I’m Sorry, I Can’t Pray for You

Dear whoever you are church member,

This past week you probably felt somewhat confused and hurt when I told you in no uncertain terms that I would not be able to commit to praying for you after you shared your struggles with me. Now, I did pray with you after we talked about your situation and that seemed to encourage you but I didn’t close our conversation by saying, “I’ll be praying for you this week.” All I could offer was, “I hope this turns out for God’s glory and your good.” No promise of praying, no offer to continue praying. I’m sorry whoever you are, but that’s all I can do. Let me explain why:

1. I have far too many people that are closer to me that I need to be praying for consistently. And know whoever you are, this isn’t because I am wildly popular. I’m a normal human being, like you, who only has so much capacity for relationship and meaningful prayer time. I pray for my immediate family, some close friends, my coworkers in the mission field and the Muslim people I am trying to reach. Just in that little group, I have enough people to keep me busy praying all day, every day.

2. The Facebookization of how we conceptualize our social circles hinders Christian prayer. There are many terrible side effects of the Facebook brain (the understatement of the year) but for now I focus on one. Facebook makes us think we have more friends than we really do. It makes us think that we are really connected to hundreds of people when in reality their lives are nothing more than a momentary flash of screen pixels. This in turn exerts a strange pressure on the psyche to try and stay “up” on what is happening with all our “friends.” God did not make us to live with so many fragmented relationships. Never before in human history has having 500 “friends,” meant having 0 friends. Anyhow, I digress, these fragmented friendships are directly tied to a fragmentary prayer life. This is because that strange aforementioned pressure exerted on the psyche via the sacrosanct Facebook worldview starts to spill over into other parts of life, including our prayer life. This means I need to stay “up” on everyone’s prayer requests which is part of the reason I am always tempted to end a conversation by saying, “I’ll be praying for you” even if I mean no such thing. The world may want this but you will have a tough time convincing me this is what God wants. For this reason, I will have to pass on keeping you on my prayer list, whoever you are.

3. When we consider the life of Jesus we see that he had three very close friends and nine close friends. That’s twelve in total. Twelve! If God made flesh has time to invest in, pray for and care about twelve, how can I be so pompous as to think I will be able to outdo him? So when I tell you I can’t pray for you, it’s really a way to keep me and you humble.

4. I would rather invest my prayers in a select few than scatter my prayers about to all sorts of “friends.” Outside of a few rare men and women in history, most of us are destined to have a meaningful impact on a relatively small piece of humanity. By small, I mean around twenty people. Because of this I need to focus my prayers on those closest to me and try and impact them for Christ. If I do that, it will be a life worth living.

5. This may be the most important reason whoever you are, so please don’t miss this. After all I have said, you may find this hard to believe, but I really did want to minister to you in a meaningful way last Sunday. This is why I sat with you and listened intently to what you had to share for half an hour. This is why I cried with you and laughed with you. The easy thing to do would be to listen for three minutes and then tell you, “Hey man, the kids need to go home and eat but don’t worry I’ll be praying for you.” The promise of prayer is often an escape from true ministry. And I don’t want to fall into that trap. That’s also why I don’t throw out the words, “I’ll be praying for you,” in a casual manner. Promising to pray is often a selfish way out. It is faux ministry. It excuses me from doing real ministry in the time we do spend together at small group or at church on Sunday.

Like I said whoever you are, I know you were probably hurt and confused this past Sunday when I told you I couldn’t promise to add you to my prayer list. I am confident this letter will clear up any of that misunderstanding.

Thanks for listening to what I had to say.

Regards,

Clayton