Agreement

June 5, 2023

Some years ago, I was listening to a younger father who was concerned about the choices his son was making. I knew enough about the situation to know that his concerns were not unfounded. He and his wife prayed fervently for their son, seemingly with little effect. He asked me what more they could do.

Having observed and listened to both husband and wife, I had an inkling of where at least part of the problem lay. The boy was in his late teens, feeling his oats and spreading his wings, and mom and dad had very divergent ways of dealing with it. He saw a young man careening into adulthood like an out-of-control car, and like a driving instructor, was desperately trying to apply just enough brakes to keep from crashing without putting them both through the windshield.

Mom wasn’t able to see her son as a young man. “I just want my little boy back,” was her plaintive cry. I had the unpleasant task of telling her he was a young man and didn’t want to be her little boy anymore.

Both mom and dad were praying faithfully. So why weren’t their prayers being answered? There are many reasons God delays his answers; sometimes it’s because there is growth we need that can only happen with time. Sometimes, it’s because God is patiently molding and shaping life, gently (and sometimes not-so-gently) guiding till we come to repentance and salvation. But sometimes it’s as simple as our neglect of one of the foundational tenets of prayer. 

In Matthew 18, Jesus said, “If “two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven.” (Matthew 18:19) I believe many of our prayers go unanswered because we are not in prayerful agreement. In the case of my friends, they both wanted to see their son saved and delivered from the lifestyle he was pursuing, but they were unable to come to agreement on how that should happen. They were praying and working at cross-purposes. 

If this is true in family matters, it is no less true in the Church, in education, in politics, or business. Disunity disarms our prayers, making them ineffective. When we gather to pray together, one of our first orders of business ought to be, “What do we agree we are going to ask God to do on our behalf?” Scattered priorities and divided loyalties can never muster enough capital to win the very real spiritual battles we face.