I was watching “Facing the Giants” yesterday. There’s a scene where a ‘small and weak’ boy is given the task of kicking the football across the 51-yard line. I’m not sure if I butchered that recollection of what happens on a football field, but honestly, I know very little of the sport. Anyways, the furthest David, the small and weak boy, had ever kicked the football was 39 yards. I should mention here that this was also the kick that would determine whether they won or lost the last game of the season, against the GIANTS – a team that was three times their size in number and attributes. As David stepped up to the plate, everyone knew that he was not going make it. This was too intimidating a task to be accomplished by this small boy with even less confidence in himself. The coach called a timeout and walked up to David and said ‘You’ve already told yourself you’re gonna miss even before you kick. Ask God to help you, do your absolute best, and win or lose, know that it was up to God.’
So when David steps back up to the plate, he prays this earnest prayer “Lord please help me to make this kick”. And in that moment it hit me. It’s a lot harder to have hope than to give up. It’s a lot harder to trust God than to say ‘I can’t do it’ or ‘it is what it is’. This was the first time David had dared to believe that God could. And this was harder and scarier than any mindset he had embodied in the past. I hope I do the movie justice in this recollection, but if I don’t, I definitely recommend that you watch it.
When I got home from the hospital after balling my eyes out in the parking lot of the ultrasound office, I was just defeated. It was not even an option in my mind that I could ask God. The first few times that I was reminded to ask God, I shrugged it off. It didn’t make sense to me that this would be a moment to ask God. But at some point, I could no longer ignore the number of things that were pointing me in the direction of God. So I had to make the HARD decision to ask God to save my baby. Let me tell you this was HARD! Even just reading over that sentence is still hard. it would have been easier to accept the report of the doctor and to start dealing with the pain. But instead my faith required me to believe that this child could still be saved until God had given his final say. It was HARD because I had no indication that God’s answer would be yes. This required the truest expression of my faith. Believing, not in what I saw, but in what I hoped for.
But just like David’s coach said: win or lose….
Sometimes God says yes, sometimes God says no. But your faith is required each time. That is how you give God the final say. Some people won’t understand why I had to go through that, the believing God would do it just to get back to the same answer again which was that the baby would not live. It may feel like this was just God torturing me.
But to me, it was God asking me to give Him the final say. And to do this even when there is no guarantee that that final say will be what I desire.
We don’t get to choose what happens, but we get to pray. And prayer is not manipulation of God. Sometimes prayer changes things and sometimes it doesn’t. Although I would argue that prayer always changes something in you. And that it did in me.
I would argue that prayer was the only way that I could face my giant. Without prayer and faith, I would just crawl in my bed and cry. Without prayer and faith, this would be something that happened to me, something that the enemy did to me. Without prayer and faith, I would have no understanding, no healing. What prayer did, was place the power in God’s hands (in my eyes). It allowed me to understand that I could not fall out of the palm, nor the will of my Father.
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