Prayer

“Prayer does not equip us for greater work; prayer is the greater work.” – Oswald Chambers

During a recent Sunday night collegelife at North Park, we spent an extended amount of time in prayer. God yet again brought me to a place that has not always been comfortable for me or that came easily to me. Of all the spiritual disciplines, prayer is something that I have wrestled with more than any other in my Christian walk. As a child, I can remember knowing that praying was ‘talking to God’  - it meant being quiet, closing your eyes, folding your hands, bowing your head, and listening intently to the Pastor or whoever else was praying aloud. I understood on an elementary level what prayer was, but it was not real to me. My thoughts would wander, I would feel like I needed to have words but end up with none, and it seemed unreal and a bit bizarre to be talking to someone that I could not see or hear respond to me like another person. Even years later I remember having doubts that the God of the universe would really hear what I would have to say, or that what I had to say would make any difference.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines prayer as “an address (as a petition) to God or a god in word or thought; an earnest request or wish.” The basis of my struggle, I discovered, was rooted in my doubts that God would be hearing my prayer, would listen to what I would have to say, would find value in my petitions. I knew that God loved me and cared for me, but I did not yet understand the significance that came with salvation. That God desires to hear my prayers. That because of His unconditional love, he desired for me to commune with Him though prayer. That my relationship with Jesus was personal, and that meant being open to what was at the time uncomfortable intimacy through prayer.
So, God started to work on my heart and my prayer life started to grow. At first when I prayed myself, I consistently found myself drifting in my thoughts and never focusing on what I thought I should be focusing on. I felt like I wasn’t conforming to the right ‘formula’ for prayer. I wasn’t saying the right words or spending the right amount of time in prayer, and I avoided all opportunities for public prayer. I knew there were various structures of prayer one could follow, but they never seemed genuine to me. But then, through encouragement from others, time, patience, and the grace of God, I started to see my prayer life grow.
The moment that I stopped relying on my own knowledge of what I though prayer was supposed to be was when I realized an amazing truth – that while God is sovereign over all things, we can move Him with our prayers. That yes, God does care to hear my prayer, to listen, and to respond. I saw that my fledgling prayer life was an issue of my heart – I was misunderstanding the nature and character of God in feeling I should or was obligated to pray, but not committing to actually carrying that out.
One of the issues I struggled with (and still at times do struggle with) is that of predestination – if God knows everything about me, about what I am dealing with, what is on my heart, what is to happen in my future, why do I need to vocalize that through prayer? If He already knows, why tell Him again? And of course, God responded to me again through Scripture. In Exodus 32, Moses is pleading with God not to destroy His people after they had crafted and began worshiping the golden calf while Moses was on Mt. Sinai. God says that He will bring His wrath on His people, but verse 11 says that “Moses implored the Lord his God.” Moses was able to bring his concerns before God and plead that the people would not be destroyed as God had just told Moses they were to be. And yet, after Moses pleads with Him, “the Lord relented from the disaster that He had spoken of bringing on His people” (32:14). Though God was, and still is, sovereign over all things, Moses moved Him with his prayers. Jesus reiterates this promise in Luke 11:9-10, saying “everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; to the one who knocks it will be opened.” Therefore, we are called to not sit idly by in our faith journey, but to engage and act and interact with our heavenly Father through our prayers. Now I am not saying that our prayers will change the will of God – He is still sovereign over all things. But, while it is true God is sovereign, He listens to our prayers and is moved by them. I have no doubt in my heart that God’s will will be done, in my life and in the world around me, yet I also understand the importance of my communion with Him about the things He has laid on my heart through prayer.
In his sermon titled “The Art of Prayer,” Matt Chandler gives one of the best explanations of why we should pray. In fact, a lot of what brought me back to this topic recently was from listening to this sermon. Here, he describes the importance of prayer:

“God’s appointed means to achieving His appointed purpose is the proclamation of the Word. Which means God said, ‘The means by which I’m going to accomplish this is the preaching, teaching and proclamation of the Word. So I’m going to save men through the preaching and teaching of the Bible and through interpersonal relationships where the gospel is taught and lived out.’ So we preach because the means by which God is going to draw men to Himself is through the proclamation and preaching of the Word. The same is true about prayer. So prayer becomes the means by which the purposes of God are accomplished. So in this way, prayer changes things.”  – Matt Chandler, “The Art of Prayer”

And perhaps the most important thing to remember through prayer is that it must start from a place of faith in the cross of Jesus Christ. I can look back at my prayer life and see that the times when I was not praying out of my own selfish, sinful being but instead praying out of God’s love and grace and power, and it was then that my prayers were not approaching the throne with the desire to bring about my own means. Instead, they were focused on placing God’s will above all else. Remembering that the Holy Spirit invades my thoughts shows that the things placed on my heart and mind in prayer, when based on my confidence in the cross, are coming from the Father. Matt Chandler illustrates that prayer not be a wish list of selfish desires, but a communion with God rooted in our faith in the cross:

“Matthew 21:22 says, ‘And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.’ Now there starts to be this little caveat in here that would stop you from being able to pretend to be Aladdin. He said that if you pray and ask for anything, you’ll receive it if you have faith. That’s not the faith that that prayer would come about, but that’s rather faith in the cross of Jesus Christ. Which means that for prayer to be effective, we must have a heart that belongs to the Lord. Which means you’re going to pray less and less and less selfishly and more and more and more in regards to the kingdom. John 15:7 says, ‘If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.’ So now we’ve got another caveat, don’t we? ‘If My word is in you and your are in Me, then ask whatever you want, and then it will be done.’”  – Matt Chandler, “The Art of Prayer”

I am so thankful that throughout my struggle with prayer, God has been faithful. In those times of doubting, drifting, disbelief, laziness, and wandering, I have never had to say that I could not return to the cross. It is the realization that I am unworthy to approach the throne of God in my wicked sinful nature that reminds me God has made a way for my salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I am not confident in myself, but in the cross, and that leads me to prayer. To assurance that God hears my prayers and is moved by them. To knowledge that God is sovereign in those times when I do struggle with prayer. That God’s love overflows and washes away any doubt that may linger. I know I still struggle and wrestle with prayer in my life, but I am confident in the cross of Jesus Christ that I may continue to learn to grow deeper in communion and intimacy with God.