John Carver - Pray then What (I hate crying in public)
1,971 views · Published 12 February 2016 · 51:27 · Indexed 24 October 2026
Channel: John Carver · 2016 · People & Blogs
I shared "Pray then What" with our church at Faith Outreach Chapel in Baltimore Maryland. I wouldn't teach about prayer for YEARS because our daughter, Juliana, has been fighting cancer since 2007 and NONE of my prayers, and the prayers of thousands of people around the world have worked to cure her...so standing behind a pulpit and sharing that prayer works would mean I would have to be a hypocrite for which I am not. Some of what I shared includes: Wisdom from people much smarter than me: “Pray like it all depends on God, but work like it all depends on you.” Dave Ramsey “The Christian should work as if all depended upon him, and pray as if it all depended upon God.” Charles Haddon Spurgeon “Work as if everything depended upon work and pray as if everything depended upon prayer.” William Booth Toward the end of this sermon I shared a story: In his book The Pressure’s Off, psychologist Larry Crabb tells this story from his childhood. One Saturday afternoon, I decided I was a big boy and could use the bathroom without anyone’s help. So I climbed the stairs, closed and locked the door behind me, and for the next few minutes felt very self-sufficient. Then it was time to leave. I couldn’t unlock the door. I tried with every ounce of my three-year-old strength, but I couldn’t do it. I panicked. I felt again like a very little boy as the thought went through my head, "I might spend the rest of my life in this bathroom." My parents—and likely the neighbors—heard my desperate scream. "Are you okay?" Mother shouted through the door she couldn’t open from the outside. "Did you fall? Have you hit your head?" "I can’t unlock the door!" I yelled. "Get me out of here!" I wasn’t aware of it right then, but Dad raced down the stairs, ran to the garage to find the ladder, hauled it off the hooks, and leaned it against the side of the house just beneath the bedroom window. With adult strength, he pried it open, then climbed into my prison, walked past me, and with that same strength, turned the lock and opened the door. "Thanks, Dad," I said—and ran out to play. That’s how I thought the Christian life was supposed to work… God shows up. He hears my cry—"Get me out of here! I want to play!"—and unlocks the door to the blessings I desire. Sometimes he does. But now I’m realizing the Christian life doesn’t work that way. And I wonder, are any of us content with God? Do we even like him when he doesn’t open the door we most want opened—when a marriage doesn’t heal, when rebellious kids still rebel, when friends betray, our business fails, when financial reverses threaten our comfortable way of life, when the prospect of terrorism looms, when health worsens despite much prayer, when loneliness intensifies and depression deepens, when ministries die? God has climbed through the small window into my dark room. But he doesn’t walk by me to turn the lock that I couldn’t budge. Instead, he sits down on the floor and says, "Come sit with me!" He seems to think that climbing into the room to be with me matters more than letting me out to play. I don’t always see it that way. "Get me out of here!" I scream. "If you love me, unlock the door!" I broke down in the middle of it because I felt like the little boy who is crying out for God to heal Juliana (unlock the door) and she still suffers with cancer.
