Prayer 01: Don’t Wait Transcript
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Laura: Hey, friends, Laura Wifler here. I am so excited to be back in your earbuds with Risen Motherhood. My co-host, Emily Jensen, will be joining me here in just a couple of minutes, but first, I want to tell you about some fun stuff that we have for you guys. We have a downloadable for you that goes along with our prayer series here that we're going to be talking about, and it's called Kitchen Sink Prayers. If you're not familiar with Kitchen Sink Prayers, it's something that we started last year where every week we would release a topic that you could pray for, and it would have different prayer prompts and some Scripture to go with.
The idea is every time you see a kitchen sink, whether that's at your place of work or at home or wherever—kitchen sinks are actually found in a lot of places if you start looking for them. Every time you see a kitchen sink, you can remember, and it can just be a reminder that you want to be a woman and a mom who prays. If you want to access that free downloadable, you just have to join our email list, and once you're in there, you will unlock The Vault. The Vault is a fancy term for basically a place to get all of our past free downloads. If you are new to Risen Motherhood, and you haven't heard some of our past mini-series or some of our other content that we reference every once in a while on the show, The Vault is how you're going to be able to access all of those things.
The other thing I want to tell you about quickly is our website Capital Campaign. If you haven't seen the news on social media, we are currently fundraising for a new website. Risen Motherhood is a crowdfunded nonprofit. You probably heard that little thing at the very beginning of our show where our donors are really making these shows possible. They make all of our content possible, and most of our content lives on our website, but our website doesn't work very well. If you've ever been on there for very long, you'll realize that things aren't intuitive necessarily. It's kind of hard to dig into our archives, and even our search bar often doesn't work. That's actually an issue with our host. It's not an issue on our end—it's something that we can't fix unless we create an entirely new site.
If you would like to join us in these efforts to be able to just bring gospel hope to moms all around the world and to help them be able to find the right content that's going to meet their needs, we want to just ask you to join with us as a partner to support the building of that website. We are trying to raise $75,000. Even just $1, $5—you guys, you don't even know. It makes so much of a difference for you to just give what you can because those dollars really add up, and time and time again, we have seen God just provide in miraculous ways.
We know for many of you that $1 is actually a lot to give, but it means something and it matters, and it really can help us move forward with the work that we're doing and really create a beautiful website so that moms around the world can enjoy it. All of the five, six years of content that we have can be found and used and be helpful to moms, not just the day it's released, but for years and years after.
We're trying to build a site that really meets the community's needs today and then also for the future. If you want to do that, head over to risenmotherhood.com/newwebsite. You can learn a lot more there. Hit the Give button if you're so inclined, and if anything, please just pray for us in this new process. Okay, I think those were my announcements after being away for so long. Let's get to the show.
Emily Jensen: This is the first episode in our prayer mini-series.
Laura: Yes. Awesome to be back!
Emily: Yes, it is so awesome to be back, and this is a topic that, surprisingly, we haven't covered specifically a ton over the course of Risen Motherhood. It seems really timely that it's like, "Yes, we need to dig into prayer, one of the most important spiritual disciplines we can ever do."
Laura: Exactly. I mean, I think prayer—it seems straightforward to me, so I've kind of felt like, "Well, why do we really need to talk about it? Just talk with God." But then as I started working on the topic of prayer a lot more, I was like, "Wow, there's just so much to be learned here. There's so many interesting things," and then, of course, dealing with my kids, they have so many fascinating questions that I'm like, "I also have this question."
Emily: Yeah, and the other thing that's interesting about prayer is even though we know we should do it—we know it's this key, super important thing—it's surprisingly really hard to do. It's hard to become this prayer warrior or become whatever it is we envision in our minds. I've almost felt it easier to develop Bible study habits than these rhythmic, daily, "always-in-a-conversation-with-God" prayer habits.
Laura: Oh, absolutely.
Emily: It just reminds me very loosely of thinking about eating healthy, kind of, "Hey, I know that I should be reaching for that fruit and vegetable versus that chip bag that looks so good." But yet, it's actually hard to make those changes in practice. There's a lot of barriers. It can really feel like a struggle. It can feel really frustrating. We reach for the chip bag over and over and over again.
