Don\’t Look Away: A Call to Pray and Engage in the Midst of Pain

“My heart feels broken,” my daughter Abigail said as tears poured down her cheeks.

Silently, I asked for God’s help as I pulled off of the road and saw her reflection in my rearview mirror. In a way, I felt responsible for this outburst of pain and emotion. After all, I was the one who had asked her to describe how she was feeling.

“I don’t know what to do, and I feel so helpless because I know we can’t help everyone, but…”

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by heartache because of something that you are seeing? Whether that pain is deeply personal in your own heart or in the life of someone you love, or a pain that seems connected to larger parts of our culture, it can feel easier to want to control that pain by stepping away or turning our eyes away. Still, that form of disengagement doesn’t help us or anyone else, for that matter.

As my fourteen-year-old daughter spoke, the tears continued, and her voice was quivering. I had sensed her heartache from the moment that we walked past one particular homeless woman on the streets of Portland. She was not the first one that we saw on our prayer walk around the downtown of that beautiful city, but she was the one who had captured something deep in my daughter’s heart on that day.

It was Day 8 of an epic family road trip from our home in western Pennsylvania across the United States. We were on our way to spend some time at the Pacific Rim Prayer Center, where we would be spending time praying and serving our friends in the Seattle region. Our journey had been filled with gasps from the backseat as Abigail took in the stunning beauty throughout our trek across mountains, plains, and deserts.

Each night she would ask my wife and me about our favorite sight of the day. From majestic snow-capped mountains to jagged rock formations that looked like they were from another planet, and from brilliant sunsets that set the sky on fire, to the strange, stark scenes of the Great Salt Lake, it was clear that what Abigail was seeing was making an impact on her heart.

Of course, the trip had not been all beautiful sights. There is deep need everywhere. In every city center, we saw the homeless, and it was hard every time. Of course, pain and poverty are not limited to the homeless. We saw need among the wealthy in the suburbs of Kansas City and Colorado Springs. We saw it among the weary in the tiny, time-forgotten towns across Wyoming and Utah. I especially remember seeing it in the empty eyes behind the mask of an attendant when we stopped late one night at an isolated truck stop in the middle of nowhere.

As Abigail’s heart was breaking in the backseat, I knew that it was important for me to be present with her as she processed the pain that she was experiencing. I have always loved my daughter\’s heart for the poor and broken. It reminds me so much of the purity in the way that Jesus loves. After all, His good news was made for the poor, and we can only access its power when we humble ourselves to receive it into our own need.

The tender-heartedness in Abigail also reminds me of one of the most beautiful parts of my wife. Her heart for the down-and-outer has so shaped our Jesus journey as a family, and now it felt like Abigail was trying to figure out how to manage the pain that was hitting that tender heart.

“Holy Spirit, Help us!” I prayed.

Sometimes it seems like being tough and impervious to pain must be a sign of spiritual or emotional maturity, but consider what Ezekiel 36:26 says. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

As God pours His Spirit out on us, He is removing the tough, stony, impervious to pain parts and replacing them with tender flesh. Flesh feels and is aware of pain. Pain is not pleasant, but pain itself is not the enemy. After all, God created our physical bodies to experience pain to let us know that something is wrong.

When Abigail walked by the homeless woman on the sidewalk in Portland and heard her writhing in torment, the pain that her heart experienced was letting her know that something was definitely wrong. As much as I did not want my daughter to be heartbroken, I knew that things would be worse if she turned her heart off to what she was seeing.

I do not believe that God wants us to be overwhelmed by the pain of what we see around us, but He did create us to be impacted by it. I remember hearing a sermon when I was a teenager about Lamentations 3:48-51. The text in the King James Version reads, “Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people. Mine eye trickleth down, and ceaseth not, without any intermission. Till the Lord look down, and behold from heaven. Mine eye affecteth mine heart because of all the daughters of my city.”

I believe that God created us so that what we see would affect our hearts and become fuel for our intercession and even our actions. We see this modeled so beautifully in the life of Jesus. Throughout the stories that are given to us in the gospels, Jesus was moved with compassion when He saw the condition of the people around Him.

How did Jesus navigate all of the pain and brokenness He saw without being overwhelmed by all of the need? How did He decide who to spend His time with and where He would go when everyone everywhere needed to hear His good news? In John 5:19, Jesus tells the Jewish leaders that He did nothing on His own but focused His life by doing only what He saw the Father doing. This is essential if we hope to courageously follow His example and see the power of the gospel transform the lives of the poor and broken around us.

When I cried out in Portland, asking the Holy Spirit for help that day, I should not have been surprised when He directed my attention to the life of Jesus. Jesus spent His life focused on the Father, and then He invites us to follow Him into that lifestyle. Hebrews 12:1-2 encapsulates a theme that is repeated over and over throughout the New Testament when it calls us to fix our eyes and focus our lives on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. As we gaze on Him, we are able to engage the pain and brokenness around us with His love and the power of His gospel.

With all that we are seeing around us in culture, it can be easy to become overwhelmed. Between the pandemic and the seemingly countless ways our nation is divided, it can be tempting to turn away or shut down our hearts. But in the midst of all that is happening, God is drawing our hearts to the reality that no ideology or political party has all of the answers to the uncertainty that surrounds us. Even the “successful” find themselves unsatisfied in life.

Could it be that the unrest in our culture creates the perfect backdrop for the story of God’s love to be put on display? Consider Haggai 2:7, “and I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this temple with glory,’ says the Lord of hosts.”

As our family journeyed across the United States, I could not help but think about this upcoming summer and Pray Americas. From June 15th to July 25th, we will join together with partners and friends from around the nation to concentrate forty days of prayer over our nation, seeking God’s face and asking Him to pour out His Spirit in a way that brings a true spirit of revival to our land. As we go out to prayer walk our neighborhoods and the centers of influence in our own communities, we will undoubtedly encounter both beauty and pain.

May we not be like those who shrink back or turn a blind eye to the hard things, but may we have the courage to fix our eyes on Jesus and see all that He would show us. Then we can follow Him and move with compassion to engage the hurting with the love of God.

Over the next few months, our team will be working together with others to encourage and equip God’s people to step out into this lifestyle of prayer and engagement as we enter into Pray Americas this summer. Would you join us in praying that God would use this 40-Day Prayer Focus as a catalyst to empower many followers of Jesus to embrace this lifestyle of prayer and living on mission?

Thank you for your faithfulness in praying with us each month. Click here to learn more about this summer\’s initiative or to sign up to be a part of the Pray Americas team to cover our nation in prayer.