To pray or not to pray, that is the question.  It’s a question I have grappled with since I became a believer in Jesus.  In “Choosing Life,” I told you about my dysfunctional family.  I may have been the scapegoat, but the destructive force in our lives was my father.  It was in my mid-twenties that I decided to believe that Jesus was real and that He was my only hope.  My first prayer for my father was that he would not die before he, too, became a believer.  Then, when I was disowned in 1975, I started praying that God would change my father’s heart.  I’m not talking about a quick thought shot up to Heaven once in a while.  I was on my knees for hours everyday pleading with the Lord.  After my mother died, my father kept me in court for six years contesting her will.  The only thing in her will was half a house.  Again, hours per day in prayer.  In the summer of 1993, I took back my prayer that God would keep my father alive until he became a Christian.  In fact, I told God that my father had done enough harm to all of us and that this would be a good time for him to die.  I only prayed this once,  a quick thought up to God.   Finally, a prayer God answered.  My father died within a month.  The only prayer for my father that God answered with a “yes.”

In the Bible, God makes it very clear that if a man refuses His mercy and turns against God and His ways, that God will harden his heart.  This is probably the most terrifying information in the Bible.  This is what happened to my father.  God hardened my father’s heart.  The hardening was a process.  I think my earliest prayers might have helped my father, but my father set himself on a course of debauchery  and would not be swayed.

In Philippians, Paul tells us  “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard you hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”  I went though many times when I gave up on prayer.  I went through a few times when I could not pray.  Now, I pray about everything.  But I am not the boss of God.  God is the boss of me.  Even if his answer if “no” or “wait,” I am at peace knowing that my Father in Heaven knows what is important to me and that He will deal with me as He always has, according to His love and His will.