How to Pray for Protection
an alternate perspective
“Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.”
John 17:11b NIV
Every time we face trial or hardship, we tend to want to pray for protection and deliverance. We want protection and deliverance from all kinds of things: temptation, physical harm, trials, hardship, persecution, to name a few. Prayers against these things are not wrong per se; I mean, who doesn’t want to lead a life free of all these things that threaten to trip us up? However, the one thing I can foresee being questionable about this kind of mindset that we have towards prayer is that it brings about questions that one might find difficult to reconcile. Sometimes our prayers are answered, but what of when they’re not? How then do we reconcile our relationship with God as our protector?
“Holy Father, keep them faithful to your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.”
John 17:11b NIV
I feel that John 17:11 does not offer a direct answer to the question posed above, but what it does offer is an alternate, more accurate perspective to prayers of these kind. The context around John 17:11 revolves around Jesus’ prayer for his disciples just before he went to the cross. The NIV version writes in John 17:11, “protect them by the power of your name”, but in the footnotes lies an alternate paraphrase which states instead, “keep them faithful to your name”. I think that this paraphrase of this part of the verse is exceedingly important because it reveals Jesus’ true thoughts about this matter. He did not pray for protection for his disciples from trials, hardships and persecution. In fact, Jesus warned them about the coming struggles of following him in John 15 just a few chapters before. Instead, Jesus prioritised the protection of their faith over that of their mortal bodies. At this point of reflection, I posed this question to myself, and now to all of you: Which is more important? That our mortal, temporal lives are maintained, or that our faith, which leads to life everlasting, be protected?
“If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.”
John 15:19–20 NIV
I think that it is fair to say that in the first world society we live in today, few (NOT none) of us bear life-threatening hardships because of our faith. Still, the same perspective towards trials should remain. If the disciples of Jesus 2000 years ago were willing to lose their lives in living out their faith, who are we to choose to lose our faith under far more underwhelming circumstances, just so that we can live our lives the way we want?
Our Heavenly Father, all-powerful and all-knowing, foresaw the trials coming in our lives and is fully capable of preventing them from happening. However, sometimes, He sees beyond the pain and the grief knows that these trials could produce a greater, positive outcome in our lives, and so He allows them for our good (NOTE: God doesn’t bring about the trial, but He simply allows the pains that this broken world brings to turn out for our good instead).
“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith — of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire — may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
1 Peter 1:6–7 NIV
The word used in 1 Peter 1:6–7 is “rejoice”. The call to rejoice in our trials is not a call to be sadistic and celebrate our pain, but rather, to take heart in the fact that these trials have come that our faith may be proven genuine on that Day of Judgement. Genuine faith can only ever result in eternal reward. There is more good than harm that comes out of a trial overcome through faith. Embrace your struggles. Sometimes, instead of pleading for deliverance and protection, we ought to pause, take a step back, and acknowledge that we don’t see the bigger picture amidst all our pain and emotion. But God does. And sometimes all we need is a prayer of protection — not from the pain and suffering, but for our faith. That it will not only be maintained, but experience growth through our testing times.
