It was summertime when it happened. I remember that because my grandmother’s second story bedroom had a big window where warm summer sun poured into her room, making her collection of succulent plants happy, I’m sure. I used to break off a tiny piece of her aloe plant to squeeze out some of the sticky juice. She’d show me how to rub it into my hands. Nature’s lotion.
She had the greenest thumb of anyone I’ve known. Her two-story sunroom was filled from top to bottom with plants and small trees. Her elephant ear plant was nearly twenty feet tall. We lived with her for a year while my parents built a new home, and it was nearly like living in a greenhouse. Outside, she had acres and acres of canvas upon which to pull beauty from the earth. I remember summers spent filling up plastic gallon buckets of blueberries from the ten foot tall bushes next to the pond, and I’m certain there was a lot of complaining on my part about the heat, the chiggers, and the southern humidity. My grandmother worked circles around us all, and she reaped the rewards for her many hours of gardening with a bounty of fruit, vegetables, and an indoor flower garden.
But my grandmother was good at something else, and like the seasons of fruit picking and weeding, it was summer when I realized that more important to her than her gardening was prayer.
I was about nine years old that warm summer day we came for a visit. When my grandfather opened the front door alone, I ran to find my grandmother. I burst through her bedroom door to announce our arrival but stopped in my tracks when I discovered her kneeling in front of a small padded bench, her Bible fanned out in front of her. Her eyes were closed, her face a picture of intent determination, her lips moving silently. I tiptoed backwards out of the room and shut the door as delicately as I could. I stood in the hallway, hand on the door knob, uncertain of what to do next. I knew I’d interrupted something important, but it was years before I understood the significance of my grandmother’s powerful life of prayer.
“Devote yourselves to prayer. Stay alert in it with thanksgiving.” Colossians 4:2
A decade later I was rummaging through my grandmother’s attic searching for some random end tables and chairs to furnish my apartment, and my grandmother was pulling out odds and ends I might find useful while telling me to be safe living on my own. She prayed for me every day, she said. Standing in the attic, I suddenly remembered her in the sunbathed bedroom with the bench and the Bible and the aloe vera plants, and I knew she wasn’t merely giving me a motherly platitude. She was telling the truth. She really did pray for me every single day. Fifteen years after that, I stood at her funeral with my husband and children and greeted people I didn’t know who clung to my hands and wept with gratitude at the ways my grandmother had given of her time, money, possessions, and most of all–prayer. More obvious than the bushels of blueberries we’ve eaten over the years or the number of times she had to cut back the elephant ear plant is the fruit of my grandmother’s many decades of intentional prayer.
“Pray constantly. Give thanks in everything, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Don’t stifle the Spirit.” 1 Thessalonians 5:17-19
How Did She Do it?
I don’t think the path to a praying life happens accidentally. That humid Tennessee morning when I interrupted my grandmother’s prayer time wasn’t a one-time thing. It was an every day occurrence. My grandfather met me in the hall that morning and said, “She won’t come out until she’s done praying. Come eat some breakfast while you wait.” And I’d padded off to the kitchen with him where we ate sausage and biscuits and drank heavily sugared coffee under the skylight that warmed the kitchen counter with as much light as the bedroom full of aloe vera plants and intercessory prayer.
My grandmother’s morning ritual of prayer time was exactly that–a ritual she wouldn’t give up even if it meant missing a few minutes with her grandchildren. I remember feeling the weight of importance as I stood outside the bedroom door I’d closed gently. I remembered it when she insisted that she prayed for me daily. I felt the magnitude of it when I stood in the funeral line and listened to a stream of stories from strangers who’d been touched by my grandmother’s walk with Christ. She prayed every single day, and not just little sentence prayers sent up in moments of frustration throughout her day (although I’m sure there was plenty of that), but in regular, intentional hours of prayer carved out of her mornings. Those were her times for prayer and nothing else. She prayed with an open Bible and, I’m sure, a list.
“Pray at all times in the Spirit with every prayer and request, and stay alert in this with all perseverance and intercession for all the saints.” Ephesians 6:18
Why Did She Do it?
My grandmother wasn’t perfect by any means. But she walked closely with Christ who was and is perfect, and she emulated her life after His. Jesus, who walked the earth as both man and God, deemed it entirely necessary to slip away from the crowds and His friends and everyone who wanted something from Him to spend time praying to the Father.
“Yet He often withdrew to deserted places and prayed.” (Luke 5:16)
“Very early in the morning while it was still dark, He got up, went out, and made His way to a deserted place. And He was praying there.” (Mark 1:35
“After dismissing the crowds, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray. When evening came, He was there alone.” (Matt. 14:23)
It was important to Jesus, who actually was and is God, to spend time praying alone. It should be important for those of us who are His followers to do so as well. If He who was God needed to pray, how much more do we who aren’t all-knowing and all-powerful? Our struggle with sin and forgetfulness necessitates a praying life.
Beyond emulating Christ’s example, prayer is an act of obedience to Him. Jesus gives us instructions on how to do it in Matthew 6:9-15 and gives us a beautiful example through His high priestly prayer in John 17. He also tells us how not to pray in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18:9-14. There doesn’t seem to be room for a question of whether or not we should pray. When Jesus address prayer, He tells and shows us how to do it. In the New Testament epistles, Paul gives us plenty of exhortations to be devoted to prayer (see 1 Thess. 5:17-18, Phil. 4:6, Eph. 6:18, Col. 4:2). It’s never a question of if but when you pray. In the Bible, the assumption is that followers of Christ will pray.
