The Power of Prayer in Recovery

 

When the average person first makes his way into recovery, he is usually in desperate straits.  We are usually feeling defeated, crushed, and absolutely broken.  The addiction has ravaged our lives and left us feeling empty and alone.  We have tried every other solution on our own, and in desperation we turned to a Twelve Step group.  We read Step One and knew it was talking about us, "We came to believe that we were powerless over sex addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable."

Learning that we were powerless and our lives were unmanageable was a bitter pill to swallow, but we quickly learned that while we were powerless, we were not hopeless or helpless.  We found that God was ready and able to help if we were willing to cry out to him in prayer.  Through prayer we find the power we need to overcome the addiction.

Prayer has always been an important part of my life, I came to know God at a young age and learned to cultivate that relationship through prayer.  As an older teenager, I realized pornography was poisoning my life and I began to ask God for deliverance and victory.

I prayed, hoping that God would give me a sort of instantaneous victory, like David and Goliath, one big, dramatic battle and then peace. (Though, of course, David would face many, many more enemies over the course of his life.)  I wanted God to zap me, and take away all desire for porn.  I wanted him to do a microwave transformation and make me into a new person.

God is not a genie, he doesn't snap his fingers and grant our wishes.  He is not Google. He does not always give immediate responses. I will say that God has answered those prayers for deliverance and is continuing to answer those prayers, but I have had to be persistent.  And it has taken much, much longer than I thought it would.

In Luke 11 we find Jesus instructing his disciples on prayer.  He teaches them the Lord's Prayer and then goes into this discourse:

"5 And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves;

6 For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him?

7 And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee.

8 I say unto you, though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.

9 And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

10 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

11 If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent?

12 Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?

13 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?"

God is a good Father and delights in giving us good things, but he wants us to persist in prayer.  "Importunity" in verse 8 is not a word we typically use today.  It basically means "much asking" or "persistence."  A friend of mine wrote an essay about some of these ideas and he used the phrase "shameless audacity" to describe this attitude in prayer.  Even human fathers enjoy giving good things to their children, how much more will our great and holy Heavenly Father meet all our needs?  Verse 13 points out that God wants to give us the Holy Spirit, and this is perhaps our greatest need.  It is through the power of the Holy Spirit that we will find deliverance and victory over addiction.

As much as we want to be free from addiction, God wants that for us much more so.  He wants to give us victory, but he also wants us to want victory.  We must have a strong desire to change.  Prayer is part of that. Our persistence in prayer is a sign that we are committed to the Lord and walking in his righteousness.  He wants us to have courage and boldness in coming to him, and if we do not receive the answer that we need, then he wants us to continue asking.  To keep knocking. To keep seeking. To never give up on that holy desire.

There is much more that could be written, and has been written about prayer, but I will just say this, practically speaking, prayer is simply about asking God for what we need.  It is about connecting and communicating with him. If we want freedom from the addiction, we need to ask him for that.  If we are struggling with a temptation we need to ask him for help.  If we are facing a difficult situation then we can ask God for clarity and wisdom.

As we continue in prayer, it may take a long time, perhaps years, as it did for me, but God will come through.  Prayer is perhaps the most important and powerful tool I have found, but it takes a great deal of work.

Most of the time when we think of prayer, we connect it with meditation, and this is another dynamic and essential tool that we will look at next time.

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