Of Requiems and Relinquishment
by Cynthia Bezek, editor of Pray! 

I took a day for prayer last week because I desperately needed to sort out some things before the Lord. On the human level there had been a terrible misunderstanding. But on another level, the enemy took that misunderstanding and energized it, committing spiritual robbery. I was loath to give up the precious and valuable things the enemy was stealing. But I didn’t know how to pray.

In times like that, I try to let the Holy Spirit guide me. This time, He led me to play my CD of Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D Minor, of all things. Though I couldn’t understand the Latin words, the Lord used this 18th-century funeral cantata to lead me into creative prayer. I followed the framework of a Christian burial service to help me die to the loss I was facing. As I prayed alongside the sometimes bombastic, sometimes somber music, at first I found myself fuming and churning about the unjustness of the loss. Gradually my tumultuous prayers transitioned to pouring out grief to the Lord in lament. Next, the Spirit gently led me to surrender my loss to the Lord, and finally to entrust and commit it to Him.

When I completed that undeniably painful process, a surprising thing happened. You have buried these things now, the Lord seemed to be saying, but they will not remain in the grave. Now start praying for a resurrection. Responding to that prompting was hard for me at first, not knowing what kind of resurrection to ask for or when or how it might happen. Nevertheless, I haltingly started to ask for new life to come out of this death. As I prayed, the Lord began to transform my sorrow into peace. And as I continued to pray about the situation throughout the rest of the day, He even started to stir in me an anticipation for what He would eventually bring about.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but the Holy Spirit had led me through a form of prayer others have called the “prayer of relinquishment,�?based on Jesus�?“Not my will but yours be done�?prayer in Gethsemane (Lk. 22:42). While it’s true that sometimes God calls us to fight for what the enemy is trying to steal from us, at other times He calls us to let it die so He can bring something even better out of the ashes of our incinerated dreams. Isn’t that what He did when He raised the crucified Jesus from the grave?

I do not know what this resurrection will look like for me, or when it will take place, but I know that God, not the evil one, will have the final word, just as He did when Jesus conquered sin and death and burst forth from the grave.

Is something dying in your life? Ask God if He wants you to let it die. If so, relinquish it to Him so He can bring it back to life in His redemptive way and timing.