Living On A Dangerous Prayer

I’m so used to talking about the power of prayer that I rarely consider how it can be dangerous too. I was walking home from work one day feeling that mix of guilt and inspiration that makes me want to do more with my life. I didn’t want to keep talking about reaching out to people. I wanted to do it. Whenever. Wherever. So I prayed. I asked God to not only make me bold enough to act, to do. And then I added to it. I asked that when a situation came up when He wanted me to do something, He would make it impossible to say no.

Yeah, it was a pretty balls-y move. Almost immediately after the words filtered through my head, my brain reacted with warning bells that I tried to ignore. It was as if, already, I could sense what kind of request I’d made. It’s like asking for humility and getting an array of uncomfortable circumstances that lead to humility rather than getting the thing itself. Of course I wanted God to work through me. At least, in theory. I never expected the transition from hypothetical to reality to be so painful.

I wonder if part of me didn't expect anything to come of the request. I hadn't really been injecting much faith into my prayers lately. Earlier that week, I joined a prayer walk through the Red-Light District. Even as words spilled from my lips, I felt a strange numbness about it all. My words began to feel like redundant echoes that lost their meaning with each reverberation. I needed more than a thesaurus, here. I needed a real and plausible solution to the deeply rooted systemic pain I could see right in front of me.

Days later, my friend and I walked through that same district. We’d already had a full evening at the UN’s HeforShe events, countered by the glaring lights and pulsing music of the bars that reminded us of just how much women still face objectification, abuse, and apathy.

So, it had already been a weird sort of night. We had already started heading home when I realized that there was a particular section we hadn’t seen. I thought that it was part of the same red light district, but when I asked, my friend told me it was on the other side of town.

I was all ready to shrug it off when I realized the thought wouldn’t shake so easily. What had started out as an inkling grew swiftly. For whatever reason, I felt like I needed to go to that other section, the one in another part of the city.

I politely declined God. Walking with my friend, I ventured another question about how long, hypoethetically of course, it would take to get there. Feeling too embarrassed to even tell her what was on my mind, I kept asking vague questions as though I could relieve this spiritual constipation.

We kept getting closer and closer to home when the thought solidified even more. I had this feeling that there was a girl, a specific person in that other red light district, that night. Ignoring whatever this feeling was would mean ignoring her.

I shushed those feelings up as if they were rowdy children in the middle of a church service. Late at night in a unfamiliar city and with my perpetual lack of direction, this was not the time or place to feel compelled to do anything except go home and maybe grab a snack on the way. And so, I internally battled. We walked toward the overpass that would lead to the street home when I spoke up and asked my friend if we could pray for whoever this person was.

There. Duty fulfilled. I’d found my compromise between my craving to participate in God’s plan and the overwhelming reality that involved people who might truly depend on my action.

That verse from Esther that I had always thought so encouraging now returned to haunt me: “And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14) Mordecai spoke those words. He said them to Esther to encourage her to forsake the security she had as queen and instead expose herself to danger for the sake of her people. I hardly faced the wrath of a Persian ruler. Yet I couldn’t even muster up a reason for not wanting to go. Trying to ease the churning in my stomach, I chose to focus on the other part of the verse: “For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish.” (Esther 4:14). Okay God, provide deliverance through someone else. I’m not your person. I’m not strong enough. I cannot do this.

There I was, literally begging God to bring this assignment to another person when I remembered the prayer I’d offered earlier that week and realized with some mixture of feelings that God was answering that in the current moment. Like some kind of Jonah, I finally knew I would have to go. It’s unlikely I would have found a fish large enough to swallow me in Bangkok’s river anyway.

I spoke up as we walked down the street towards home. I expected to go alone. During our walk, the only reason I told my friend anything was to try to release the pressure I felt on me (as though God is some angry god who demands appeasement). I wouldn’t dare ask her to join me because I couldn’t even be sure what this was on my heart. Yeah, I’m not sure my faith was even at mustard seed level. Interesting then, how my friend agreed to join me right away. Makes all of the embarrassment and doubt seem silly.

We set off on our nearly hour’s long walk, and I I still didn’t know what to expect. I’d given God a yes, a grudging one. But as soon as we switched directions, I felt the weight lift. When we finally made it to the other part of the red light district, I hesitated, still wondering – which is a nice word for doubting – just what would happen once we ventured down it. As we wound our way through, passing people, bars and street vendors, I looked out for a little girl, but no one I saw fit the image of a small child that I expected. In my mind, she had been a child who I could gather up in my arms, but when we passed by one woman, I felt like I needed to stop.

I felt it, but kept moving.

I know. I’m the one doing all of this, and even I don’t understand how I can be such a slow learner. That weight slammed into me all over again until I knew I needed to turn back. When I got to the spot, though, the woman had disappeared. Then it happened once more. I passed another woman with the same pressure to tell her something or stop for her, and again, I passed by.

I have a renewed understanding of Peter’s repeated and seemingly uncontrollable denial. When it comes to acting on what God’s placed on my heart, it’s like I had some short-term memory malfunction about the way He provides.

We ended up walking up and down the sidewalks without seeing any little girls like the one that was on my mind. But as we walked, I prayed. Unlike the prayer walk from earlier in that week, I felt like I was actually praying – pleading with God to move in the places where exploitation and addiction cling to the foundations of those establishments like a slime. I have to be honest: I have a hard time going by the men I see sitting at those bars, often with younger women, without aiming my condemnation their way. From a distance, I can remember that they’re broken people in need of redemptive repair. Up close, my thoughts become clogged with disgust. But I’ve also been realizing that the pity I shower on the women hardly recognizes them as fully human either. Looking up at the both the men and the women occupying the bars, I had been expecting to find a little girl, but as we, but as we wound through the crowd, I could feel God telling me that the women sitting at the bars were His daughters, that each one was a little girl to Him.

Over and over, God has been telling me how we see people matters. How we interact with them, how we present their stories – if we have that right at all – makes an impact on whether we are recognizing each other as family or as one-dimensional issues. Again, I have to be honest that I don’t have a concluding lesson or neat resolution from the experience that night. Maybe to some, it looks like all I did was break curfew to go on an extended late night walk. I can’t describe it, but I know that even though that night didn’t end with a dramatic rescue, the night did not go to waste. Hmm. I wonder if that was the point and also the place where my faith has to grow because as I walked through the red light district, God was showing me one of the most powerful ways that I can join Him: by praying. Even with the ministries and gifts and actions He allows us, my friend and I reflected, and I couldn’t help but dwell on the significance that I could have stayed at home and prayed, but God drew me out pray right up close, and anything He accomplished that night for Him, has everything to do with His ability, and for me, has only to do with my obedience, though even that came in sluggish and flawed format.

So that’s it, the interesting night when I learned how God will actually take you at your word when you ask Him to move in your life. Part of me wants to say that like the warning to “be careful what you wish for,” also “be careful what you pray for.” But don’t. Be fearless in asking God to move in your life because as uncomfortable as it might get, it also means getting to feel God’s strength stir within you and guide you to places you’d never be able to reach on your own. It’s a dangerous prayer, sure. And one that doesn't always come naturally nor result in my natural obedience. That night showed me some of my weaknesses - inaction, doubt, apathy, denial - pretty clearly. But that prayer is one that leads me to security situated not in comfort but in Him.