The Prayer of Relinquishment

Not My Will

If you are going to become like Jesus, then you are going to have some unanswered prayers. Jesus did. At times people stop praying or stop praying with faith, because they simply don’t feel like it matters. Some have lost hope in God answering their prayers. Some have become fatalist. Both must now battle through deep personal issues regarding God’s love and what it is like to be His child. Many Churches today are not honest about what the life of prayer is truly like. The over promotion of “God will give you the desires of your heart” has resulted in hundreds of wounded souls. When what they desire is not granted they are deeply hurt. Confusion over what types of prayers God answers abounds.

In a quick search I found 26 scriptures for unanswered prayer, 18 reasons our prayers are not answered and 5 reasons it is best that God did not answer our prayers.  While each site has some merit, the true depth of the issue was not apparent to me.  This is my take on the subject.

God is a spirit and a being. The Bible describes God in personal ways even giving Him a personality. We see love, anger, hope, desire, plans, intentions and a thousand other things, personal things, when we read scripture. God is living, moving, active. So when we pray, we are communicating to a being that has a personality with an agenda, desires and hopes. When we take our request to God we find that He too has request, plans. So what happens next?

Well that depends on your relationship with God. Amazingly, God allows us to maintain our free will. We can learn to relinquish our will or we can go on living free from His will. We can try to live out the Christian life and never once surrender our will to His will, our person can never become ruled or subject to His person. When a person walks this pathway their prayer life is full of pretending, denying, neglecting and busyness.  

Un-submitted to the will of God we pretend that God is close to us, that we feel His love, but we don’t. Encountering the love of God involves His ruler-ship over our will. While God will not make us deny ourselves to follow Him, the ability to truly follow God requires that we do. When we don’t we are just pretending, and pretending leads to other things.

Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.    Mat 16:24 NASB

Denial creeps into our lives when our will is not surrendered to God because we end up rejecting God on a deep level. We can pretend that we are OK, but in time conviction to surrender sets in and we then choose to yield our will to God’s or we deny Him. Denying God doesn’t mean we leave the church. We may be in church leadership. But their feelings toward God may reveal issues that we have with God; they feel He is mostly angry, mostly mad, and mostly judgmental. Often these emotions come from the reality that they are feeling God’s call to submission but denying their personal need to submit their will to His. It’s like a child who is disobeying the instructions of a parent. The child may enjoy the forbidden action but they will feel the pain of the broken relationship with the parent.  Now add neglect.

Neglecting God in their inner life is often the result of this pretending, denying combination. It hurts when God convicts us. When God draws us by His Spirit it impacts our lives and we are often tormented by His loving pursuit. If we do not submit we cannot bear the pain of His call long, so we develop skills of neglect. Like friends who once were close but now separated by some hurtful act, we can live our lives around God and yet have little to do with Him. We can see God in worship, in the lives of others, in our children and yet distance ourselves from God by simple neglect. Our biggest tool in neglect is busyness.

Busy being a parent, a church member, a servant, an office worker, a soccer mom, a hunter , a runner or any number of things, we choose to push God away by making ourselves busy. Often this pathway starts from a juncture where a person feels like God did not help them in a time of need. The issue of surrendering their will and desires to God was not addressed. Instead these people are often encouraged to receive “in faith” what God has not willed for them. If not corrected, the belief that a Christian is determined by what they get, not what they give, will destroy their lives. Promoting the ideas that Christians get a better life, heaven, health and favor from God are true, in part. But what makes one a Christian is not what they get, but what they give. In giving themselves to God, in surrender of their all, they engage in transformation.

Now back to the story of Jesus and His unanswered prayer.

Jesus prayed for Peter and the coming testing of his faith. Jesus prayed that Simon’s faith would not fail. Then, almost as if Jesus knew that Simon would fail, that His prayer would not be answered, Jesus encourages Peter to strengthen others once the ordeal is over and Peter has been restored. Here is a glimpse into the passage.

"Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers."    Luke 22:31-32 NASB

Jesus has a perfect relationship with the Father. Whatever Jesus saw the Father doing, Jesus did. The union and harmony between the Father and Son was beyond that which fallen humanity could achieve. Yet, Jesus made request of the Father that were not answered or not answered in the manner in which Jesus sought.  Jesus, being both God and man, had within himself desires that all men have. Jesus dearly loved Peter, His friend. Jesus loved life and desired not to die. The cries from the heart of Jesus reflect both His humanity and His divinity. Looking at how honestly Jesus prayed should encourage us to cry out with all our heart also.

Following is the passage from the garden of Gethsemane.  I bolded the text for emphasis.

Then He *said to them, "My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me." And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will." And He *came to the disciples and *found them sleeping, and *said to Peter, "So, you men could not keep watch with Me for one hour? "Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, "My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done." Again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. And He left them again, and went away and prayed a third time, saying the same thing once more.   Mat 26:38-44 NASB (emphasis added)

Andrew Murray has a chapter in His book on the School of Prayer about this event. Chapter  TWENTY-EIGHTHLESSON – Christ the sacrifice  You can read it by following this link. The chapter is also in the book 7 Classics onPrayer that I mentioned last week. I think it is worth the time to read and encourage you to do so. The language is old, but worth the effort.

When we look at the above passage we could see only the “Your will be done” part and miss the struggle. Jesus had a will too. Independent of the Father, Jesus sough to have His will acted upon by the Father. The struggle was real. Jesus physically sweated blood in this battle of wills. In the end, the desire of Jesus’ heart was not answered.  He cried out “Thy will” instead.

What happened was that through prayer Jesus relinquished His will to the will of the Father. The will of the Father was exerted over the will of Jesus. I could go on but I don’t think I could do as good a job as some others who have written about this. So here are those links. Please check them out. Volitional surrender to God seems to be at an all-time low in the American church. Independence, self-rule, and even personal desires are often promoted as Godly means. They are not.  So make the click and take a step in deeper transformation into the image of Jesus Christ.

Crucifying Our Will is an article by Richard Foster and appears in His book on prayer. In the second part of the article the prayers of self-emptying, surrender, abandonment, release and resurrection would be a great place to start a new year’s adventure in prayer.

Catherine Marshall wrote Adventures in Prayer and has a chapter on the Prayer of Relinquishment. I have read sections of this book but not the whole book. You can find in online as an eBook, but I am not sure of a trusted sight to download it from. Beware of additional spyware when downloading from some sites. If you know of a safe site that has this eBook, please pass it onto me. Amazon only has the print version available.

The third link is to a three page PDF by Lorene McCullough on the Prayer of Relinquishment who talks about Catherine Marshalls article published in 1960 and share s some of her own insights.