We often bank on long prayers to get us through things. Effectual prayers are not necessarily long prayers. Most believers have been made to believe that their prayer is less impactful when it is short. However, this is not true according to God’s word. Every prayer prayed that stemmed out of knowledge, faith and a sincere heart will always avail much. I am a firm believer of brevity and I learnt the power of short prayers first hand, back in 2014.
December, 2014: “Darker than usual, isn’t it?” I asked the other two as we walked towards the last platform to catch our train home. It was 12 in the night and the Coimbatore railway station looked like a scene from ‘The Amityville horror.’ Carrying a bag pack, two travel bags, an umbrella and a sling purse, I followed my friend David who was unanimously elected to lead the way and take care of us girls—after all they say our country is not safe for women; especially in the absence of a man. There were only three of us at the station; at least that is what I thought. Never had I seen it so empty.
I questioned the unusual silence with the iconic song from the movie, ‘Phantom of the Opera’—Why so silent, good Messieurs. The other two burst out laughing and suddenly we were hushed by a man behind us. Yes! There was someone else apart from the three of us. He was lying on a torn rug, in a fetal position. Must be homeless—I thought. And then I re-thought—“must be dangerous too.” David checked his pocket and realized that he left his phone at the station’s ticket counter and he sprinted to get it. Somewhere between the panic of losing his phone and running, he forgot about us girls—so much for taking care of us, I thought.
A drunkard’s horrible singing in the background, high-pitched sound of the crickets, snores of the homeless guy and our whispers— ‘twas the perfect orchestra for attracting anti-social elements. Well, Mr. Anti-social wasn’t far away. He was right there in the opposite platform, dressed in a pair of mahogany-colored pants and an earth-green shirt. Early forties, one could tell—he looked like one of those shady pedophile uncles. Long stare and the next thing we know, he was crossing the rails to get to us. There was panic in the air and I whispered the shortest prayer which might, someday, go down in history— “God, Help!”
“Are you girls alone?” he asked, but we chose not to reply. He spent the next twenty seconds staring at us, top to bottom. And then he got closer and offered to help us with our bags. When we declined the offer, he said, “It is either the bag or you!” Just when he finished that sentence, he was startled by a loud clanging noise of metal plates. Remember, there is one more person in the whole scene—the homeless man on the torn rug. The writer in me always believed that no weapon is mightier than the pen. Well, there two other things which are—your tongue and your umbrella. As our homeless man got up with his metal plates, Mr. Anti-social gets into fight mode. My adrenaline also went on screaming, “Fight!” Our army of three, metal plates, an umbrella and a high-pitched scream was enough to scare him away.
He did not say anything or gloat in the glory of rescuing us from a predator. We thanked him but he just nodded in approval. I noticed a Tamil Bible next to his bag and I wanted to know more but neither did I know how to start the conversation nor did I know the language. To our surprise, he boarded our train and he sat on the passage seat next to us.
“God woke me up!” he told us in broken Malayalam. “I heard Him say, make noise.” He went on to say how it was the first time he distinctly heard God’s voice and how he has been desiring for it. Amazing how God came to our rescue.
No, the man wasn’t homeless, but he was stranded after he got robbed during a mission trip to an obscure village in Tamil Nadu. “I had a faith crisis,” he said. “I left a good job and my parents to follow God’s calling and I struggled. I got to the station somehow but I did not have enough to get to my home in Palakkad.”
“Get me home somehow, God! is all I prayed” he said. But he did not hear anything until the whole predator scene. “Get on the train; everything is taken care of! —this is what God told me!” he said.
Now, there is a background to our story. One more friend of ours was supposed to travel with us but he cancelled in the last moment however he did not cancel his ticket as we took a group travel ticket.
We were dumbstruck! God had orchestrated all this for the good of all of us. This incident not only boosted our faith, but also that man’s and the ticket collector who came to check our tickets. It was journey of incredible faith, mission stories and short prayers.
I still remember the verse we spoke about that day:
“Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore, let thy words be few.”
-Ecclesiastes 5:2, KJV
The writer of this verse admonishes that “your words be few before God!”. However, don’t let this stop you from uttering long prayers. The impact of your prayer is not in its length but in its content and the heart from which it stems. Before you speak to God in prayer, always know that He knows your heart (Luke 16:15). There are countless number of times in Scripture where men prayed short prayers and yet, received awesome and instant results.
Take the case of Peter. He was faced with a life-threatening incident. This was when he began to sink into the sea, after Jesus had asked him to walk on it. In desperation, he cried out to the Lord, “Lord, save me” Matthew 14:29-30.
…and sometimes,
you don’t even have to say anything. “He knows the groanings of our heart!”.
Consider this:
Keeping it short this week—can we challenge ourselves to write down short prayers instead of long ritualistic ones.
Here’s mine:
“Keep holding me tight, God!”