Praying in ignorance?

Does God ever change His mind? Seemingly so. There’s a story in Genesis 18 where God announces a change of plan after Abraham has prayed fervently; and this morning, in Exodus 32, I read another account of how God “changed His mind” after Moses presented his case before the Lord.

The interesting thing about the Exodus story, though, is that Moses was praying in absolute ignorance of what was actually going on. Moses and Joshua had been up on Mount Sinai for six weeks, and the people at the bottom of the mountain had got tired of waiting; they had built a golden statue and given themselves over to drunkenness and wild pagan revelry.

God, in His omnisicence, saw what was going on, and His heart was broken. Idolatry is so abhorrent to Him that He told Moses they deserved to be destroyed. He even told Moses that they had made a golden calf for themselves. But Moses, in relative ignorance of what this idolatry looked like, pleaded for mercy on behalf of the people. And God, whose heart is full of mercy and grace “changed His mind” and forgave the people - even though they were still in rebellion.

A few verses later, when Moses came down the mountain and saw the mayhem for himself, he became so furious that he broke the stone tablets (with the ten commandments on them) and proceded to carry out judgement on them. I wonder if he regretted that he had asked God to have mercy on such wicked and rebellious people.

The thing that caught my attention this morning, though, is the way that God is so willing to answer our prayers, even when sometimes we’re clueless about what’s going on or how we should be praying about it. God is so much bigger than our lack of knowledge and understanding and is always ready to move in mercy.

Right now, I’m in a season where I honestly don’t know what’s going on in my body, with my health. Bronchitis that began in Hawaii was later diagnosed as pneumonia and now, more recently, as pleurisy. Two trips to the emergency department, with debilitating chest pains, saw me on an oxygen tank to regulate my breathing, twice having an ECG to check my heart, and also having x-rays to find out if I had any broken ribs. 

I was previously prescribed a strong antibiotic which within days had caused sore muscles and painful cramps all over my arms, legs and body. Now, when I have the excruciating chest pains, I simply don’t know whether the pain is from my lungs, my heart, from strained intercostal muscles or from nerve damage (peripheral neuropathy) as a result of the levaquin toxicity. It feels like my body is a battlefield, but I don’t really know what’s going on, and it sometimes seems that the doctors aren’t completely sure either.

A number of friends have been praying fatihfully for me, even though we’re all aware that we’re kind of stumbling in the dark and not sure exactly what to pray for. All we can do, is pray with the understanding that we do have, and with the awareness we have of how God is leading us.

And so this morning I took comfort in the fact that God was not limited by Moses' ignorance in prayer or his lack of knowledge about what was really going on. I may not know exactly how to pray; I may not even know the cause of my chest pains, but Father God is still able to move in mercy and healing. I believe that it’s important to tune in to the Lord when we pray, but perhaps praying in ignorance is better than not praying at all. Thank you for joining me in praying that I will soon see relief from this strange medical episode that has cast such a shadow over the past six weeks.