I've had that experience with prayer over the years, especially as we've gotten busy, and have had kids, where "Oh, Lord, I want to pray. I know this is important. I know this is the best thing for me," and yet, I'll often defer to the lesser thing.
Laura: I feel like I have a pretty natural—I talk with God and commune with him throughout the day pretty naturally. It's synonymous, perhaps, with even talking to myself or thinking to myself because I was raised as a believer. Since a young girl, I think that's ingrained in me, but what I realized is that I become really light with my prayers or kind of flippant or I'm not really planning about anything at all. I'm half thinking, half praying, and there's not a reverence or an awe to it.
I don't spend time, I think, deliberately, really truly saying, like, "I want to pray about these specific things that are on my heart." It's just more of an in-the-moment, emergency prayer, which is not wrong, but like you're saying, cultivating that habit of prayer—that true, deep recognition of what's changing in you, what's happening, of the true privilege that it is—for me, that is sadly more rare than I would want to admit.
Emily: Oh, totally. It's also hard to admit, I think, our own weakness and our need for something. I read a book a while back from Jared Wilson, and I thought it was so true that he pointed out—it's a quote, "We practice awareness of our own weakness that we might simultaneously practice awareness of the Spirit's presence. This is what prayerlessness is, essentially—forgetfulness of God."
Laura: Yes!
Emily: It’s this idea that like, "I can fix it, first. I can come up with a solution here. I'll Vox Laura. Laura will have something wise to say about this—
Laura: —I’ll tell you what to do!—
[Laughter]
Emily: —Or "I'll talk to my husband," or "I'll Google something first," and none of those things are wrong. Those things are all good and important, but there is a pride there that's a barrier between me and coming to the Father who knows all things and sees all things because, in order to welcome him into the situation, I have to admit that I don't have all the answers.
Laura: I think we think of prayer as our last resort, like, "I've lost my keys. I can't find them. I've looked for them forever. Okay, actually—oh, I should pray. I should pray. Let's do that real quick, kids." Instead, prayer should be our first move. That should be, "I've lost my keys. Let me ask the Lord to help me find them, and then I will go forward and look for them." I think that it feels like inaction sometimes with prayer. It feels like I'm not actually looking for my keys, but in fact, it is one of the best things that you can do and the most helpful things that you can do, and we're going to explore that in this coming series.
Emily: Definitely. All right. We want to look at the whole overview of Scripture, and, Laura, one of the things I appreciated that you did in your book—she's smiling at me right now—
[Laughter]
Emily: This is a shameless plug. Any Time, Any Place, Any Prayer, anywhere, anyhow, anything.
Laura: You could go on and on forever with it.
Emily: I think I got the title right.
Laura: It's a bunch of any words. It's totally fine.
[Laughter]
Emily: That whole series is really to take a topic and look at it over the redemptive storyline of Scripture. You did that with prayer in the book at a child's level. I feel like often, we could benefit from hearing it more so at that simple level. Will you just explain to us: what is the gospel story with prayer?
Laura: That was one of the most exciting parts about writing the book for me was looking through and thinking, "Hey, where do we find prayer in Scripture? What's it like?" I really never searched the Scriptures in that way. It was so fun because as soon as I started looking for it, I was like, "Oh my goodness, it is in literally every single part of Scripture." If we define prayer at its most simple definition as talking with God, then we see prayer everywhere. Adam and Eve—they actually talked with God. They prayed to him when they were in the garden. It's not just something that we do post-fall. It's not something that's new since the fall.
It's actually been around since God created all of the earth and set everything in motion. Then, though we have the fall where it definitely changes what prayer is, it's interesting to think that Adam and Eve talked with God with words. Then the Serpent came in with new words, words that Adam and Eve decided to believe instead of God's Word. There was a new story written for them, a new narrative written for them, and when Adam and Eve listened, they sinned and the fall happened. No longer could they be with God because God is perfectly holy and He cannot be around sin.
