Courageous Prayer

There is no greater grace than finishing your first year of ministry. When I was a NET (National Evangelization Team) missionary in Canada a year ago, I distinctly remember this time of the year. My team was leaving the parishes that we had been stationed at for the past year, having started and built youth groups, events, and fantastic relationships. I remember hating that we would leave without finishing our work, because surely it wasn’t finished. It is so very clear to most ministers that ministry is not possible in a single year. You can certainly do good, but you spend the majority of that time learning the community and building relationships. The team had also learned a lot over that year about the community, the people, and running a ministry in general. It just didn’t seem fair to us or the parishes. Now, I’m very to happy to report that another NET team went back to those parishes and continued the work that we began (except now they have left, with their year finished as well). Having completed the first year in this ministry not only with Journey at St. Mary’s but also with CCFM, I am so completely happy and excited for the next year to come.
I bring this up because here at CCFM, we are already looking to the second year. Now, I like to pretend I’m organized (sometimes), and so having already set a spring retreat date for 2014 is such a weird feeling (actually it’s more like nausea). Even looking at the first half of 2014 is eerie (again nausea) but exhilarating, and it’s also something I’ve never done before, having dates set this far in advance. It’s very freeing, because now we are able to focus on our ministries will a special dedication that previously would have been spent with balancing multiple calendars and last minute schedules. We get a longer opportunity to look at what our ministries need, and the different places we could take them deeper. This past week, I was thinking about what kind of focus Journey would have next year. And that’s when the pope called me.

Ok, he didn’t call me, he tweeted, which is essentially better (except he forgot to tag me...). It was in this tweet that Pope Francis gave me exactly what I would need to minister to Journey this upcoming year. It also seemed that God put this quote in my way, not only for Journey, but for my own faith as well. I cannot tell you how many times I simply look at prayer as “a mere formality” and as something to check off. I also love how Pope Francis used the word “struggling.” God never promised us that prayer would be easy or simple. It’s a relationship that, like every other relationship, requires love, sacrifice, and perseverance. 
I was recently in an argument, and I can clearly remember standing there listening to the harsh words and feeling like just leaving. Some of the words may have been spoken in truth and others exaggerated, as they tend to be in arguments, but that didn’t encourage me to stay. The easy thing to do would be to simply leave. But leaving would not be loving or fair to those I was arguing with. Leaving wouldn’t be fair to their truthful argument. And leaving would not be fair to me, because it would have condoned my ignorance and cowardice. The relationship is so much more beautiful when you can say, “I love you” after fighting. It’s worth so much more when it is preciously fought for. I cannot tell you how many times I have just left God instead of persevering and fighting as hard as He fights for me.
Not only this, but I realized how little we all pray with confidence. We pray with hope, but never with courage, because we don’t want to feel embarrassed if it doesn’t happen. It’s humiliating to say to God, “Hey, you know that thing that I wanted that you didn’t give me? Yea, I super appreciate you not giving it to me, because I know I don’t need it.” But somehow that has translated to our culture that we should never pray with confidence but simply with a distant hope. Prayer has become more of a wishing mechanism than a conversation with our Creator. Why don’t more of us pray for cures and healings? Why don’t more of us pray for conversions of a friend? Why don’t more of us tell that fried we are praying for their conversion? What if we prayed and showed God that we are upset that that friend hasn’t converted? What if we prayed and told God that we are angry that someone wasn’t healed? I guarantee that God can take it, but instead we just think along the lines of “my wish didn’t come true.” If we began to actually ask as the persistent widow does in Jesus’ parable (Luke 18:1-8), then who knows what miracles might happen. The question is the same that our savior spoke 2,000 years ago, “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8)

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