Spiritual Arsenal #5: Prayer

By -
Why do we pray? Does praying actually change anything? Is prayer merely a psycho-therapeutic aid to calm our anxious spirits?

The fact that I’m including prayer in this series hopefully conveys my belief that prayer is a vital part of our spiritual warfare. When Paul depicts the "whole armor of God" in Eph 6:13-17, he wraps it up with this: "Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. Pray also for me."

What does it mean to pray? For starters, prayer requires you to inquire what God’s true priorities are. You probably understand what it's like to request something from a powerful person, perhaps a boss, principal or community leader. You can't just get whatever you want simply because you request it. If your request doesn't align with the priorities of that powerful person, then your odds of success are slim to none.

Now imagine coming in prayer before the King of all creation with the same mindset. Prayer requires that our passions become transformed into attitudes that line up with God's. The book of James provides an important window into God's priorities: care for widows & orphans (1:27); don't discriminate against the poor (2:1-5); put away envy & selfish ambition (3:14); do the right thing (4:17); pay fair wages to your employees (5:4). James says that you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly; your priorities don't match those of God.

Second, prayer means that you must be open to changing. Richard Foster writes in Celebration of Discipline, "To pray is to change. . . If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives." This is true because prayer is an acknowledgement of your own insufficiency. In prayer, you are turning to God for help with something you can’t manage on your own. James says that you must go through many things in order to attain the wisdom you desire from God. Sufferings test your faith, producing endurance and finally maturity (1:2-8).

Praying to God poses the likelihood of change in you. God desires marriages to be healthy, careers to be productive, the sick to be healed, and communities to thrive. These things often cannot happen, however, unless you recognize your own culpability in the problems for which you seek solutions. People may ask for a cure for their current symptoms, but they actually need deep healing. This is only possible when you are willing to change in conjunction with God's work.

Finally, you pray because you recognize that God is the ultimate change agent. As the Creator and King, God is able to do far more than you can ask or imagine. Of course, God’s actions don't always happen on your exact timeline. If God doesn't give you what you want by Tuesday, that doesn't shed light on God's power. Elijah prayed for healing for Israel. This led to three and a half years of drought. Talk about a long wait! But powerful things happened because of Elijah's prayers, even if not in any apparent hurry (see James 5:13-18). God can do impossible things. God is the ultimate mover and shaker. 

When you make your requests to God, you can rest in the knowledge that you have turned to the right source of help. God is not like the stubborn judge who must be pestered to bring justice. God is not like a begrudging father who gives rocks and scorpions to his children instead of bread and eggs. God is generous and wants you to walk in right paths.

Turning to God for help is always a good idea. Prayer opens the line of communication for speaking to and listening to God. Can we rediscover together what it means to pray? "Lord, teach us to pray."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Love It or List It: We Sold Our Church Building

By -
Image
On October 8, 2023, we held our last worship service in our home of 59 years. We're moving on to a temporary location while we wait for God to reveal where our more permanent home will be. It's been a journey for which there is no solid road map, but we feel blessed by what's happening. We formed a giant circle for the final song at our longtime, northeast Fresno home. In late January, our elders announced a shock decision. We would be selling our church building and moving on. Among the elders, it was an uncontentious and unambiguous decision. They 100% believed it was in the church's best interest to put our property on the market and find a new home. Many congregations have hard choices to make about aging properties that are oversized for today's churches. Selling seemed the most desirable option to our board in our circumstances. I wrote about that decision back in January. You can read about it here . I had an inside seat to their decision-making process. As a
Read more

Galatians 4:1-7 & The Confusing Apostle Paul

By -
Image
Does Galatians 4:1-7 confuse anyone as much as it does me? After studying this for some time, I am prone to agree with the words of 2 Peter 3:16. "There are some things in [Paul's letters] hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures." I hope I'm not one of the ignorant and unstable people. But I'm in the camp of folks who can say that Paul's writings are occasionally hard to understand. Let me clarify what I'm having a hard time clarifying. I don't really think it's difficult to understand Paul's point in Gal 4:1-7. The broader context makes it clear. Paul says that the Law of Moses is inferior to the promise previously made to Abraham. Gentile Christians, he writes, are descendants of Abraham because they share the same faith in God (3:6-7) that Abraham had (Gen 15:6). They therefore don't need to obey Jewish rules and customs. That's his point. from Anthony
Read more

Still Freezing in Abilene

By -
Image
So I've been in a class all week titled "Missional Ecclesiology." It's taken me most of the week just to figure out what the title even means, but it's been a thoroughly invigorating week. Basically, the class is about how church can become a people who are more fully dedicated to the Kingdom of God. Of course this brings up all kinds of questions. If we are going to reshape our churches to more accurately resemble a pursuit of God designs for creation and humanity, what exactly is his aim? Is he merely interested in us going to heaven? Is that what salvation means? And how do we live our communal life in a way that nurtures this vision of salvation? These are deep questions and not so easily dismissed. For example, when I grew up in church, the primary concern was to be saved from sin and not go to hell. So how did we answer this concern? By baptizing people in the right way for the right reason so that they could have assurance of going to heaven. But as we look
Read more