A man climbed to the roof of his home during a torrential rainstorm. As the water rose higher and higher, the man prayed, “Lord, please save me!” Shortly after, another man in a rowboat passed by. When he saw the first man stuck on his roof, the second man shouted up, “Jump in! I can save you!” The man on the roof shouted back, “Thanks for the offer, but it’s okay! I already prayed and asked God to save me!”
The water continued to rise, and a few minutes later, another man came by, this time in a motorboat. He, too, shouted up to the man on the roof, “Jump in! I can save you!” Again, the man on the roof replied, “No, I’m okay! I prayed to God and He’s going to save me!”
Soon, the water level approached the roof of the home, just as a helicopter flew overhead. The pilot, spotting the man below, shouted down to him, “I’ll throw you a rope and pull you to safety!” To this, the stranded man yelled, “Thank you, but I prayed and I have faith that God will save me!” Reluctantly, the helicopter flew away.
Not long after, the water rose above the roof, and the man drowned and went to Heaven. He immediately asked God, “Why didn’t You save me? I prayed and I had faith and instead, You let me drown. I don’t understand!”
God replied, “You prayed, and I answered. I sent you a rowboat, a motorboat, and a helicopter. What more did you expect?”
This old tale does a good job at pointing out a miscalculation that each of us has probably been guilty of committing at one point or another. After all, Ephesians 2:8-9 cements for us the doctrine of salvation by faith alone: “For it’s by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it’s the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” We know this, and so we extend it to mean that prayer alone is the solution to *insert a problem of your choice here*.
But what about the times when prayer ‘isn’t the answer’?
Stick with me here, because I absolutely believe that prayer is a powerful weapon in our spiritual line of defense! But sometimes, if we’re being honest, Christians have a way of using prayer as an escape clause to avoid getting into the nitty-gritty that is real life. After all, it’s a lot easier for us to respond to someone else’s struggle with a platitude of, “I’ll pray for you” than it is for us to get down in the trenches alongside them and say, “I’ll do for you”. The trenches are dirty. They’re uncomfortable. They’re downright unpleasant sometimes. And they’re often exactly where God has called us to serve.
James calls out the importance of our beliefs being backed up by physical action when he denounces faith without works as dead. He points to Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac on the altar and says, “You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did” (James 2:22). James isn’t substituting the principle of salvation by faith alone for salvation by human works. What he’s saying is that the mature believer is capable of distinguishing between the unearned grace of God that saves us from our sin, and the spiritual marching orders He gives us once we choose to follow Him: that is, to be the hands and feet of Jesus here on earth.
When God prompts us to respond to a need – whether it’s for ourselves or for someone else – we should, of course, pray about it! But let’s not neglect the possibility that He’s calling us to take a second action step, too, to DO something about it. Let’s not ignore the proverbial rowboats, motorboats, or even helicopters He sends. Otherwise, we might just miss the lifeline He’s trying to throw our way!
