I had to stop reading my Bible. About a week into my time in Cambodia, I read a verse that made me stop in my tracks.
Joshua 10:14a—There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the Lord listened to a man.
This comes at the moment when Joshua is leading an army fighting against the five Amorite kings. God is throwing hailstones down on the Amorites, killing even more people than the Israelites were killing. God is clearly fighting for Israel. Joshua speaks to God in the presence of all of Israel and asks God to make the sun and the moon stand still. God answers Joshua’s prayer by stopping the sun in the middle of the sky.
And then we get to that verse. There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the Lord listened to a man.
Yikes. If this verse means what I think it means upon first glance, I have two big problems.
- There are a lot of people in the world, including myself, wasting a lot of time on this thing called prayer.
- The Bible is fallible. 1 John 5:14 – This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
I couldn’t brush over this and just continue on with life. How could I pray to God for understanding if He doesn’t listen to man? How could I keep reading the Bible if it seems to contradict itself?
I told my team about my dilemma—they told me that this verse just probably had to do with the historical context and this specific part of the world. They weren’t wrong. But I still could not shake my frustration.
I started digging into commentaries online, and I found a few explanations that began to help me reconcile this statement in my mind.
One commentary explained that this means that there has never been a day before or since when God altered the course of nature after a man’s request. Other commentaries explained that while God has clearly answered the prayers of many men throughout the Bible, never was there any other occasion of such a large display of divine power. Basically, God listens to man’s prayers, but this is the only time He has done something this extreme.
It made sense, and I started to calm down. While I was processing all of this, I started thinking about what made this prayer special and what I could learn from such a powerful prayer.
Four things stood out:
- The timing of the prayer. Joshua is in the middle of battle, surely concentrating on organizing his troops and strategizing the next move. But he stops everything to speak to God, recognizing that God’s will is essential to victory.
- The purpose behind the prayer. Even though Joshua had marched all night and fought all day, instead of taking the opportunity to rest, he desires more sunlight which would give him the opportunity to continue fighting for the Lord.
- The faith in the prayer. By asking for God to do something as massive as alter the course of nature, Joshua shows that he completely trusts in the power of God. And he does it in front of all of Israel. There was no doubt in his mind that God would stop the sun.
- God’s will in the prayer. While busy leading an army and fighting, it could only be God who put this idea in Joshua’s head to ask for something so wild. God inspired Joshua to pray this bold prayer.
Do I pray like that? How often am I praying for God to give me the opportunity to keep fighting for Him, instead of asking Him to give me rest or an escape from hardship? Do I truly pray with the expectation that God will answer? Am I always praying “thy will be done” instead of my desires be done?
This month in Cambodia reshaped the way I pray. God knew that I needed to see this kind of prayer in action, and He showed me clear illustrations of each of these four aspects of Joshua’s powerful prayer.
Stopping to pray amidst the battle.
One day as I was teaching my favorite English class of 3 students, all of the kids closed their eyes and started praying. I asked my star student, Suchi, what she was doing. She said that she was praying because she was nervous about remembering the vocabulary I had taught them. These kids are not yet Christians, but they are learning about God every week through this ministry. They have grasped the concept of stopping to turn to God amidst the battle, knowing that victory is in His hands. I watched these kids pray throughout the entire quiz, not just right before starting. How often do I get caught up in the task at hand, completing it on my own without turning to God throughout the process?
Praying for the opportunity to keep fighting.
As we spent an evening participating in David Platt’s Secret Church, praying for persecuted believers in Iran, we were encouraged to not pray for an end to persecution, but rather for God to give believers strength to persevere and for God to use this situation for His will to be done. Paul was able to share the Gospel through His imprisonment, and likewise, God will use the situations of these persecuted believers for His glory. We are praying for more opportunities to fight for God, not for a way out. How often do I ask God to bring relief, when I know that being a Christian entails being a soldier with perseverance for the Lord?
Trusting in the supernatural power of God.
Later in the month I went out to drink bubble tea with my host, and God so clearly used our conversation to continue to reshape the way I pray. This amazing woman of God exhibits an incredible faith and obedience to the Lord in everything she does, and she is constantly praying for the Lord’s will to be done through her and her family.
As we were drinking our bubble tea, she explained to me that she tries to pray by just presenting the situations before her to God. She does not make demands of God, but simply tells the Lord about the needs she sees, knowing that the situations are in His hands and He will provide according to His will. She had two big needs in front of her:
- She did not have a Christian English teacher available to teach a class from 6-7pm each day.
- Her family had virtually no furniture to put in the new home they were moving into this month. Their previous home came furnished, but this new home was barren.
She was simply talking to God and explaining the situation, knowing that if God wanted that English class to happen and if He wanted her family in this new home, that He would provide as He saw fit.
In the middle of our conversation at the tea shop, a Cambodian university student walked up to our table and asked if we are missionaries. We answered, “yes,” and the girl sat down at our table, opened her Bible, and started asking deep theological questions about the book of Revelation. Then, she asked my host if she teaches English. My host explained that she runs an English school. Without my host even saying anything about the school’s current needs, this girl asked if there was an opening for her to teach English specifically from 6-7pm. This girl was an answer to prayer—the passionate, Christ-following, English teacher needed at this ministry.
To answer the prayer about the need for furniture, the Lord had been using our team by placing this need on our heart before our host even fully expressed it to us. On our second day in Cambodia we had a team meeting and discussed how great it would be if we could raise money to buy the host the furniture they would need for their new house, knowing that on a fundraised missionary salary this move would be a struggle. We launched a fundraising campaign and God provided over $1000 in a week through several generous donors! Thank you to all of you who donated—you are truly such a blessing to our host family! We were able to help them purchase all of the essentials they would need to begin life in this new home.
What an example of praying with the expectation that God will answer. How often do I not fully trust that God can provide, even in the most unconventional ways?
Praying for God’s will to be done.
I watched my host family do this all month. And I think this is the main area of growth I had in my prayer life this month. I am coming home soon. It is all too easy to pray for God to open a door to my dream job, to give me my dream apartment, or to make a particular job interview go well. But is that really praying for God’s will? No. God has shown me the incredible peace that comes with praying for God to simply work His will in my life, whether that looks like I expect or not. That sometimes means praying for people to not respond to my e-mails if it is not God’s will to have me follow a certain path for my future. That sometimes means praying that God will crush a dream if it is not of Him. That means a constant surrender as I change my mentality from seeking my ideas of happiness to His will that may look very different. But these prayers of full surrender bring immeasurable peace and strengthened faith, because I know that I can trust the Lord to answer.
That brings me back to 1 John 5:14 – This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
I can pray confidently, knowing that God is listening, if I am praying for His will above my own. God does hear us, but He doesn’t take orders from us. God listened to Joshua in this extreme way, because Joshua was simply praying the Lord’s will that God had placed on His mind, which led to God’s display of divine power in a way that has never been seen before or since.
In Cambodia, God taught me to pray amidst my battles, to pray for opportunities to continue fighting for the Lord, to pray with a deep trust in God’s power, and above all, to pray for God’s will to be done.
Thank you, God, for hearing us. Thank you, God, that we are co-laborers with Christ and we will never fight alone. Thank you, God, for being a God who already knows the path of our lives, and who will always provide for our needs. And thank you, God, for the goodness of your will.
