It is a terror to wake up in the night to see the face you love more than any other leering demonically. The image stains your memory like the Shroud of Turin, and it doesn’t fade. By now, Samie’s eyes—those beautiful, summer-blue eyes—had turned to moons of white and her whole body seemed to be shaking. I hoped she was unconscious, but then, with superhuman effort she forced out a single, desperate word: “P-p-p-pray.” (33)
Pete Grieg immediately took his 29-year-old wife, Samie, to the hospital. In the hours to follow he was to learn she had a tumor the size of an orange growing in her brain. As a result, at any moment seizures could violently shake her body like an angry child does a rag doll. Though the tumor was operable, it left Samie with epilepsy and the seizures continued.
So when this happens to you—and you are the leaders of an international prayer movement—what do you tell people when all you get is silence in response to some of your most heart-wrenching and soul-emptying prayers for a miracle? How do you hang onto faith in a God who seems to answers the prayers of others, but not yours?
God on Mute is Mr. Grieg’s answers to such questions. It’s not formulaic, but honest, personal, and unflinching. It faces some of the toughest questions about prayer nose-to-nose, and comes away with answers that not only help you hang onto your faith, but will also deepen and enhance it.
The question of unanswered prayer is not an easy one to address. We tend to either dismiss the person offering prayers that don’t get answered as being in error or disbelief in someway, or fall into the ditch on the other side saying that God often answers our prayers with a firm, loving, “No,” and we need to learn to live with that. God on Mute will help you see that neither of these are acceptable answers.
Through it all, Pete Greig is a man who believes prayer is still one of the most important—if still dumbfoundingly mysterious—disciplines of our Christian walk. Reading this book will help you come to it more honestly, and believe it or not, with greater confidence, determination, and faith in the God to whom we pray. While it challenged my faith, it even more challenged my hypocrisy and my too frequent prayerlessness.
It is definitely worth checking out.
Pete Grieg, God on Mute: Engaging the Silence of Unanswered Prayer (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2007).
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