He banished them from the garden and yet, Adam and Eve still prayed. God's people still continued to pray, but the fall helps explain why prayer is hard. This was really enlightening for me and something that was really fun to be able to share with my kids is to say, "Oh, well, that's why prayer is sometimes boring. Prayer is— sometimes you're afraid to do it. Sometimes you don't know what to do. Sometimes we feel bad about coming to God and praying." Well, all of those things are because of sin. There's a reason why prayer is hard for us, like Emily and I were just talking about, and there's a reason why I think that there feels like there's a barrier for us to live these thriving lives of prayer. But then something monumental happened that changed the way that everyone prayed. Jesus came.
Again, this is so fun to think about: Jesus talking with God, praying to God. When Jesus came in human form, He was able to talk with his disciples, so it's really fun to think about them praying, and Jesus even taught them how to pray. They asked to be taught and Jesus taught them through the Lord's Prayer. Now we know, though, that Jesus came with a purpose, and he willingly went to the cross for the sins of the world—those sins that Adam and Eve had committed when they listened to the Serpent's words. Jesus died. He rose again three days later and he ascended into heaven, but not without leaving us with a huge gift. One that really helps us in prayer—the gift of the Holy Spirit.
This is so fun to think about: us living on this side of the cross, us as believers, because now we have the Holy Spirit—if we trust in Christ—living in us and the Spirit is actually helping us to pray. The Spirit convicts us of sin, the Spirit leads us to repentance. He reminds us what to pray for, he offers discernment, brings wisdom and hope. He even intercedes for us when we don't know what to pray—those groanings that are too deep for words. Yet we look forward to knowing that prayer isn't always going to stay hard. Even with the help of the Holy Spirit, prayer still feels hard, but it's not always going to be that way. We have the hope of heaven to look forward to and a day when there will be no more barriers to prayer, and we can enjoy the full presence of God once again and talk with him in heaven.
That is such a gift and an exciting thing to look forward to. That's the overall narrative of prayer as you look at it in Scripture, but I would encourage you guys to dig deep and look at different, specific prayers that were prayed, because you can see and learn so many different things as you dig into that story.
Emily: Yes. Absolutely. I just love that picture that someday, if we are in Christ, we are going to be with him, and there is going to be this pure delight and enjoyment in who he is, and that, when we pray right now, we get to experience a bit of that. It's like, why wouldn't we talk with him? Why wouldn't we want that communion and that fellowship? I think it's also interesting to look at all of Scripture, but perhaps we even really see it in the early church, that prayer isn't just this nice recommendation of, "Well, if you've got some extra time on your hands and you really want to be super-spiritual, you will pray." It's like, "No, this is an essential, fundamental part of the Christian life. It's an essential, fundamental part of the church and how the church as a whole brings the kingdom here on earth as God works in and through our prayers."
I was listening to this thing from John Piper recently. He was talking about why Christians are prayerless. He's like, "We don't think we're in a battle." We think like, "Oh, it's comfortable, it's not wartime." But actually, there is. We're not fighting against flesh and blood. There's this whole cosmic battle happening, and prayer is how we fight in the battle. If we're not praying, we may not even realize we need weapons here. This is one of our weapons. It's jarring when you think about how critical it is to the mission.
Laura: There's a real weight to it that we often forget. If you watched our video trailer—for all of our mini-series now, we're doing video trailers, so if you haven't seen it, head over to social media to check it out or to our website—but there's a quote by Martin Luther that says, "To be a Christian without prayer should be no more possible than to be alive without breathing." In the trailer, voicing one of the thoughts that I've had before, is I just thought to myself, "Man, why does it feel so easy to be alive?"
I think that it's exactly what you're talking about, Emily. We don't remember the real battle that we're in, and we don't remember that prayer really matters to these things, that it changes things. I think that we think as moms, "Hey, I'll just wait till I have more time or my kids get a little bit older—I have those really quiet mornings where they all sleep until eight." I hear tell of that time, stuff like that, or you see the woman at church who's known as the prayer warrior, and she's like 60, 70 years old. You're like, "Okay, that's the time when I'll start praying," or whatever.
Actually, what we want to encourage you guys to do—what we're charging ourselves with, and Emily and I are trying to encourage each other to do—is saying, "No. It's a necessity to abiding in Christ and to being a believer on the battleground today. We, as moms, need to start doing this now."
