by Emily Ralph Servant
When I was a child, I believed in miracles. Prayer could move mountains; we prayed fervently and often. By the time I was a teenager, I had a list of people and circumstances for whom I prayed every morning, early, before the rest of my family woke up. My (literal) prayer closet heard many petitions for healed bodies, restored marriages, world peace.
By the time I was in my twenties, I found my prayer life had grown stale. After many years of interceding for people and situations without seeing healing, restoration, or peace, I found prayer to be painful. I couldn’t push requests out of my mouth when my heart didn’t truly believe that the answer would be “yes.”
In seminary, I was introduced to contemplative prayer. It took a while for me to learn how to still my racing thoughts and simply sit in God’s presence, but eventually I began to experience God’s powerful and healing love flowing through me as I came to God without wishes or demands. It was enough to be with God and know that I was loved.
This practice of contemplative prayer was tested in my early thirties, as I struggled with depression and anxiety, healing from past trauma. Stilling an anxious mind was challenging; experiencing God’s presence felt impossible when my body and heart startled and ached. I found myself longing to believe that I could ask God for peace, restoration, and joy, and God would make it happen.
But there was no magic wand.
Still, time and again God met me, holding me close in the quiet and the pain. And as the peace, restoration, and joy slowly filtered back, I wrestled to make sense of a lifetime of conflicting experiences of prayer. I visited other congregations in Mosaic Conference and heard stories of times when the church prayed for healing and the cancer disappeared. Yet someone I love still endures chronic pain after decades of intercession. I remembered times when funds miraculously showed up to pay a pressing bill. And I also remembered when I begged God to intervene with justice and mercy and still my child was taken from me.
I have found that, anymore, I don’t often have words to give to God. When someone I know is hurting, I rarely ask God for anything more than “Please!” Most often, I simply hold them in the compassionate, redeeming presence of God, trusting in the one who said to a sick man, “I do want to!” (Luke 5:13, CEB)
“There are different spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; and there are different ministries and the same Lord; and there are different activities but the same God who produces all of them in everyone. A demonstration of the Spirit is given to each person for the common good.”
1 Corinthians 12:3-7, CEB
In this stage of my prayer journey, I find myself grateful for those in my life who have energy and faith to intercede for others. Rather than feeling condemned by them, I see them as Aaron and Hur, who held up Moses’ arms when he was getting tired (Exodus 17). I Corinthians 12 says that the church is a body made of many parts, each with its own gift. Maybe others have the gift to pray for healing and transformation, and I can receive that gift with gratitude.
And perhaps I bring my own gift to the church. I am noticing that, as I stop filling my time with God with words, I have more space to listen. God speaks—in the stillness, in Scripture, in life circumstances, through other people, even in unexpected places in my neighborhood. When I listen for God and then change in response to what I hear, I am transformed. The world around me is transformed. Prayer changes things.
Emily Ralph Servant
Emily Ralph Servant is a Leadership Minister for Mosaic Mennonite Conference. Emily has served in pastoral roles at Swamp and Indonesian Light congregations and graduated from Eastern Mennonite Seminary.
The opinions expressed in articles posted on Mosaic’s website are those of the author and may not reflect the official policy of Mosaic Conference. Mosaic is a large conference, crossing ethnicities, geographies, generations, theologies, and politics. Each person can only speak for themselves; no one can represent “the conference.” May God give us the grace to hear what the Spirit is speaking to us through people with whom we disagree and the humility and courage to love one another even when those disagreements can’t be bridged.