Prayer, Power, and Personal Problems

at the root of his problem.

II Corinthians 13:1-10
I
Begin by recognizing one simple truth: that we live in an intricate web, where our personal lives and our interpersonal relationships affect one another. Let me put it this way: most of our personal problems are really interpersonal, and most of our interpersonal problems are compounded by our personal issues. Maybe I can make it simpler still: if I am having problems with me, that will cause me to have problems with you. And if I am having problems with you, that will make my problems with me all the worse.

Suppose one night you didn’t get a good sleep. The baby cried most of the night, or you saw a scary movie on TV, or you did what I’ve been known to do: consume too much of my favorite snack, salsa and chips. Whatever. You didn’t get much of a sleep, but off you went to work the next morning, dragging, drowsy, and distracted. When you got there, the boss, who is always at work early, always alert, always hard-charging, the boss wants to know when that job is going to be done and why you haven’t produced that report, and were you the person who left the door unlocked yesterday afternoon? What do you do? In the face of all of these accusations, most of which make you look weak, what do you do? Well, you can swallow it all, and resent the boss; or you can make excuses, and resent the boss; or you can lash out and accuse the boss of being unreasonable and unfair, and really resent the boss! Any way you slice it, you resent the boss, you wish he would drop into a hole somewhere and leave you alone.

But what’s that really all about? It’s about looking weak. It’s about how hard it is to feel ineffective. And when we feel weak, when we think we look small, we will lash out and defend ourselves. We get hostile, because we have a need to win, a need to look powerful. Not just a desire to win, but a need to win. Tell me that something I want to do is mistaken, and I will get stubborn, because I have a need to win. Tell me that something I have said is not correct, and I will get defensive, because I have a need to look powerful.

So it looks like Paul starts down that track. It looks as though Paul reacts out of his tummy, just like any of the rest of us. “I warned [them] and all the others, and I warn them now while absent, as I did when present on my second visit, that if I come again, I will not be lenient ...” Paul is reacting to the charge that he is weak, because, like most of us, he has a need to win. And his personal problems have become interpersonal ones, and his interpersonal problems have made his personal problems all that much worse.
II
But now this is where things take a different course. This is where Paul stops himself and takes a different tack. All of a sudden Paul stops screaming. He stops screaming at his critics and he does something else instead. What? He prays for them. He prays for them, and he prays for their completeness. Listen to his language carefully:

“We pray to God that you may not do anything wrong ... that you may do what is right ... this is what we pray for, that you may become perfect.” Paul’s prayer for his enemies, who have accused him and have made him look weak and ineffective, is that they should grow into completeness. His prayer is not about himself, it is not a prayer for his needs. It is not a