What's the deal with tongues? In this article, Jesse Medina recounts his experience in an Assemblies of God church with a high value on speaking in tongues. But what about the weirdness? Can we throw tongues out altogether? Read and Interact
Do Numbers Matter to God?
Posted By AJ Teaters on/at 9:51 AM
Written by AJ Teaters
I recently read the following:
“MERRITT ISLAND, Fla. — As Shellie Ross waited in a hospital for word on her son, Bryson, she posted this note to the social networking site Twitter.com: ‘Please pray like never before, my 2 yr old fell in the pool.’ “(USA Today, 12/20/09)
By the end of the article, I had one big question on my mind,
Does God answer a prayer if more people are praying for the same thing?
Of course, there is a big brouhaha about this woman tweeting while her son is possibly dying in the ICU of a local hospital and, more controversially, how this same woman tweeted just one minute before the 911 call about finding her son at the bottom of the pool. People are screaming for justice and parental negligence because of the actions of this mother.
However, I want to look under the surface of the story and look at what I quoted in the start of this blog. The mom tweeted a prayer request, I don’t know how many followers she has (it doesn’t matter), but she asked a mass collective group of people to pray for the same thing as she was praying for.
And it makes me wonder why.
This scenario paints a vivid picture in my head of all the times my sister and I would bug/annoy my parents in hopes of getting what we wanted. My mom would say, “No,” so what was the obvious course of action? Ask Dad! Then, if both parents agreed in the denial then we busted out the big guns.
“Can we have it now… how ‘bout now… now… now… now… mmmmm… now?”
“I promise this will be the only time I ask, ever! I’ll never ask for this ever again in my entire life!”
“If my friend Blake gets to, why can’t I?”
Mass prayer requests sound like a child whining to a parent who won’t give them their way. Is it that we believe God will prioritize our prayers based on how many times we pray the same prayer or because of how many people pray for the same thing to happen?
Do we think God is a democracy?
Random Christian: “Dear God, please help me. Send your Holy Spirit down and heal me from this cancer that is overtaking my body. In Jesus’ name, heal me.”
God: “Um…yeah…about that cancer, there’s this family in Ohio that has their entire congregation praying for their newborn son to breathe on his own without a respirator… so… sorry, he gets the miracle this time. Hit me up next time, though, and see if you can get more people praying. My motto is, ‘the more the better.’”
Doesn’t this make God sound like a gumball machine? Pay enough money and you’ll get one miracle at a time (hopefully it’s the blue one, they’re the best). Is our faith so little to think that God can’t grant more than one miracle at time; wouldn’t that make him not all-powerful? Why do we think that God is more likely to answer prayer when more people are praying? Is it because our collective prayer voice is louder to God – does he sit up in heaven weighing prayer requests with a pray-o-meter and raise one hand when the prayers get loud enough? Is it because it’s more annoying to God, so He will answer our request quicker?
I’m not saying we shouldn’t pray for one another, but what if there is another point behind it?
It is a subtle difference, but perhaps our focus when praying for others is not just to get God to answer prayers, but to hold one another up before God. In other words, the point is not just to create a louder voice, but to join with one another in love and compassion.
Perhaps we need to go from praying:
“Dear God, please give Dave what he is praying for.”
To:
“Dear God, please give Dave the discernment and wisdom to get through this tough time in his life. Be with him and calm his thoughts and heart. Use me to help.”
God hears Dave. More importantly, God knows what Dave needs better than anyone else, including Dave. And it may just be that what Dave really needs isn’t to get whatever he is praying for. It may just be that Dave needs wisdom, or character, or something else. So instead of trying to democracize God, let’s change the way we pray.
How does God decide what prayers to answer? Does it have to do with numbers or need? Do numbers help?
