Then He said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and goes to him at midnight and says to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves; 6 for a friend of mine has come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; 7and from inside he answers and says, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been shut and my children and I are in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything. ‘I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will get up and give him as much as he needs. 9″So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 10″For everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it will be opened.
I have too many ideas going on to decide what to start blogging about, but got into a fairly non-controversial discussion, and I thought it would be good place to start, if for nothing else than to show people that I have a somewhat "normal" side (in comparison to my future "crazy" bloggings to come).
Sharina posted about prayer, so I just wanted to share personal perspective with this critical and under-utilized tool. Prayer is about literally tapping into the power of God personally, not about some distant hope or Christian "requirement". It's fairly worthless when forced, perhaps defeating the purpose from God's perspective.
I think it's an easy place to get caught up in misconceptions, and I've certainly been guilty of this as well.
What should we pray for?
If your background is like mine, you've been taught repeatedly to pray for "God's Will" to be done. We are taught over and over to pray for anything we want, and He will hear us.. I mean ANYTHING! This is awesome! But, oh yeah, it must be "God's Will". Umm, well that kind of defeats the purpose of askin' for stuff, right? I knew there was a catch.
And hang on a minute. If God is all-powerful, His Will is going to get done regardless, right? Isn't this whole "prayer thing" kind of a futile exercise? We can ask for anything, but it can only be God's Will. How will we ever know if He did anything specifically because we asked it, when He is just going to do His own Will at the end of the day?
Not including the countless "Lord's Prayers", I've recalled praying over and over again for God's Will to be done. These were some very unspecific, unrewarding prayers, let me tell you. Yes, the "Lord's Prayer" is the ideal prayer, but its the prayer of a person that is already convicted completely, whose pure and altruistic interest is to see the furtherance of God's entire kingdom.. its not a prayer designed to build that relationship with God. Was He listening? Probably. Did it bring me closer to God? Probably not a whole lot.
God knows what we want
I'm not going to dig up the parables of the birds & flowers & whatnot, but rest assured, He knows our needs and our desires. So, if it's God's Will to bless His people, and God is always going to carry out His Will, tell me again why we need to pray? He should just read our minds and bless us, right? Again, it's easy to build a pretty solid case against prayer. I'll give it points for "you don't want to be the person not praying, when everyone else is praying". It would be hard for many people to find a much better reason than this, if they were being honest about it.
From God's perspective, the purpose of prayer, over and over again, is to build that relationship and to open that line of communication.. to make you fully trust Him and to get in the habit of coming to Him for everything. Yes, God is fully capable of reading your minds and doing the things you want, but that would be a very one-sided relationship. It would be unfulfilling in bringing you closer to Him, both because of your lack of effort/commitment, and because it would not lead to giving Him credit for doing what you asked of Him.
Pray Boldly (and Specifically)
Pray boldly and ask great things of Him. Don't suspect He won't do it and therefore limit what you ask. That is a weak prayer and not one that can let Him show off His glory. Come to Him with full surrender (do not rely on your own knowledge or trust the things close to you, no matter how enlightened you think yourself to be), and ask for GREAT things, that He might do these things for you and show you His full glory. Some may think of financial success here, but what are the odds that you can be that rare person that is given financial success and can still remain a dedicated Christian? Most people need that adversity in financial struggle to keep close to God, so it generally isn't His Will. But don't lose heart; there's lots of cool stuff to ask for, and He might even let you give the financial success thing a try, if only to prove that its not for you.
Bold prayer can be a very tough thing for a humble Christian to come to terms with, though our humility should be personal, and our bravado in Christ. Aren't we taught to demonstrate humility? The Lord's Prayer was fairly humble.
Am I dare suggesting that we "test" God? Not at all. To test God would be to say, "if you do X for me, I promise I'll start being a good person". You are saying that you are only going to be penitent and follow Him after God accomplishes the tasks you've laid out for Him. That's probably not a winning strategy, though it hasn't stopped me from trying.
Pray Continually
Yeah, this one seems like you have to put in a lot of hard work for years and then "maybe" you get some results, but you'll never know if it was prayer or just blind luck that gets you there. All throughout the Bible, we are taught to "pray continuously", and yet there are many prayers in our lives where it just seems like God wasnt listening or didnt answer. To chalk this up as "it wasn't God's Will" can feel like a cop-out. We may never come to understand why He chose not to give us something that we thought would be really beneficial to our lives at the time we asked for it. But what we can do is recognize the power when we seek Him and He answers us under the terms above.