Emily: This is good. This is why we're doing this series, to remind ourselves to—I was just thinking—
Laura: —Oh, for sure!
Emily: —As you're sharing, I'm like, "Yes, I need to remember this too." I am just as tempted to look at the 70-year-old at church, the prayer warrior, and go, "Yes, I have time to become a prayer warrior." There are benefits now. There are reasons why we should do this immediately.
Laura: Because we're not going to do them if we don't think it matters. We need to understand the benefits. We want to start here.
Emily: Absolutely. One of the most important things as a mom—why you should pray right now, I should pray, Laura should pray—is because this is a means for pleading for the salvation of our children, praying for the next generation. Not just our children, but our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, every generation to come.
I know that I was really convicted of this in the last year or so. I feel like I was having a little bit of that last-resort syndrome where I was just noticing some patterns in one of my kiddos' lives that I was just like, "I feel like I'm seeing less interest in spiritual things." I thought things were going well. It just pushed me into a season of—I think it was like about 30 days—of praying for our kids by name more intentionally and really specific things that I was writing down these prayers every morning.
I didn't know what the Lord would do with that. I didn't have a real, clear expectation other than, I just was like, "If I'm not pleading for them, who is pleading for them? Who is pleading for their souls?" It was really amazing to watch a few weeks into that, this child that I was a little bit more—I would say "concerned" is a strong word, but just observing changes—was having a conversation with my husband and I, and we had a chance to share the gospel with him in a fresh way when it was just the three of us, and he—his soul, his heart was just broken over his sin in a new way. He prayed and was repentant and turned to the Lord. We talked about the seed of faith that's in his heart.
That was a real time of turning to the Lord. Even since then, a lot of time has passed since then, and we are still seeing that seed of faith grow. I look back and go, "That was nothing that I did, but that was how God used my prayers." I just feel like, "Oh, we have to do that." James 4:2, I think, talks about we don't have because we don't ask. I don't want to be guilty of not asking.
Laura: That is a powerful word to all moms. I feel conviction right now of just wanting to pray for my kids. I love when you said, "If I am not pleading on their behalf, who is?" I could cry thinking about how much I care for the salvation of my kids' souls. When we were talking about framing up the series, Emily and I, we were talking about, "Oh, let's just talk about kids and how to help our kids to pray," and things like that.
We just thought the best way to help our kids to pray is by moms starting it and modeling it and doing that. That will trickle down to our kids. We want to talk to you guys as moms, but understand that all these benefits we're talking about will directly benefit your children. This is one of the best ways that you can help your child have a thriving prayer life. We often think, "Well, how do I help my kids have a good prayer life, or how do I help them have quiet times?" We forget that we need to do these things. It's funny how we get so concerned—if you start talking about the kids, then we're interested, but if it's about us, we're like, "Eh, that's okay. I'll deal with that later."
Emily: If you want to be a mama bear, pray.
Laura: Yes!
Emily: There you go.
Laura: You want to—
Emily: —That's how you roar. Talk to the Lord.
Laura: Ooh, that’s like a rhyme. That's how you roar, talk to the Lord. I like it. [Laughter] Another benefit again, continuing on this train, is this is really how we do ministry in our homes. It is how we fulfill and work out that purpose of motherhood, just what we're talking about here. 2 Corinthians 10:3-4: "That we walk in the flesh. We're not waging war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds."
This goes back to everything Em and I were saying a little bit earlier, that there is a real, spiritual, cosmic battle going on, and it’s a fight for our children's souls, and it's a fight every day for you to stop looking at Jesus and to look at anything else. If we want to go to battle in this—if we want to change a pattern of sin, or see our child's souls change like Emily's talking about, we want to see our husbands change, we want to see the world change—we need to start going to war and prayer, and we need to fight on our knees.
Prayer does change things. I think this is one of those really messy topics where there have been entire books written on this. There have been lots of conversations, lots of theologians have discussed this, and we're guessing you are like us, still wondering, how exactly—"Explain it to me like I'm five. How exactly does prayer change things?" At the end of the day, it's still a mystery of God. Even the wisest theologians would say, "When you start getting down to the nitty-gritty, it is a mystery."
