On the other hand some folks approach prayer as though God had an emergency-room-style triage system in place for prayer requests. They think, “I won’t pray to God about my troubles because there are undoubtedly people out there with much bigger problems. After all,” they reason, “God must hear a lot of prayers and in the grand scheme of things mine can only come across as small compared to some of the really desperate stuff that others are facing.” However, the only reason why hospital emergency rooms institute a triage system by which patients are assessed and then prioritized for care is that the hospital is limited in resources, space, time and personnel. God is not limited in any way. He is like a vast, infinite ocean of care that covers the shallows and the deeps alike. Approaching prayer with the assumption that God has a triage system in place to filter out seemingly small requests is ultimately dishonoring to God because it assumes that He is limited in some way. Your needs, or the needs of others around you, will always seem less urgent than other hypothetical scenarios, but that is not the point, He is the God of all those who look to Him in trust.

The body of Paul’s letter to Philemon begins with a description of what he has been praying for on Philemon’s behalf. Paul has not been prompted to pray for Philemon because he is in some crisis or desperate need. He prays for Philemon even though so much seems to be going right in his life even while Paul himself was imprisoned. If the prayers we lift up to God are merely based on our human desires or circumstance then is what we seek transformation or merely alleviation? Paul presents us an example of transformative prayers for the Christian maturity of our brothers and sisters.