I’m quite sure I’ve said it myself, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Perhaps you’ve heard it in the wake of a tragedy or when things have taken an abrupt turn for the worse: “All we can do now is pray.”
Cringe.
I know what you mean. I even know what I’ve meant when I’ve used the phrase. But I still don’t like it, and I try to avoid using it. Here’s why.
1. It diminishes the power and privilege of prayer.
The Almighty Triune God has not gifted Christians with the powerful privilege of prayer as a mere afterthought, as if prayer is simply something to keep us busy and out of his way while he manages the cosmos. It isn’t like the meaningless task daddy assigns to his little helper during a project just so she can feel like she’s contributing, when in fact her effort has zero impact on the actual outcome. No, prayer changes things. It heals hurt. It diverts disaster. It alters eternities. And, to be clear, it accomplishes all this not because of some intrinsic power prayer would have on its own, but only when and because it is directed to the One true God who hears and answers accordingly.
This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him” (1 John 5:14–15 NIV).
2. It is NEVER “all we can do.”
It may only sound this way to me, but the statement “All we can do now is pray” seems to imply that every other course of action on our part has been exhausted. But is that ever actually the case? Can anyone say that in any given situation, we have really done everything we could possibly do? I’m not so sure. Could we create more awareness about a certain matter (resulting in exponentially more prayers being offered up)? Wrestle with specific Scripture? Educate ourselves more about a topic? Contribute a gift? The list goes on, and I don’t know that we can ever fully exhaust it when it comes to our actions accompanying our prayers.
Maybe instead of “All we can do now is pray,” we could tweak it a bit: What we can ALL do now is pray. That speaks positively of prayer, and leaves the door wide open for faith-born action to accompany our prayers.