Like most people, when I first began active experimentation with prayer, I was full of questions, such as: Why are some agonizingly sincere prayers granted, while others are not? I still have questions. Mysteries about prayer are always ahead of present knowledge\u2014luring, beckoning on to further experimentation.<\/p>\n
But one thing I do know; I learned it through hard experience. It\u2019s a way of prayer that has resulted consistently in a glorious answer, glorious because each time, power beyond human reckoning has been released. This is the Prayer of Relinquishment.<\/p>\n
I got my first glimpse of it in the fall of 1943. I had been ill for six months with a lung infection, and a bevy of specialists seemed unable to help. Persistent prayer, using all the faith I could muster, had resulted in\u2014nothing. I was still in bed full-time.<\/p>\n
One afternoon I read the story of a missionary who had been an invalid for eight years. Constantly she had prayed that God would make her well, so that she might do his work. Finally, worn out with futile petition, she prayed, All right. I give up. If you want me to be an invalid, that\u2019s your business. Anyway, I want you even more than I want health. You decide. <\/em>In two weeks the woman was out of bed, completely well.<\/p>\n This made no sense, yet the story would not leave me. On the morning of September 14\u2014how can I ever forget the date?\u2014I came to the same point of abject acceptance. I\u2019m tired of asking, <\/em>was the burden of my prayer. I\u2019m beaten. God, you decide what you want for me. <\/em>Tears flowed. I had no faith as I understood faith, expected nothing. The gift of my sick self was made with no trace of graciousness.<\/p>\n And the result? It was as if I had touched a button that opened windows in heaven; as if some dynamo of heavenly power began flowing. Within a few hours I had experienced the presence of the Living Christ in a way that wiped away doubt and revolutionized my life. From that moment my recovery began.<\/p>\n Through this incident, God was trying to teach me something important about prayer. Gradually, I saw that a demanding spirit, with self-will as its rudder, blocks prayer. I understood that the reason for this is that God absolutely refuses to violate our free will; that, therefore, unless self-will is voluntarily given up, even God cannot move to answer prayer.<\/p>\n In time, I gained more understanding about the Prayer of Relinquishment through the experiences of others in contemporary life and through books. Jesus\u2019 prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane is a pattern for us, I learned. Christ could have avoided the cross. He did not have to go to Jerusalem that last time.<\/p>\n He could have compromised with the priests, bargained with Caiaphas. He could have capitalized on his following and appeased Judas by setting up the beginning of an earthly kingdom. Pilate wanted to release him, all but begged him to say the right words so that he might. In the Garden, Christ had plenty of time to flee, but he used his free will to leave the decision up to his Father.<\/p>\n J. B. Phillips, in his book The Gospels: Translated into Modern English, <\/em>brings Jesus\u2019 prayer into focus for us. Dear Father, all things are possible to you. Please let me not have to drink this cup. Yet it is not what I want, but what you want.<\/em><\/p>\n The prayer was not answered as the human Jesus wished. Yet power has been flowing from his cross ever since.<\/p>\n Even when Christ was bowing to the possibility of death by crucifixion, he never forgot either the presence or the power of God. The Prayer of Relinquishment must not be interpreted negatively. It does not let us lie down in the dust of a godless universe and steel ourselves just for the worst.<\/p>\n Rather it says, \u201cThis is my situation at the moment. I\u2019ll face the reality of it. But I\u2019ll also accept willingly whatever a loving Father sends.\u201d Acceptance, therefore, never slams the door on hope.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yet even with hope our relinquishment must be the real thing, because this giving up of self-will is the hardest thing we human beings are ever called on to do. I remember the agony of Sara, an attractive young girl who shared with me her doubts about her engagement.<\/p>\n \u201cI love Jeb,\u201d she said, \u201cbut he drinks. Not that he\u2019s an alcoholic. Yet the drinking is a sort of symbol of a lot of ideas he has. This has bothered me so much that I wonder if God is trying to tell me to give Jeb up.\u201d As we talked, Sara came to the conclusion that she would lose something precious if she didn\u2019t follow the highest and the best that she knew.<\/p>\n Tears glistened in her eyes as she said, \u201cI\u2019m going to break the engagement. If God wants me to marry Jeb, he will see that things change\u2014about the drinking and all.\u201d Right then, simply and poignantly, she told God of her decision. She was putting her broken dreams and her future into God\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n Jeb\u2019s ideas and ideals didn\u2019t change, so Sara did not marry him. But a year later she wrote me an ecstatic letter. \u201cIt nearly killed me to give up Jeb. Yet God knew that he wasn\u2019t the one for me. Now I\u2019ve met The Man and we\u2019re to be married. Now I really <\/em>have something to say about trusting God!\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s good to remember that not even the Master Shepherd can lead if the sheep have not this trust in him. That\u2019s the why of Christ\u2019s insistence on practical obedience: \u201cAnd why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?\u201d (Luke 6:46). Our pliability must be complete, from our wills right on through to our actions.<\/p>\n When we come right down to it, how can we make obedience real, except as we give over our self-will in reference to each of life\u2019s episodes as it unfolds? That\u2019s why it shouldn\u2019t surprise us that at the heart of the secret of answered prayer lies the Law of Relinquishment.<\/p>\n So Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne, wife of the famous American author, found as she wrestled in prayer in the city of Rome one day in 1860. Una, the Hawthornes\u2019 eldest daughter, had a virulent form of malaria. The attending physician had that afternoon warned that unless the young girl\u2019s fever abated before morning, she would die.<\/p>\n As Mrs. Hawthorne sat by Una\u2019s bed, her thoughts went to what her husband had said earlier that day. \u201cI cannot endure the alternations of hope and fear; therefore I have settled with myself not to hope at all.\u201d But the mother could not share Nathaniel\u2019s hopelessness. Una could not, must not die. This daughter had the finest mind, the most complex character of all the Hawthorne children. Why should some capricious Providence demand that they give her up?<\/p>\n As the night deepened, the girl lay so still that she seemed to be in the anteroom of death. The mother looked out the window onto the piazza. A dark and silent sky was heavy with clouds.<\/p>\n