‘six prayers god always answers’: an interview with its author

My wife Jessica is doing a giveaway for a book called Six Prayers God Always Answers. Here’s the link if you’d like to enter the contest! It’s easy. You just need to leave a comment.

After reading all of the great comments on Jessica’s blog–almost 200 of them!–I thought it would be interesting to do an interview with one of the book’s authors Jennifer Schuchmann.

I’ve known Jennifer for a couple of years now. During this time she’s become a dear friend and on a couple of occasions a rather helpful therapist.

I highly recommend that, once you’ve failed to win the book through Jessica’s blog, you go buy the book from Amazon or from some other book retailer. This book isn’t just another book on prayer. Jennifer isn’t an authority on the subject. She’s a journeyer like you and me…

Here’s the interview…. (btw: I’m on my way to Dallas to speak at the Echo Conference. Hope to see you there.)

Jennifer, you’ve never struck me as the kind of person who would write a book on prayer…

Thanks. I’ll take that as a compliment. And that’s why I wrote one. I’m not a prayer warrior, I don’t like chains, and for most of my life my prayer time was spent wondering if prayer even worked. Does God hear my prayers? Does he answer them? How?

As a Christian, I believe one of the primary ways I learn about God’s character is through his word. And in his word (the Bible) he’s the one who makes some pretty audacious and presumptuous claims, like “Ask whatever you will and it will be given to you.” Seems to me what he’s saying is that he answers all of my prayers. The problem was I didn’t always see how he did that. This book was my attempt to understand how he does what he already claims he’ll do.

Do you think there’s right way and a wrong way to pray?

I don’t think so. I think God welcomes conversation with us in whatever way we’re willing to have it. It’s often preachers who put “rules” into prayer making us feel like we have to use certain words or get into a specific posture before we’re “really praying.” I think God laughs at how stilted some of our prayers sound. And we’re often embarrassed to pray out loud because we know how false and fake our words sound. Prayer can get really awkward when we try to force it. I think we need to think or pray as less of a to-do (like a quiet time) and more of an on-going conversation.

Explain that a little more. Are you suggesting that we stop closing our eyes or kneeling when we pray? As if…

Yes, if it frees you up to pray more honestly and authentically. I sometimes tell people who are stuck in the rut of only praying formally to pray while they drive. They can’t close their eyes and they have a lot to think about so they learn to pray from a different place then they do when they pray formally.

Let me give you an example. My son has never-ever finished dinner, ran up to my office, pulled out the 20-pound cream stationary and hand-calligraphied a note that said, “Dearest Father and Mother: Thank you so much for the sustenance you gave me to the nourishment of my body.”

Yet, what he has done is taken a mouthful of food and said, “Mmm, Mom. I love this chicken.” Even though he is talking with his mouthful, it makes me feel appreciated. He noticed that I made his favorite dish. It makes me happy when he notices things I’ve done for him. I don’t need a formal letter expressing his gratitude. In fact if I got one, I’d be immediately suspicious, “What do you want?”
I think God is like that. I think he really likes it when I say thanks for the little things—when I notice that he’s given me a good hair day, that it didn’t rain on the weekend, or when the slow car moved out of the left lane just when I got there.

If I am pleased by such a little comment as “Mmm, good chicken,” how much more so must God be? He is a more perfect father than I will ever be as a parent.

know preachers give these ludicrous examples of people getting up at four in the morning to kneel down on cold cement floors to pray all day, but frankly I can’t do that. I’ve got a kid to get off to school and a life to live. But I truly believe that if throughout my day I acknowledge God in big and small ways that he is as delighted (and maybe more delighted) than if my prayers became a chore on my to-do list.

I recently had a pastor’s wife tell me that she believed God answered prayer—other people’s prayers—but never her prayers. My response was, “Wow! That must make you really angry.” She admitted that it did. I asked her if she ever told God how angry that made her. She said she was afraid that she’d be struck by lightening if she did.

Now this breaks my heart. Here is a woman who knows all the theology yet doesn’t see it in her life. I can’t for a minute believe that a loving God wants that.

I told her she needed to go have an ugly prayer time with God. She needed to get mad, scream at him, and curse if that helped her to express her anger and frustration with God. I compared it to my own teenage son. I expect him to treat me with respect. We don’t tolerate yelling or cursing from him. However, if he was really angry with me, I’d rather him come and yell at me, even curse me, so that I could hear what was going on and have a chance to respond. If all he did was go into his room, shut the door, and mope I couldn’t respond to him at all.

Again, I think God is like this. I think he welcomes our angry prayers because he loves relationship with us so much that he’ll take whatever conversation we’re willing to have.

When God says “Ask and you will receive,” does he really mean it? Can we pray for anything?

See here once again, I think religious people have messed up God’s word. His word says we can ask for anything, but we try to protect him, so we add on caveats such as “if it is in his will” or some other nonsense. But my reading of the Bible says ask and he’ll answer.

Again, well meaning teachers and preachers have said, “God answers prayer with a yes, no, or a wait.” That makes me so mad! If every time I asked my husband for something he responded with a yes, no, or a not now, we’d be divorced. That isn’t a very satisfying relationship. And frankly, I expect more out of my God than I do out of my husband.

But what if you really want something selfish, like say a brand new Mac, or your book to sell a million copies and be number one on the New York Times Bestseller list for thirty weeks, will God answer that?

Again, I believe that God has invited us to audaciously come to him with even the most selfish of requests—to win the lottery, for a new car, or for fame and fortune from the sales of our books. I truly believe that our innermost desires are placed there by God whether it is a dream for our future, our desire for something shiny, or our need to feel important.

We were created in his image. It’s not accident we think big, that we’re attracted to beauty, or that we want something more out of life. But I believe that when it comes to the answers we get to our prayers we have to look outside of the specifics we pray for and realize that God’s answer to our prayer may be very different than the one we expect.

Again, an example with my son: He wants a violent video game. Why? Because he’s a 13-year-old boy whose testosterone is kicking in and shooting people on a screen feeds that. However, I know that violent video games affect him in negative ways that he can’t yet understand. So instead I feed his real need for excitement with a different kind of shooting–we expanded the patio in our backyard to make a basketball court and bought a new goal that could be raised and lowered so he can play one-on-one with his dad and his friends. He now shoots basketballs for the same sense of mastery and accomplishment that he wanted from the video game.

Did I give him what he asked for? No.

But did I answer his request in a way that met what he really needed whether or not he sees it now? Absolutely.

As C.S. Lewis so masterfully explained in The Weight of Glory, “Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

Do I get extra points for quoting C.S. Lewis on your blog?

Not so much. But I’ll still call you up for therapy on occasion. That’s better than extra points, right?

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