standing with hope

by vonda hogle

Accept my prayer as incense offered to you,
    and my upraised hands as an evening offering.

Psalm 141:2

To be perfectly honest, I have truly wrestled with writing this article. Not because of what God says, but because every time I put something down about prayer, God deals with me about my preconceptions. Not things that I have necessarily been taught, but my own projections that I have developed throughout a lifetime of praying.

Having been raised in the church, I have done just about every prayer model that has been developed in the last 50 years. ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication). PRAY (Praise, Repent, Ask, Yield). HEART (Honor God, Examine your life, Ask for help, Request for others, Thank God). SOAP (Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer). Five Finger Prayer – Thumb: pray for those closest to you, Pointing finger: pray for those who guide us (teachers, mentors, doctors), Middle finger (tallest): pray for those who lead us (government, civic, business), Ring finger (weakest): pray for those who are weak (poor, sick, homeless, persecuted), Pinky (smallest, least): pray for yourself.

There is nothing wrong with any of these models, especially in teaching people to pray initially when you just don’t know where to begin, but as I have matured and my relationship with God has grown deeper, I don’t want to just check things off of a list or feel inhibited in my conversation with Him because I feel like I am focusing too much on myself. My prayer life isn’t about the to-do list or the list of needs that I have, it’s about talking with Someone who really hears me; who knows me and who I can be completely honest with how I am feeling or what my true desires are.

That level of maturity in my prayer life is the goal. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 says “¹⁶ Rejoice always, ¹⁷ pray continually, ¹⁸ give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” I can rejoice about a lot of things. I can find a way to be thankful in most things. But pray continually? That means that my life should be a prayer. Everything I do is a communication with God, a reflection of my relationship with Him. That is challenging because I don’t feel like all, or even most days, many of my actions, are worthy of my relationship with him.

I can get fixated on my situation or the other relationships in my life and put a higher priority than what Jesus modeled for us. I give Him a list of the things I want Him to do for me or provide for me, or I tell Him what to do in other people’s lives. I do all of this without the courtesy of seeking Him for His purpose or plan or even timing.

When I pray, timing is really a hard thing for me to grasp. I am a latch key kid, brought up on ramen noodles in the microwave and have been conditioned to put a clock on things. I will give God a certain time to get things done, then I will try to solve it or create it in my own strength. I want it to be like the Wizard of OZ where God validates my requests, then grants me whatever I want.

This past year I learned a lot about prayer, about the life of the actual prayer itself, long after it is uttered. The context in which I learned this lesson is why I have struggled with writing it. It’s because I have seen God’s long game in prayer and realized that I was able to be used by Him while He made true on His promise from James 5:16(b) “The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.”

I want to be careful as I relay this story, because this is my story, from my vantage point and I think it is important to share; however, there are others involved and it is not my place to share their parts of the story. When things took place, they were children, but now as adults, iit is their right and responsibility to share their own stories.

The first week of January in 2010, I took a group of college students on a mission trip to Haiti. We stayed and worked in an orphanage for a week. I had traveled to many third world countries and had been in many orphanages, so I thought that my primary job was going to be to help these students guard their hearts, because I knew they would fall in love with all of the kids and want to take them home, but couldn’t. I thought I was ready for the task.

As we settled in, the Haitian children were all vying for the attention of the college students and I sat back and watched as they played soccer (football) and jumped rope with them. In my mind I tried to imagine the circumstances that would bring children to such a place. When I looked up, I saw a Haitian girl smiling at me with the sweetest smile. She was probably 10 yards away from me and wasn’t smiling at me for attention, but as odd as it sounds, I felt seen by her. At that moment I felt God say, “You are looking around her trying to figure things out, even with some judgment, and she is looking at you with the face of Love.”

I was hooked. I wanted to know this girl. She wasn’t the loudest, she wasn’t the shyest. She was a girl in the middle. She floated from one group of kids to another, making some of them laugh, just talking with others, but showing no partiality to any of them – just a little friend to them all. I continued to observe her from a distance.

Very shortly after that, a group of boys approached me and even though there was a language barrier, let me know they wanted me to take pictures of them with my digital camera. As I did, one of them became very interested in how the camera worked. He was so inquisitive, so I handed him the camera and had someone interpret that I wanted him to go take pictures for me. You would have thought I gave him the keys to a Ferrari!

So there I was, probably 50 kids in this orphanage and two stole my heart while I was supposed to be the guardian of hearts and not allow this to happen. It wasn’t until a day and a half later that someone noticed who I was dividing my time between and said, “You realize they are brother and sister, don’t you?” I had no idea! Once someone said it and they finally stood next to each other, there was no denying it and God began speaking to me about adopting these kids. I found out as much of their story as I could.

I had already adopted the year before this trip. I knew that was my one and done. On this trip, another couple who was there felt God was telling them to adopt a different girl, and had contacted a Haitian lawyer to come and begin the process. They asked me to sit in the meeting since I had previously adopted, figuring I had some experience.

I argued with God over the next few days. My prayer wasn’t the list of things I wanted or needed. It was a list of why I couldn’t adopt these kids. It was a legitimate list, but God really didn’t care about my excuses and continued to work on me.

As we headed for the airport on Saturday, January 7, 2010, I said to the director of the orphanage, “I don’t know what God is doing (though I totally knew what God was doing) and I will keep praying about it, but I just want you to know, if anything ever happens, I want to take care of these two.”