Do you find yourself thinking that God exists for your beck and call? Think again – let your afflictions lead you into your prayer closet. Only then can your emptiness meet God’s fullness.
Let me tell you a way to really strengthen your prayer life.
Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada, and I remember decades ago when I was first injured, someone said, “Joni, your afflictions are going to send you into your prayer closet, and [those afflictions will] shut the door.” And, oh, he was right. After that diving accident in which I became paralyzed, my prayer life changed. Dramatically. Up until then, my prayers were pretty much self-centered. Before I became paralyzed, I looked at God as though he were, and I’m so embarrassed to say this, but I looked at him as though he were a celestial bellboy, and prayer was like this big, spiritual vending machine. And I reasoned that as long as I kept my nose clean, I could walk right up to that vending machine, say my prayers, put forth my petitions, pull the lever, and out would come answers to my liking. God was someone from whom I could get stuff: happiness, a great job, friends, a good reputation, you know, stuff like that. My prayer life was mostly made up of petitions that centered around my desires.
But when I became paralyzed, things started to change. ‘Cause I kept pulling that lever on the vending machine, the same one: asking God time and again for him to physically heal me. But he was not about to be my vending machine. More so, he was about to change my view of him as celestial bellboy. My afflictions sent me into a prayer closet, and those same afflictions shut the door behind me. I did not like it, at first. I squirmed at the idea of being shut away with God, just him and me. But it was in that prayer closet, without any distractions, that I was forced to think. Actually, I was forced to rethink my ideas about the God of the Bible. I was made to meditate on tough Bible passages, to reflect on things I was reading, question God about his mysterious ways. Most of all, in that prayer closet – I should say, it wasn’t a physical closet; mainly, it was my empty bedroom, and often just my bed – but it was there that I had time to ponder the significance of what Christ had done for me on the cross, and how, because of that sacrifice, I could trust him with my paralysis. My quadriplegia wasn’t a fluke; it was part of a plan. And that plan was good because God had proven himself trustworthy. My ideas, my immature view of him, began to be transformed as I focused, in that prayer closet, on what Jesus did for me. That took time. It took a lot of stillness and quiet meditation, digging deep into who this great and glorious God of the Bible really was. And so, in my heart, I knew that in that prayer closet on my bed, I would find salvation. And over time, I did.
So, I ended up being extremely grateful for the way my hardships had shut that door, sequestering me and God away together. For it was in that solitary get-alone-with-God prayer closet that brand-new desires for Jesus began to spring up in my heart. My love, my devotion, and my somber respect for my majestic Savior began to stretch my soul’s capacity for him. In that prayer closet, I found that my own emptiness and God’s fullness were brought together. And I could not imagine anything sweeter.
And so, if you are one who tends to view prayer as a vending machine; if you sometimes catch yourself thinking that God exists for your beck and call, think again. Today let your afflictions take you by the hand and lead you into your prayer closet. For only in prayer will your emptiness be satisfied by God’s fullness. Especially when you suffer.
© Joni and Friends