan wanted Jesus to jump off the highest part of the Temple in Jerusalem in front of crowds to wow them with a sensational stunt, complete with a supernatural display of angelic assistants to rescue Him. That would be “trusting” God’s Word in order to claim its promises for whatever you want in life, not recognizing that the promise of protection includes being rescued from attraction to the world’s praise. Jesus was not out to do tricks in order to get human applause. Acting in humility to please His Father was the way to demonstrate real trust in the Bible’s promises.

Satan tempted Jesus with carnal glory. He was enticing Jesus to set His sights on the praise of people. Has Satan snared you on this? Do you live a life of trust in the Father’s will, living in quiet obedience, or are you driven by praise from people, following Satan’s version of “trust” in the Bible in order to indulge your pride?