Panic Prayers

I am posting this on the other side of a weekend retreat at the WinShape Retreat Center on the Berry College campus in Northwest Georgia... R. and I have been so blessed to get to go and my mindset has been re-calibrated, so I am not sure if I can properly communicate the intensity of my intensity last week but I am going to try.

Have you ever prayed Panic Prayers?

I think I have referred to them before in this blog, but Panic Prayers will - at times- make up a better part of my day.

I take the verse literally that says: "don't worry about anything, pray about everything"; and so that means that I sometimes pray about "making green lights", finding a good parking space or even finding my way when I am lost (I think God sometimes advises me to "just ask someone for directions" but I often ignore that part).

While some might think of this as frivolous praying - I think the concept is basically okay. After all, if I am to "pray without ceasing" and stuff comes up while I am praying, it is only natural to include those things in my conversation with God.

The problem comes when I forget the first part of that verse I mentioned earlier... Philippians 4:6 ... I forget about the "don't worry about anything - " part. This results in what I call, Panic Prayers. These are the "Okay God! You gotta' get me outta' this..." prayers. They are not born of my faith in Him or my thankfulness that He is meeting my needs; they are just born out of panic.

Most of the time, I feel as if God is ignoring those Panic Prayers.

Last Friday, as my already-crummy week was seeming to come to a tumultuous climax, I began praying Panic Prayers.

I had to be at a number of places, at specific times throughout the day on Friday and each location was about an hour's drive away. In each case, I felt that I had to be there and I couldn't sneak in if I was late.

The final stop was my the couple's retreat, R. and I were attending. It would begin with a business meeting which I needed to attend.

I further felt that my support was low. The week had not been good for either R. nor myself and we were very unprepared for a weekend away. We packed at separate times and at the last minute, we were leaving a number of things undone regarding our household, and our communication had not been very good so our conversations were kinda' short.

No matter what I did on Friday, I got behind schedule. My travels took much longer than I anticipated, the traffic was much worse than I expected, the traffic signals were conspiring against me. . . everything seemed to be going wrong.

So I prayed.
And I prayed.
All from a position of panic.

The final straw came as I was heading to a recruiting luncheon for college students at a school near Anniston, Alabama. I remembered that since we were bringing in the food, I needed to stop and pick up ice. So I stopped at Walmart.

A few weeks ago, R. addressed the issue of unused Check Out Lines at Walmart on her blog, God's Design Not Mine, it is a universal problem.

Not only was I in a different time zone, I may have stepped back into a different era!

It was early in the day and though traffic was low in the store, the check out lines seemed to be at capacity.

People were just lumbering about in an unhurried fashion, completely ignorant of the fact that I was running late!

The aged cashier (and I'm okay with that)at my lane seemed to have hearkened back to the days in which each the price of each item had to be punched in individually. She commented on the items and the customer would comment back.

I suddenly realized that this is how people feel about me when I move about in my own usual unhurried fashion!

Finally, I got out of Walmart with the ice and back to highway in which red traffic signals marked my course.

It was at that point that all my possible scenarios pointed to the fact that I was not going to arrive at the time I had planned.

It was also there that I stopped praying Panic Prayers.

"I feel like You're ignoring me..." I prayed - and incidentally, I believe that it is alright to tell God how we are feeling as long as we keep the proper reverence and remember that His perspective - ".... and it looks like You are not going to help me be there when I needed to be there."

And that's where I think some of His insight kicked in.

So I continued, "I guess I just have to believe that You have a reason for wanting me to be late, so I am going to try to just trust You with this."

And that's about where I left it.

Though it was later than I had planned, we were able to pull off the luncheon without a hitch.

Though I was indeed late for the business meeting later at the retreat - it wasn't the end of the world.

Some time later that evening, after the couple's retreat portion of our weekend had begun and R. and I returned after a session to the serenity of our room at the WinShape Retreat Center (it's a "media free zone" - no phone, no television, no internet), a tranquil peace began to ease into my heart and mind.

As I implied earlier, the weekend did me good and the timing was impeccable.

I hope to be done with Panic Prayers, I know God can - and will -come through in a pinch. But my approaching Him should be from the standpoint of confidence - not panic.

Incidentally, the verse that I referred to earlier is followed by a promise of God's peace - a peace that surpasses our understanding.

Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6-7 NLT