Prayer In Pain

Encouraging Prayer. God offers an open invitation for His people to talk with Him at any time about anything. On Encouraging Prayer, Dr. James Banks, author of the bestselling Prayers for Prodigals and many other books on prayer, provides weekly biblical insight to help you learn to love to pray.

And now, here's James. Talk about but really praying while you're in pain. Yeah, I'm so glad we're talking about this today because this is such a practical topic, Robbie. So many people who live there on a daily basis and you just look at, you know, all of the ads we see on TV for prescription meds and for pain relievers. And, you know, this is such a part of human life.

How do we handle it with our prayers? Let's talk about that. Yeah, it seems like, wow, God's kind of had you there with the situation with your own back recently, right?

Yeah, yeah. I have had a situation for the past month where my nerves have just been going out of control and on, you know, my sciatic nerve. And as you know, that's a painful one.

Not sleeping at night and losing strength, not able to, you know, do the things that I did and treatment sometimes working, but not making it go away. And, you know, as I've laid awake at night, sometimes I thought, Lord, what do you want me to learn in all of this? What is it that is the lesson for me here?

It's kind of a hard question to ask. Oh, it is. And I have certainly people who know me well. I've been through a few things. And often the lesson is quite different.

And sometimes the lesson isn't even for us. Right. Before we went on the air, you were talking about how you had a time of excruciating pain and how the Lord met you in that when you were praying.

And I'd love for you to share that with our listeners. Yeah. When I had, you know, I had lymphoma in 1996. And then after that, I had this flare up in the meninges part of my brain.

And so they did something you never want to have, by the way, if you can get away with it, don't get a brain, Bob. But anyway, I had one and they they take a little part of your skull out and they and they put a titanium plate in there. Well, that thing got a staph infection, which quickly led to a brain abscess. And with the plate still in my head, they needed to rush me into emergency surgery. The painful part of it was that my skull was actually, you know, swelling inside or my brain was swelling inside my skull with no way to get rid of the pressure. And so they were trying to rush me into this emergency surgery. And something happened where they couldn't get into the room for about 20 or 30 minutes. They pushed me up in the hall and and they're like, somehow or another, you're just going to have to hang on.

And they'd given me all these pain medications, but they had done nothing. And I just I was in this phenomenal point of turmoil. Like, I can't even I don't want to even think back to. But what I remember was crying out just simple. Like, I couldn't tell you the words I use, but it was like, help. You know, it was like, oh, my gosh, I can't take that.

You know, this is it. And softly, I felt a hand grabs my hand and I looked up. She didn't say a word. It was a it was a nurse that happened to be in my Sunday school class. And I knew her, you know, somewhat well. But I had no idea that she worked here. There she somehow or another sensed what was going on.

She did not say a word which would have been unbelievably painful. She just held my hand. And immediately I knew I knew at this point that it seemed like more than I could ever take. Really, you know, almost hoping to die, that this was Jesus. And he had my hand and he was in this particular case is saying, I'm here with you and in my gracious of him, it's going to be OK. And that just sense of him being there and it being her and realizing that Jesus sent her. It was the point that I needed. And it brings me to tears to this day to even think how loved I felt in this is even in the pain that I was in. What an amazing story. And, you know, I love this because God's word tells us to call on him in our prayers.

You know, I look at someone 16, which is because he bends down to listen. I will pray as long as I have breath. You know, you think about Peter saying, Castor cares on him because he cares for you. And this applies to not only physical pain, but emotional pain as well.

You know, you could be going through loss, grief or or heartache in a relationship. And it matters so much that we can call on the Lord. But as we call on him, you know, it's so important for us to point out that, like you were saying, he may answer in any number of ways. We're not saying that call on him and that'll just instantly make the pain go away. You know, often it doesn't.

Sometimes it does. But I think our model here is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, where it says that he was in great anguish, you know, so much that he sweat great drops of blood. And yet look at the way he prayed there. Father, if you are willing, have this cup pass from me, but not, of course, referring to the crucifixion, but not as I will, but as you will.

You know what your will be done. And, you know, there's something in that as well, saying, Father, you know, I will accept this if I have to, if it is what you want for me. That's a challenging thing, though, isn't it? Oh, and it's amazing because we so desperately needed him. I mean, I hate, you know, but sometimes you think maybe there's something in our pain that's needed to happen in order to help others the way that Jesus' pain helped all of us.

Yeah. Yeah, well, and that is so true. You know, think about how, you know, he went through the worst kind of pain imaginable. But the main point here is that we have a father that we can truly call on in our pain.

And, you know, we have to do this. Sometimes we may get frustrated, we may get angry, but he meets us. And if he doesn't remove the pain, then as we lean into him, he gives us a way to get through it and shows us, you know, that he is greater than anything that we face.

Wow. It seems like a perfect place for me to close in prayer because I'm afraid we're out of time, but I know that there's lots out there that are relating and some of them are hurting right at this very moment. So, Jesus, thank you that we know you're there. And in some way, I pray that you would grab hold of somebody's hand and help them to feel that you're with them through this.

You may take that or whether it's for someone else. Lord, we pray that it would not be wasted, that it would be used for your good purposes and that many would rejoice as we look forward to our coming to be with you. And we ask this in Jesus' name. You can hear more from Pastor James by visiting his website, jamesbanks.org, or by visiting Peace Church in Durham, North Carolina. May God bless you and encourage you as you pray. This is the Truth Network.