"Pray Beyond the Sick List"

Reading and reflecting on an article by David Powlison on "Pray Beyond the Sick List" (originally published in the Journal of Biblical Counseling, Winter 2005) has been a great help.

I can echo Powlison's lament that much of our public prayers, whether during church service, prayer meetings -  even in my own private prayers - are often "medically informative but spiritually impoverished". Powlison's threefold warning on persisting in such forms of prayer certainly got my attention. I've paraphrased them as follows:
1) they can compromise our witness about our Lord;
2) they can actually be "disheartening and distracting the faith of God's people"; and
3) they can feed our inclination to worship the idol called HEALTH.

Powlison summarises his concerns with some stirring words:

"prayer can become a breeding ground for many bizarre ideas and practices: a spiritually sanctioned version of THE EXACT SAME OBSESSION WITH HEALTH AND MEDICINE THAT CHARACTERIZES THE WIDER CULTURE; naming and claiming your healing; superstitious belief that the quantity or fervency of prayer is decisive in getting God's ear; the notion that prayer has some intrinsic "power"; questioning the faith of a person who doesn't get better." (EMPHASIS mine)

What's the antidote to such "spiritually impoverished" prayers?

Powlison suggests that the solution is to let God's Word shape how we understand and practice prayer, how we request prayer for and from others, how we model and teach prayer. In particular, he encourages us to keep these factors in view:

1. Keep spiritual issues in view

Powlison invites us to take a closer look at the oft-cited passage in James 5:13-20.

"Notice ... how pointedly James keeps spiritual issues in view. His letter is about growing in wisdom, and HE DOESN'T CHANGE THAT EMPHASIS WHEN IT COMES TO HELPING THE SICK. What he writes is predicated on his understanding that suffering presents an occasion to become wise, a good gift from above: “Count it all joy when you meet various trials … If anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask … .” He has already illustrated this regarding the issues of poverty, injustice, and interpersonal conflict. Now he illustrates it regarding sickness." (EMPHASIS mine)

In other words, understood within the context of our Lord who is totally, sovereignly at work in all our circumstances, sickness as a form of suffering is God's provision for our growth, a "very good gift" from the all powerful and all wise and loving God.

Keeping spiritual issues in view also helps us see at least two other ways that God works in sickness:

"Sickness, like any other weakness and trouble, can force us to stop and face ourselves, to stop and find the Lord."

How we respond to sickness (complain and grumble? anger? denial? blame? fearful? crave attention? indulge? depressed? etc.) exposes what lies within our hearts, leading us to greater dependency on the mercies of the Lord Jesus, and deeper delight in the love of God.

Keeping spiritual issues in view help us see what God is ALWAYS interested to do in us:

"Is God interested in healing any particular illness? Sometimes, sometimes not. But is He always interested in making us wise, holy, trusting, and loving, even in the context of our pain, disability, and dying? Yes, yes again, and amen."

2. Long for Christ's Kingdom 

Powlison also shows us that when we allow God's Word to shape how we pray for the sick, our emphases will change.

From his survey of prayers of God's people in the Bible in both testaments (especially the Psalms, the Lord's Prayer, Philippians 1:9-11, Colossians 1:9-14, Ephesians 1:15-23 & 3:14-21), Powlison identifies three emphases in biblical prayers, what he calls "circumstantial prayers", "wisdom prayers" and "kingdom prayers":

"1. Sometimes we ask God to change our circumstances—heal the sick, give us daily bread, protect us from suffering and evildoers, make our political leaders just, convert our friends and family, make our work and ministries prosper, provide us with a spouse, quiet this dangerous storm, send us rain, give us a child.
2. Sometimes we ask God to change us—deepen our faith, teach us to love each other, forgive our sins, make us wise where we tend to be foolish, help us know You better, give us understanding of Scripture, teach us how to encourage others.
3. Sometimes we ask God to change everything by revealing Himself more fully on the stage of real life, magnifying the degree to which His glory and rule are obvious—Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, be exalted above the heavens, let Your glory be over all of the earth, let Your glory fill the earth as the waters cover the sea, come Lord Jesus."

Allowing God's Word to shape our prayers means keeping all three emphases together as we pray, including when we pray for the sick. Powlison explains:

"If you just pray for better circumstances, then God becomes the errand boy (usually somewhat disappointing) who exists to give you your shopping list of desires and pleasures—no sanctifying purposes, no higher glory ... If you only pray for personal change, then it tends to reveal an obsession with moral self improvement, a self-absorbed spirituality detached from engaging with other people and the tasks of life ... If we only pray for the sweeping invasion of the kingdom, then prayers tend towards irrelevance and overgeneralization, failing to work out how the actual kingdom rights real wrongs, wipes away real tears, and removes real sins... "

Powlison's article is a helpful reminder amidst much present calls to prayer. The zeal behind many prayer rallies of late has been a great blessing to God's people. But may we heed the loving exhortation in this article to pray "far beyond the sick list, [but] in a noticeably different way for the sick."