The Prayer of Nothing
The most useless prayer I can think of is one of the most commonly prayed ones when it comes to healing: “Lord, heal me IF IT BE THY WILL” and its counterpart “YOUR WILL BE DONE concerning my healing.” This kind of prayer is THE PRAYER OF NOTHING.
“The prayer of faith” will save sick people, but “the prayer of nothing” is a colossal waste of time. You would be better off watching a TV show where people try to sing better than each other so that they aren’t sent home this week. At least that might have some entertainment value (if you like those shows), but praying IF IT BE THY WILL has NO value whatsoever.
People who pray this way usually tell me that God is sovereign, and they take that to mean that He’ll just do what His will is in their specific case. (He IS sovereign, but He isn’t a favorites player. What He’ll do for one He’ll do for another if the other meets the same conditions, as is clear from Romans 2:11 and multiple other similar verses cited elsewhere in this book.)
The irony is that if you believe that God will just do HIS will (whatever it is) when it comes to healing, why have you just wasted your time praying? If God’s supposedly pre-determined result is what you’re going to get anyway, you spent your prayer time for NOTHING! God was just going to do “His will” anyway without any consideration for your prayer, so why bother moving air around about it?
Why should you have to “consecrate” yourself to accept His will when it’s what you’ll get anyway even if you’re totally unconsecrated?
I doubt that most people who pray these prayers even stop to consider that.
In the back of people’s minds, they are probably wanting to CHANGE God’s will. In other words, they may think, “Lord, please heal me – I really want you to heal me, but if that’s not what You want, I’m OK with it.” But that’s a lie! You’re NOT OK with it! If you were OK with it, you would not have bothered praying your PRAYER OF NOTHING in the first place hoping to change God’s mind! Besides, if you were OK with it, you would not be seeking medical help or taking any medications (which you’re probably doing) to try to get out of what you think may be God’s will! So don’t get “religious” and claim that you’re OK with something when you know full well that you’re not. When your PRAYER OF NOTHING goes unanswered, and be sure that it will (James said that if you don’t pray in faith you must not expect to get anything – James 1:5-8), you know full well that you will feel “let down” and disappointed and generally not too happy with God about that matter, if you’re honest enough to admit it.
It’s as illogical as another PRAYER OF NOTHING, “Lord, hear my prayer,” which if He wasn’t hearing you, He can’t answer by hearing you now, and if He was hearing you, you just wasted your time asking Him to hear you because He already heard you. It’s no different if you say, “Lord, I want to be healed, but feel free to ignore my prayer if it’s Your will.” Think about this for a minute. This is far worse than asking without BELIEVING – it isn’t even ASKING or BELIEVING! All you have done is express a desire to be healed in prayer, yet you have not actually ASKED for anything. And the Bible is clear that you will HAVE not because you ASK not (James 4:2)!
If you want something definite, you must pray for something definite. When you pray expecting nothing, you will definitely get nothing.
Someone could amend the bad prayer above to say, “Lord, I AM asking you to heal me, but feel free to turn down my request if it’s Your will.” Then he can say that at least he asked. But that isn’t necessarily true either. That prayer can be reworded, “I’m asking for healing, but I hereby withdraw my request if it isn’t Your will to heal me, so depending on whatever natural circumstances or feelings I deem to be proof of Your will to heal or not heal me, I may or may not be requesting anything. If it’s Your will to heal me, I’m asking, but if it’s not Your will, I’m not asking after all, and because I don’t know Your will, I don’t know whether I’m asking or not.” Surely Jesus never taught anyone to pray such prayers to receive specific things from God! Far from the tenacious praying Jesus taught that seizes the Kingdom by force (Matthew 11:12), this prayer is basically, “I’ll ask, but if I don’t see any natural results within my timetable, I will assume that You don’t want to heal me and I will abandon the request. I will ascertain Your will not from Your eternal Word, but from my changeable circumstances.”
“Asking” in this sense misses it anyway. The #1 mistake people make regarding healing is asking God to heal them!
What you need to do is change your praying. But FIRST you need to renew your mind to the Word in the matter before you pray! That’s why I wrote this book – so that you can see what the Bible plainly teaches about divine healing. You can only pray in faith when you know what God’s will is. But once you see from the Bible that it is always God’s will for you to be healed, and that He has already provided healing that is yours for the taking in prayer, you won’t pray an IF IT BE THY WILL or a THY WILL BE DONE prayer about your healing anymore – you’ll believe and receive it when you pray.