“I have an unspoken.” or: “I have an unspoken prayer request.” Does this kind of prayer request get your imagination racing?
For most Christians, going to church services and prayer meetings means a chance to catch up with friends and fellow believers. But for a few believers, it also means a chance to catch up on the latest gossip and stories going around the congregation. Unfortunately, this term “unspoken” can often add fuel to those gossipy flames. It’ll happen like this. People are sharing prayer requests, and someone will raise a hand or stand up when it’s their turn, and they’ll say, “I have an unspoken prayer request.” Or, if they’re into the hip slang of the church, they might simply say, “I have an unspoken.” That means they want prayer, but they aren’t going to give a description of what the prayer is for. Some people think that the “unspoken” automatically has to do with something “unspeakable.” That is to say, if you can’t even say what the prayer is for, then it must have to do with sex, alcohol, divorce, bankruptcy, an impending crisis, or whatever else the seething crucible of the human imagination can invent. Or is it just simply something/anything the asker just wants between God and themselves??