Emily: It's both true that God is sovereign and all-powerful, and he's providential. We are not going to change who God is or tell him something he didn't already know or come up with some great idea, but at the same time, he works through our prayers in miraculous ways. He tells us to ask, he tells us to come to him. He uses prayer as a mechanism to change us.
We don't know exactly how this works. I would encourage you, if you haven't seen it already, to join us for the August R|M read because we are reading a book called Does Prayer Change Things? by R. C. Sproul. He gets in-depth a little bit more. There is a heavy-hitting theologian there who explains that a little bit more clearly, so definitely read that, but I think we see throughout Scripture lots of instances of God using people's prayers to accomplish his purposes.
The reality is that thing happened. We don't know what would have happened if they had not prayed. We don't have a great negative example almost, but we think of Hannah praying for a child, Moses praying for food and water for the Israelites, Paul praying for churches, Jesus praying to the Father that we would have the gift of the Spirit and just pleading for us, on our behalf—all of those things are there in Scripture that God is working through this.
Laura: Amen, to everything that you said. Just a reminder, we can pray for what we want to see change in the world. We can pray for different outcomes. Thinking of Jesus at the cross asking for a different way— sometimes God will grant that and sometimes God won't like he did with Christ—but ultimately we know he has good for us in mind. He has the best in mind. I think Emily's saying there, it's looking at the prayers in Scriptures, take time to study those, and learn and see for yourself how prayer has impacted things.
Emily: Another really important benefit is that prayer is how we get strength and how we grow in spiritual things. The coffee mug verse comes to mind. The one that football players probably quote—
Laura: —Under their eyes. They write it under their eyes.
[Laughter]
Emily: Philippians 4:13. "I can do all things through him who strengthens me." Actually, if you read the full context of that verse, Paul is recounting all the different challenges and circumstances that he's faced in his life and in his ministry and he's talking about, "Hey, sometimes I had a lot of resources and things are going pretty good and they're pretty comfortable." Then other times he was really physically weak, or he was injured, or he didn't have all of his needs met, and he's talking about, in all of those moments, God gave him strength in Christ to continue doing ministry.
What that makes me think of, in motherhood—it's like some days where it feels like things are going well, and we have the resources that we need, circumstances are going okay. We made it to whatever our destination was on time, and we're feeling pretty good, and in that, God has given us strength through Christ to do ministry in our homes with our children. But then what about all those days when we feel weak, we feel tired, we feel ill-equipped, we feel like, "Why do we even have this job as a mom?" That is the connection to saying, "I can do all things through him who strengthens me. I can do ministry in my home even today through Christ” and we need to pray for the strength to continue being faithful.
Laura: Another benefit is that it's how we get wisdom or insight and direction. You've probably heard before the point of prayer is really not to change your circumstances, but it's to change you. Prayer does align our will to God's. When we're praying honestly, when we pray with soft hearts that are willing to be conformed, that comes with a humble attitude, then there's a supernatural work that is done in our hearts that honestly can't be explained. I've experienced this—I'm sure you have, Emily—where you come in and you want one thing, and you know maybe you should change or you feel like this is how everything should happen, but then over time, as you were praying, you realize, "Wow, I've really had a change of heart." That's what people often say.
Emily: Have you seen that pre-school Sunday school illustration—we've done this before—you bring in a rock and then some Play-Doh, and you make a heart shape out of it, and you have the kids see if they can squash and change the rock into a different shape, and you get a four-year-old who's like, "errr…"
Laura: They really believed they could.
Emily: They're like, "I'm going to do this," and then you pass around the little heart of Play-Doh, and I'm sure it breaks down big-time, but the heart of Play-Doh and they can all squish it and mold it and talk about "Jesus gives us a squishy heart."