In the Bible, the assumption is that followers of Christ will pray. Share on XAfter obedience, prayer is an act of faith, I think. It’s acknowledging that only God is sovereign and that we are powerless to do anything except plead with Him to move. It’s like the Israelites in the wilderness watching the tabernacle for the next step. If the cloud went up, they could pack up and move. If the cloud stayed hovering over the holy section of the tent, they stayed put. You move, we move. You stay, we stay. I think of prayer a bit like that. It’s waking up in the morning and saying, Lord, I can’t move until You do. I can’t do anything without Your Spirit leading the way. So I’ll open up this Bible and listen to Your voice, and I’ll ask You to help me obey it. I won’t take a step that’s outside the path You illuminate with Your Word. This is the way, help me to walk in it.
“Don’t worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses every thought, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7
My grandmother taught me a lot about regular, intentional prayer. In addition to praying over the Scriptures, she prayed for others constantly. I’ve learned over the last several years that I cannot in good conscience tell someone I’m praying for them if I don’t have a plan to do so. For me, this looks like a handwritten list taped to the inside cover of my Bible. I have things I pray for every single day, and some things I pray for weekly. Working through the list keeps my mind focused in my early morning hour of prayer, and it ensures that I actually do pray for the people I’ve promised I’ll pray for.
Prayer is the way I work through my personal struggle with sin, it’s how I lay down my worries about my kids, my church, my finances, my work, my marriage. Prayer is like kneeling at a padded bench by the window and the aloe plant and saying, Lord, where else can I go? Only You have the words of life. Only You have the power to be sovereign over anything. Only You can work good from this tangled up mess in front of me. Please be here in the midst of it. Prayer helps me to walk away from my worries trusting that life won’t fall apart if I let go of it. Prayer is acknowledging that God is sovereign and I am not.
After All These Years
I took home exactly one plant from all the funeral flowers at my grandmother’s memorial service two years ago. It’s a peace lily plant, and though I’ve nearly killed it at least a dozen times, it’s still alive and puts out a white bloom at the oddest times of the year. I did not inherit my grandmother’s green thumb, and I’m okay with that. Far more important is the heritage of spiritual discipline she passed down to me that sometimes seems hard but in reality is the beautiful work of perseverance that is absolutely necessary to the Christian life.
Prayer does feel like work sometimes, I think. Like any spiritual discipline, it takes a while for prayer to become a habit, but also like the other spiritual disciplines, the rewards are worth every ounce of effort. A prayerful life doesn’t happen by accident; it happens by intention and affection for Christ. If you can’t muster up either of those things, pray for the discipline to pray! Be like Tozer who prayed, “I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still.” Even a plea to desire to pray is the right prayer.
I’m a slow learner, but here’s what I know: there is freedom in laying down your burdens before the Lord each morning and saying, “I can’t. You can. Your will be done.” There is an unearthly gratitude that grips your heart when you cross off your list the name of a person you’ve prayed to come to Christ every day for ten years. There is blessed conviction that crawls its way out of your chest when you speak the ways you’ve sinned before God as you’ve read His words. Prayer is how we understand who we are in light of God’s sovereignty. Prayer is how He wants us to stay close to Him. Prayer is how we open our controlling, conniving little hands and say, “You are wise and I am not. Help me to walk in Your way.” It is, in every way, a gift of free access that Jesus made possible when He took on flesh and carried our sins and sorrows to the cross.
“Therefore, brothers, since we have boldness to enter the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way He has opened for us through the curtain (that is, His flesh), and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water.” Hebrews 10:19-22
Jesus died to set us free from sin, so we should dive deep into that freedom by running through the flung-wide sanctuary doors to call out to the Father.
Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and lives in rural Southeast Missouri where she tries and fails to keep up with her two energetic sons. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence (P&R) and Everyday Faithfulness (Crossway), and Memorizing Scripture (Moody). Connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Ranelle McFarland says
What a wonderful legacy she left you. Oh that my grandchildren could say the same.
Mary yates says
I knew this woman well! I’ve Seen her in the middle of the night standing in a dark room with outstretched arms towards heaven. What was she doing? Praying as usual to her Lord Jesus who she loved so much. Just more praise, prayer, conversation, with Jesus that she did every day! Thanks to my niece for those beautiful words that have made me cry but brought back such sweet memories! I love you glenna, what a legacy we have! I see you keeping it alive!
Kendra G. Britez says
A praying Grandma is a wonderful gift! Reading this today brought back many memories for me. Although my own left me while I was young child, my first introduction to God was around my Grandma’s dinner table. Afterwards I can still remember her taking me by the hand and showing me her spare room where I’d be staying. Before leaving me to sleep she told me that I was sleeping in her “praying room”. Praise the Lord for Grandma’s who dedicated themselves to intentional prayer.
Judi Gertz says
Oh so beautiful! Thank you for the vivid imagery of your precious Grandmother! Her hunger for Jesus and her mighty prayers for all her children! She heard “Well done good and faithful servant”!!! I pray that one day my children will be able to rise up and call me blessed!