This reads to me like God has inflicted or allowed this condition on this person and is content to sit back and do nothing unless a lot of us start praying. What would life, death or sickness even look like to God? If I pray for this am I really saying, "God, you messed up. This lady shouldn't be sick..." That sentence seems a little absurd. I remember reading somewhere in Matthew, Jesus saying not to pray for things, that God knows what you need. The only kinds of prayer that make any sense to me at all are:
1. Prayers of gratitude/thanks (gratitude for life, not for scoring a touchdown).
2. Prayers for guidance.
3. Maybe prayers for strength, in terms of convictions, not physical strength.
If you choose to share any thoughts on this I am interested. (Or, you probably already have posted thoughts, in which case a link would be great.)
The above questions and comments are similar
to those I’ve often heard, even uttered or at least, thought myself. What should I pray for? How should I pray? If God is sovereign, why pray at all? The following remarks are not intended to be
definitive answers, but simply thoughts on the subject that will hopefully be
of some help in moving toward answers.
Looking back over my 300+ posts, I realize
that I haven’t said much about prayer, even though it is essential to my life,
though I found a few posts. One was A MODEL PRAYER, in which I
made some comments on what is known as the Lord’s Prayer. This was part of a series I had been doing on
Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Another, CORPORATE CONFESSION, was a
plea for the church to adopt the form of the great Old Testament prayers to our
current situation. Another was PRAY FOR OUR PRESIDENT,
another plea.
I have always been hesitant to speak or write
on the subject of prayer, one reason being that I have this little
uncomfortable feeling that my personal prayer life is inadequate.
But, I also find that it’s hard to know where
to begin. The Bible, both Old and New
Testaments, is full of prayers – conversations with God, as well as
instructions/ commandments on how prayer is to be done. One would think that I, who for years taught
theology in college, would have a clear theology of prayer. I don’t.
The following thoughts are not an attempt at that, but simply to
interact with the above questions.
First of all, we can take comfort in the fact
that God knows our weakness and ignorance in prayer and doesn’t seem to be
bothered by it. In fact, He has provided
us with a divine “Interpreter” to make sure we get it right. As Paul tells us in Romans 8:26, 27:
“And in the same way
the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we don’t know what we should pray even
as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes with unspoken groanings. And He who searches the hearts knows what the
mind of the Spirit is because He intercedes for the saints according to God.”
We are ignorant, but God provides every
believer with the indwelling Holy Spirit as Paul explains earlier in this
chapter. The idea I get from this is
that though I in myself may pray in ignorance as to the “what’s” or “how’s” of
prayer, the Holy Spirit reads my intents and communicates these with the
Father.
Of the many instructions on prayer in the New
Testament, one seems to override the others:
“Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Though there have been many attempts at
explaining this passage, or explaining it away, we are confronted with what at
first seems an impossible command. And
yet, I and many others take great comfort in this command. Here’s my take on the command.
I am to live every moment of my life in the
consciousness of the presence of God. He
is aware of every thought I think and every word I speak. So when I reason, when I plan, when I
daydream, He, in the person of the Holy Spirit, is in on my reasonings, my plans
and my daydreams, whether or not I am clearly conscious of His presence. So in a real sense, every thought I think,
even every sentence I write is a prayer.
And, of course, there are many times during the day when I actually
utter a prayer, whether formally or informally.
I’ll not here attempt to deal with the fact
of God’s sovereignty in life, death and illness, except to say that the Bible
teaches over and over again that He cares about our pains and sufferings and we
are told to take them to Him and to make our requests to Him, not because He
doesn’t know, but because He cares.
“Don’t be worried about anything, but in
everything, with prayer and entreaty with thanksgiving make your requests known
to God” (Philippians 4:6).
I am a firm believer that God is the One who
heals. In fact, I believe that all
healing comes from God, whether He uses medical means, natural means or an
occasional miracle. I also believe that
even though we may pray for healing we must recognize that it is always in His
sovereign control.
Uni and I receive many requests similar to
the one referred to above. They come by
facebook and e-mail. We often pass them
on to others. At times, we stop as soon
as we read a request, utter a brief prayer and then move on. Sometimes we write them down on our daily
prayer list. And many times we ourselves
initiate a request. It is comforting to
know that there are brothers and sisters around the world praying for and with
us.
The passage referred to above – Matthew 6:8b,
“… your Father knows what you need before you ask Him,” is not meant to
discourage but to encourage prayer.
Perhaps I should repeat my comments given in my post, A MODEL PRAYER:
“The question is sometimes asked;
if He knows what we need, then why bother to ask? I have to say that there are
no easy answers to this question, even though many have been attempted. But
I’ll take a shot at it.
First of all, though He knows
our needs, we don’t always come to Him with our needs, but rather with our
wants. It’s not that He doesn’t often give us our wants; He does. But I believe
that what He seeks for us in our prayers is that we make our needs into our
desires.
We are like little children. We want stuff, we want toys, we want pleasant things. We are often satisfied with lesser things than our Father seeks for us. But He knows what our real needs are.
And I believe that while He desires to meet our needs and does, His real longing is that we seek Him. Not simply what He can provide, but Him. As a father and grandfather, I believe that in a small way I can understand this. I am not a wealthy man. I cannot (as God) provide rich gifts for my children and grandchildren. But I can provide them with love and my great desire is for them to reciprocate.”
I recommend Philip Yancey’s book, Prayer: Does it Make Any Difference?http://billball.blogspot.com/2010/07/pray-for-our-president.html
4 comments:
Rev 5:8 "And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints" changed my prayer life. I now strive to pray in such a way that my prayers are worthy incense for God. Therefore my prayers now focus much more on thanksgiving and adoration and much less on give-me. Nevertheless I still bring my needs before God has He has commanded us to do--I just spend less time doing so and more on praise.
Thanks for responding to my question; it brought my understanding to a different place. It still seems odd for me pray for a person of whom I have no knowledge, but I also see that while a prayer such as this may not change the condition of the subject person, it does change me.
A few months ago I was competing in a difficult race. 70 miles in, after a night of running in sub freezing temperatures through knee deep snow and mud, it had gotten hot, my feet were a mess and I decided to quit. I never said a prayer to finish the race nor for strength, but suddenly I had this deep gratitude for being privileged to run in the mountains. I finished the race. The last 30 miles were physically punishing, but the gratitude never left. Im not a Biblical scholar, nor a very good Christian (which is why you get email from me), but for me, the race represents life and the gratitude represents prayer.
Chris
Bill, I appreciated your comments and also comments by Chris. I often hear the local Christian radio station pray for "a lady's wish to have her insurance company pay what's due her because she desperately needs the money" or other such nonsense (my opinion). Someone said "we do the possible (using common sense in life's issues) and God does the impossible (when we are at the dried up brook)." Could you address what we should be praying for besides praising more?
Judy: I believe as I mentioned above, that for the believer every thought is a prayer. So, in a sense, nothing is off limits for prayer - God is big enough to handle them all. He knows our needs. As James says (4:2b), "...you don't have because you don't ask." At my age I utter many brief prayers during the day for God to help me find my misplaced glasses, coffee cup or whatever.
On the other hand, he also says, "You ask and don't receive because you ask with bad intents, that you may spend it on your pleasures" (4:3).
I wouldn't necessarily classify the request you mentioned as nonsense. It was a prayer for justice that reminds me of the story Jesus told in Luke 18:1-9. But I have heard plenty of trivial prayers.
Perhaps our problem is proportion. Look at Nehemiah's prayer in 1:4-11. He spends 8 verses, praising and confessing and one verse on his specific requests.
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