What God gets out of prayer
Prayer is a "gift" you give back to God. Certainly, worship and praise acknowledge your submission to Him and your love for His power. Approaching Him for forgiveness helps mend your crimes against your relationship. But bold prayers will bring you much closer to Him, that He can demonstrate how He listens to you and convict you fully. Without asking with confidence, there is a distrust of that relationship or of His power, and you are probably not ready to give Him the credit He will naturally expect in return. This is why God asks us over and over and over again to keep praying ("but I've prayed for that like 100 times already!")
A big prayer
I was really struggling with my beliefs in college, but asked God over and over for general Christian guidance and for success with my career choices, repeatedly. My parents were relatively poor, and I prayed for specific financial goals to be met by a specific date, that I might see and acknowledge His power in my life. I realize this wasnt the prayer of a saint, and I knew it at the time even. God chose to grant my request fully, anyways, no doubt to show off His capabilities. The success I experienced literally fell from the sky right into my lap with practically zero effort. It happened overnight and was a much bigger pot than I could possibly deal with; it was the business equivalent of winning the lottery right after buying my first ticket. I was racked with guilt over this and a part of me just wanted to credit "blind, dumb luck" instead of God, but I reluctantly gave God credit at times. You could say I was irresponsible with this and had a pretty severe fallout with God at that point, even testing Him you might say. He wasnt amused and it wasnt long before I stopped looking at private islands off Manalapan and started looking at how I was going to make my next rent payment. All of that left as quickly as it came into my life and I was soon in debt.
My second big prayer
Another set of prayers had been with me most of my life and I had lost confidence in God being able to deliver on it. I wasnt even close to beginning to seeing any progress on this prayer, though much of what I was asking for here had clear "side" benefits that I knew could help me develop as a Christian. Eventually, I took matters into my own hands and tried to work against His Will to fill those desires. This also was a big part of the downfall I have described above; just working against God because you want something and you are sick of waiting for it. When God eventually granted me this prayer, it was extremely humbling and an even greater indication to me of His power than my first gift. It's tough to get past the guilt of taking what wasnt yours because you didnt trust He would provide for you. As insane as the first gift was, the circumstances surrounding this gift were even more unbelievable to me (and probably most of the people that know me). It literally fell from the sky and landed in my lap again, and it was (and is) incredibly precious to me. Even so, there was a piece of me that still wasnt completely convinced. After all, there are people that have won the lottery twice in their lifetimes. It was pretty overwhelming evidence in my life, and enough to convince me that it would be very difficult to chalk it up as luck, but not quite enough to cement it for me completely.
Now, these prayers were both "more than I bargained for" and I wasnt prepared to deal adequately with either, but it was shocking how accurately these requests were met, and how foreign these things were to the pattern of my life. I still have the second gift, and even the first gift is coming back now that I'm dealing with it more responsibly.
The third and biggest prayer
When we pray to God, His Will IS being done ALREADY. The act of prayer is what He is wanting from us. The dedication to Him of your time, thoughts, and energies. Not the length of prayer, but the desire to constantly put Him in your thoughts, making decisions alongside you. This prayer of mine consisted of divine revelation alone. I needed to get past the doubts, and wanted something big and concrete to convict me of the inerrant truth behind the Bible. I must confess that I didnt think the Bible would assist in that revelation, I thought it would be related to a comfort level with science and I put my confidence in coming to a new understanding or resolution there. Yes, there were a lot of good books on the subject that tore into secular understanding of science, but nothing that could convinct me of the infallible nature of the Bible. In spite of past success with prayer, it was tough to hear those whose advice I sought, to tell me I just needed to pray about it and that God promised to show those who seek Him in earnest.
But, I took the advice to heart, worked on it hard, prayed harder than ever, and bought into the notion that He would convict me somehow in spite of my science-fueled doubts (more aptly, pseudo-science).
He convicted me of this by showing me things that are hard to believe or understand or come to terms with, but it instantly shut down all the scientific and secular doubts that a part of me wanted to hang onto. Much of what He showed me could be found in the Bible, but a lot of other stuff was all around, hiding everywhere in plain sight, away from our minds, because we have come to trust the wrong voices.
Conclusion
Pray to Yahweh, the one true God, and to Jesus Christ, His Son. Pray often, requesting that He creates this relationship with you and pray for the willingness to put away your preconceived notions, cemented through an entire lifetime of bias. Yes, it's possible to pray to other gods and see amazing things done as a result; there is incredible power in evil as well. This is only a deception and you need to be very careful to not be fooled by this, many of whose forms come with a Christian appearance.
Pray boldly, pray often, pray big. Pray that we are moved to make big prayers that are aligned with His Will, so that we can learn to know Him better and we can build out that relationship. Prayers can seem a foolish waste of time on the surface, but try to see God's perspective here, and then unlock that power that God wants to show you. Really trust that God will answer your prayer and believe that He truly wants to give you what you ask.
