Discussion Jumpstarter
Study leader reference - not a definitive answer
Question 3
After his sister Annie died, Efrem (age 13) lay in the produce patch and prayed, “Why don’t you just take me right now?… But if… you want me to stay here, then I give you my life”; what does that childlike surrender reveal about God’s nearness, and how do you evaluate that moment in light of his later backsliding and loss of peace?
Another way to ask: After Annie died, Efrem prayed, “If you want me to stay, I give you my life.” What does that simple surrender say about God being close, and how do you understand it knowing Efrem later drifted and lost peace?
Discussion Jumpstarter
Direct Answer
Efrem’s story portrays that moment as a real experience of God-given peace and surrender, yet also shows that later seasons of backsliding can obscure that peace without proving the earlier nearness was fake.
- After Annie’s death, he describes “deep searching… wanting to be a child of God.”
- In the produce patch he felt “such a peace from God that I would be ready to go and be with him,” even wanting to die and go then.
- His prayer included both desire and submission: “Why don’t you just take me right now?… But if… you want me to stay here, then I give you my life.”
- He later admits, “there were some years after that where I didn’t have that peace… but I always longed for that again.”
- Looking back, he says he tends to believe that experience was genuine: “I don’t think that was fake at all… I believe it was very real. But then I backslid.”