Laura: That is so cute. Goodness. I'm going to use that in our Sunday school class. I love that. That's adorable. I have not seen that, but let's all have squishy hearts. I think, for me, this is honestly where some of the most powerful work I have seen God—this is where some of the most powerful work has been done by God in my life is simply to change my heart. Especially as a mom, I think as I've struggled through decisions, really big and weighty ones—where I've held stereotypes or I've held specific ideas in my mind and ideals of what motherhood would look like, and I've just prayed that God would break down those things, that he would show me the way, that he would bring me peace in my decisions—those things like have truly happened and it's stunning to look back at motherhood and to see—I've been a mom now for over eight years—and just the changes that have occurred in my life simply because I have prayed that God would bring peace to my heart. I was reading in Isaiah this morning and talking about, "His whose mind is"—I should have this verse memorized—but "His whose mind is stayed on you…”
Emily: “You will keep him in perfect peace.”
Laura: “Perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you.” Yes, thank you. Say it again, Em. I don't know if I'm putting it right.
Emily: “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you…”
Laura: “…because he trusts in you.”
Emily: Ooh.
Laura: I think that's—everybody, look that up. We're misquoting hardcore. My other favorite coffee mug verse is—I saw it once on a friend's—
Emily: He will carry you up on wings like eagles. [Laughter]
Laura: That one's in everyone's bathrooms, but no. It's whenever people put on—I've seen it, it's just like a funny coffee cup where it says, "I can do all things through a verse out of context."
Emily: Oh, yeah! [Laughter]
Laura: That is my favorite coffee mug. I'm like, "I need that. The world needs that." [Laughter] Anyway, just huge changes are done when we have our squishy hearts.
Emily: Okay. Squishy hearts. I know, I love that. Another benefit is that we get to grieve and lament when we pray. Of course, we know that there are so many moments in motherhood where we feel grief and loss. Some of you right now might be walking through miscarriage or a season of infertility, or perhaps you've just heard a diagnosis for a child, or maybe your marriage has just been really painful or hard, or you're in a season of transition—this could go on and on and on. I think we can just look all over Scripture, but particularly the Psalms, to see what it looks like to cry out to the Lord in prayer, to tell him all of the things that we're feeling, to say, "I'm disappointed. This isn't how I wanted this to go. I don't understand why you're doing this, Lord." That is one of the functions of our prayers.
Laura: Another function is that prayer is how we worship and give thanks. Thanksgiving—it's a huge theme in prayer. We see it in the Psalms, we see it in the hearts and prayers of Paul and other believers throughout the Bible, and Paul specifically talks about how we walk in love and we relate to one another as believers and he says, "Give thanks always and for everything to God the Father, in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ," in Ephesians 5. That is just a huge piece of the puzzle. Prayer allows us to practice the gratitude and thanksgiving and worship that Christ deserves.
Emily: One thing I like too about giving thanks for something that's really, really specific and even hard, as we might see later, that God was using that thing in a really important, merciful, powerful way, and we just don't know yet. I love that example from an R|M read we did a few months ago, Corrie ten Boom's The Hiding Place, and is it Betsy that gives thanks for like the—
Laura: The fleas!
Emily: The fleas! And it's like, "Why are you giving thanks for fleas?" But they find out later that it was those very fleas that were allowing them to study the Bible together and share the gospel and it's like, "Yeah, give thanks for the fleas."
Laura: Lastly, prayer is just how we keep an eternal perspective. When we pray, we are lifting our eyes to the realities of heaven. The reality is that this life isn't all that there is. When we pray, we're recognizing that we are not on the throne, that there is a God on the throne, and there is a plan for our lives and for our story, and that there is more hope coming. It's just a reflection and an acknowledgment that “God, you are God, and I am not.” With all of these things in mind, all of these great benefits that you can get from praying, we just want to encourage you guys as moms to start praying right now. It's not going to be perfect. You're not going to have everything together.
We're going to talk a lot more about everything with praying for our kids and praying with our kids, and how we can just cultivate a prayer life on our own, even in the secret places, but we just want to encourage you to start off as you listen to this mini-series to spend some time in prayer, and maybe pick out a couple of the things that we talked about today, and just pray specifically about those things. Pray for your children's souls. Pray that there would be a recognition in your own life and in your children's life of the cosmic battle that is waging, knowing that prayer is a true weapon in that battle and it is productive. It is something that you can do. It is a helpful tool. It matters and it changes things. Go forth and start praying.