Your phone rings in the middle of the night. Through a fog of exhaustion you try to understand the voice on the phone. It’s the hospital. “Your father’s heart stopped. The doctors got it started again, but you’d better come in.” The voice, with calm authority, pronounces judgment, “this may be the end.”
Fear kicks down the door of your heart.
Fear kicks down the door of your heart. You set down the phone without ending the call. Your mind begins to race. Your stomach tightens and you begin to see yourself standing over your father’s grave. Fear and hopelessness tighten their grasp on you. As you scramble around the room looking for your glasses and your clothes you begin to cry out to God, fervent tearful prayers that die in your throat as hopelessness chokes off your words.
You run to the kitchen and grab your car keys off the hook, then you stop. You remember who God is and who you are.
You remember who God is and who you are.
“Thank you, Father. You love me so much. You look over me and my entire family. You love my father even more than I do.”
You walk swiftly to your car.
“God, I can’t stay under these circumstances. My inner voice and the voices of fear and hopelessness are overwhelming. I thank you that I don’t have to stay under these things. I enter your gates with thanksgiving.”
You start the car and as the engine comes to life you begin to feel the fear lift off of you. “I praise you, God. You are amazing. I love you so much.”
As you drive the dark, empty streets to the hospital, praise rises up. You began to praise God more and more. You enter His courts with praise. On the corner of Turner and Third Avenue, your car fills with the presence of God. Peace comes into your heart, grabs fear and his crony hopelessness by the scruff of their necks and throws them out. Peace closes the door to your heart and locks it.
Now you’re ready to pray.
“Father, what do you want me to know about this situation?” And you wait. When anxious thoughts try to come in you just gently praise them away. Then he speaks. It may be a picture in your mind, a still small voice, a Scripture or an inner knowing that you recognize as Him.
Now, you pray. You pray his answer to your situation. It is a prayer that you can be sure he will answer. When you pray it’s with great faith and calm authority.
You now enter the hospital prepared to change the atmosphere and bring the full kingdom of God to bear in this situation. Your spirit is seated with Jesus in heaven. That’s where you are praying from.
How to Pray in an Emergency
Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.
Psalm 100:4
Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Hebrews 4:16
This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.
1 John 5:14-15 (NIV)
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 2:4-6
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