A young lady came to me after the service on Sunday and had asked some good questions about prayer since that is what I spoke on. One of the things she was curious about is how does prayer continue to be meaningful to us because there is such a tendency to treat it as a religious exercise where we check the box that we did it without any meaningful interaction.
Sometimes, when we pray, we talk too much. It is hard for us when prayer feels like a one-way monologue where we are constantly telling God things He needs to know about. I say that, of course, with a high level of being facetious since God knows what is going on in us and in our circumstances with much greater clarity than we do. God longs to hear from us and desires us to be in His presence. But when we do not (usually) hear a voice respond to our questions, diatribes, demands, interactions, and confusion we don’t think anyone is there; at least we can easily convince ourselves no one is listening. But listening is exactly what we need to do. We are not very good listeners, and we love to be entertained. The fact is prayer is not intended to be “entertaining” it is meant to be relationship. We listen when we include the Scriptures in our prayer time. We listen when we allow the Spirit of God to prod our heart.
Sometimes we want to turn relationship into a formula. There is no end to the “formulas” out there that if we pray in a certain way, or with the right number of people, or we claim certain promises, we can get God to do things that He otherwise would not do for us. If we get “two or three” of us together we think we can outperform the “prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” Since we have the “authority of Christ” we can demand miraculous intrusions into the world of Satan and cast him out. But the fact is that my prayer can be powerful, not because of my prayer in and of itself is powerful, but we pray to the God who is powerful. Prayer is effective because we pray to the God who is powerfully effective. God responds to faith not arrogance or posturing. From the woman who reached out and touched His garment to the Centurion who pleaded with Jesus to heal his servant, they all had faith.
The point is that Christ has authority, prayer is not about me having authority. The more confidence and belief I have in God, the more I will commit to pray for His will to be done not mine (1 John 5:14-15). The central condition of prayer is that His will, not mine, be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt. 6:10; 26:42). I know the idea that we have authority is widely advocated and I understand why. Christ-in-us gives us a stewardship to represent Christ and in that sense gives us authority; if you know me, I prefer the idea that we are under authority to carry out the master’s purpose. However, this does not give me the right to start telling God what to do and we must be careful even about judging even the angels (Jude 1:8-10). I am often surprised when it sounds like people are giving God orders and reviling angelic beings; we do like control. The power is from Him and not us (2 Cor. 4:7).
Why should we expect God to do anything through us if we never talk with him? We have entitlement and control issues for more than we would admit. He keeps working in us so that Christ is formed in us. We would often like Him to skip that part and keep on fixing our circumstances. But the primary focus of His power is not necessarily to make life easier, but to make in us an abundant life in Him. We can get this way when we start treating God like a concierge rather than our Savior; it is all about being personally related to our heavenly Father and treating Him with respect.
Is God personal to you? Do we treat God like a real person? Do we treat God as One who is deserving of our honor, worship, and respect?
Pastor Brad.
