Great Leaders and God

Praying Saints of the Old Testament

It is difficult to compare oneself to one of the praying saints of the Old Testament, because it feels simultaneously ludicrous and presumptuous to imagine oneself like David or Daniel. With difficulties and responsibilities that pale in comparison to the challenges that both of those men faced, it actually seems a little presumptuous for me to engage in prayer at all, as if I am bothering God with petty concerns when the world is facing major problems. After all, I have not been called like Daniel or David to lead a nation of men out of troubled times. However, I realize that such thinking is ill-informed. After all, both Daniel and David actively communicated with God before they became great leaders. It seems reasonable at least as reasonable to assume that these men were selected for greatness because of their willingness to communicate with God, as it is to assume that these men became entitled to communicate with God because of their greatness. When I view their prayer lives as helping bring about their greatness, it becomes clear to me that my own prayer life is insufficient when I compare it to either David's or Daniel's.

A cannot say that I make prayer a regular habit. I do not set specific times to place and I have designated no special place as a place for prayer. Of course, there are reasons that I pray, but I do not think it would be accurate to describe my prayers as a habit. For example, I pray when I am about to take a test for which I am ill-prepared. I pray when I see a cop's flashing lights in my rear-view mirror and look down to see that I am exceeding the speed limit. Fortunately for me, these things do not occur regularly enough for me to consider them a habit.

A do, however, habitually pray when I am confronted with difficulties in my life. These prayers differ from the ones for trivial problems like the ones listed above; those prayers are more recriminations about my own bad-behavior. The prayers when I face real difficulties in my life are real prayers. I do have a deep and abiding faith in God, and I believe that He desires to help people with their problems. When confronted with something that I cannot resolve on my own, such as a family member's illness, I call upon Him for assistance. I also have enough faith to believe that God does answer prayers, even if those answers are not always favorable. I do not believe that God is like a friend to whom I should stop speaking, when He does not do what I ask. Instead, I believe that God does know better than I know. Therefore, when His answers are not the ones I wanted, I begin to pray in earnest, hoping that He will reveal His will to me, and help me to understand why I must pass through such difficulties. If I have learned anything from my study of the great leaders in the Bible, it is that even those who are in God's favor face hardship, maybe even greater hardships than those who are not in His favor. Therefore, all I can do is pray to God for understanding.