Category: Prayer

Why do we tend to remove the mystery out of prayer? I guess I could rightly ask why do we remove the mystery out of anything? The truth is that prayer is not some sort of philosophical phenomenon we need to solve in order to get God to give us the answers we want. Prayer is more than a barter system with God. Or at least I hope it is.

The craziness about prayer is that the God who creates, sustains and saves listens to us. In fact, he begs us to come to him. If you really think about it, it sounds as though one would have to be outrageously naive to believe such a thing. “How can God listen to all the people in the world at one time?” “And what kind of a God wants to hear from his creation?” We can answer questions by saying that God is “big” and God is “loving,” but is it not still a bit mysterious?

I’m not sure our questions about prayer are going to end, but that’s ok. Let’s embrace the mystery of it. And I guess I should note that when I write of prayer as being a “mystery” I’m not talking of some spooky or mystically weird type of experience. What I mean is that we are not going to figure it all out. Therefore, our questions of it should not inhibit our praying. Perhaps they might lead us to pray more.

So when it comes to prayer and our continued questions about it, I hope we keep in mind a a few things. First, I hope we never lose the wonder of it. To be beckoned to approach God with confidence (Hebrews 4:16) as we are told ask, seek, and knock (Matthew 7:7) should at times, lead us to a stance of awe. Oh how sweet the hour of prayer “that calls me from a world of care, and bids me at my Father’s throne.”

Second, we need to realize that prayer is more than just spouting words. It is about being in the presence of God. The Psalmist writes: One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple (Psalm 27:4). To be in the presence of God is that which we must cherish. It is that which we must linger. We must not let our world of speed and obsessive productivity rob us of our need to sit at the feet of Jesus.

Finally, we need to keep in mind that praying is about being honest before God and to God. On an episode of Pete Enns podcast, he interviewed Sarah Bessey about prayer and her book on the subject. One comment stood out to me. Sarah said, “There was something about the honesty and the rawness and even the anger and the joyousness and the earthiness of prayer that I saw in the psalms that I didn’t really see in a whole lot of places around me.” I’m afraid many of us are like Sarah and have not been shown that we can come to God and speak openly and plainly about life’s ups and downs.

One more thing: If there is an area in my life that I feel undisciplined in, it is prayer. Perhaps you might feel the same. And yet as I think about why I feel this way, I wonder if it’s because I have viewed prayer as only a morning ritual to complete a daily “quiet time” instead of a relational presence I embrace as I go about my day? This is not to say there should not be disciplined times of prayer, I believe there should be. But when I move prayer from a check list of things to do to a walking with God in the mundane tasks of life, things change for me. Prayer becomes an hour by hour dialogue and a posture of gratefulness for God’s continual presence as I acknowledge God’s mercy in meeting me right where I am. Again, this does not eliminate the need for discipline in my life of prayer, it just frames it with a new end in mind.

Last week I began asking some simple and yet not so simple questions about prayer. I’m doing this not because I doubt the importance of prayer, but because I feel that asking such questions can both spur us to pray more deeply while at the same time help us to be honest about the struggles we have with it. And yes, it is okay to struggle!

The question about prayer that I brought up last week was,
“Does anything happen when we pray? The complication of answering this question comes when we face God’s sovereignty. We know God is control (whatever that means) and so as a result, if nothing can thwart his plan, then what good is our prayer? He’s going to do what he’s going to do, right? (I realize this is not the only way to think about God’s sovereignty…and personally…not a healthy way to think about it.)

I have a few comments about this way of thinking. (And yes, I guess you could say I’m still working through last week’s question). First, I realize that this question concerning God’s sovereignty and prayer is not necessarily one the Bible is asking. For the Biblical writers, the truths that God was in complete control of everything and that humanity had true freedom to do as they wished was not seen as a problem. So does prayer change the course of history? Of course! Does God control all of history? Of course.

Second, when I think about God’s sovereignty, I’m not viewing it as something in which God is stiff-arming his creation to get it to do what he wants. There is a relationship that God has with what he has made. He loves us. So I think there is a relational aspect to God’s sovereignty as there is a working together of God and us as his image bearers to make this earth “as it is in Heaven.”

Third, we have to be okay with a bit of a mystery as to the workings of God and how he holds all things together and yet gives us freedom to live as we please. There has been much ink used in discussing God’s sovereignty and our free will. I’m glad there are those who have the intellect to tackle this issue. But I think each of these folks who dove into the depths of this subject will say at the end of the day that there is still quite a bit of mystery.

Historian and theologian N.T. Wright remembers facing this question of God’s sovereignty and prayer when he was quite young. Though he didn’t have a complete answer for it in his teens, he still believed that God answered his prayers and thus, felt his prayers changed things. As he has aged and given this question a bit more thought, he says…

As I've gotten older and have thought about Genesis 1 and the role of human beings in creation and bringing that forward into Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom of God and Paul's appropriation of that, it looks as though what Scripture is trying to tell us is that God who made the world made it in such a way that some of the most important things he wants to do in the world would happen through human agency. So the mystery of prayer is that when we humbly come before God with our requests, there seems to be something there that delights him. 

As always is the case in these short posts, much more could be written. And perhaps it will. Also, it could be that what I have typed here as only caused you to ask more questions (of which I would be delighted). But can we end with the most incredulous thought that, regardless of where you land on the question of how God’s sovereignty and the voicing of our prayers to him relate, God delights in our bringing ourselves and requests to him. Think on that for a bit. Oh what a privilege it is to come before him. Oh with what love does God bend his ear toward us. Blessed be his name!

Prayer is so simple. It’s talking to God. You don’t need to use religious jargon. Nor do you have to put on a “holy vibe,” whatever that means. You just come as you are.

Prayer is also listening. I don’t think we always think about the listening part of prayer. Yet it’s an important element. We must not leave it out of our prayer life.

But though prayer is so simple, or at least in some ways, I still have some questions about it. And so for the next few weeks, I want to address some of those questions. Some of them may seem to have an obvious answer, but we do well to still ask them for many times, it’s in the asking of questions that new discoveries are made. Now some of the questions may not have an answer, or at least not a clear one that I can give, but that’s ok. We still need to ask.

To start off, I have a rather elementary, but perhaps complex question. Here it is: “Does anything happen when we pray?” The answer has to be “Yes!” does it not? Why do we pray if it doesn’t make a difference? And yet I think we have all faced times in which we wondered if God was listening. We have all thought that perhaps God has not answered some request we have offered up.

The Bible is clear however, that God hears our prayers. In fact, he invites us to “ask, seek, and knock” (see Luke 11:9). And when we do, he promises to answer. Or at least when you continue reading Luke 11 that’s what Jesus seems to be saying. So this is good news. God hears. He doesn’t turn a deaf ear to us. He is present.

But once again, I know we have all had experiences where we sometimes doubt that God is really present and listening to us. I hope you realize that you are in good company when you feel this way. Just read through the Psalms. Many times they offer a plea of “God, where are you? Are you listening?” Or read the biographies of those in whom we classify as the “great saints” of the past. As you do, you will discover that they too had times of doubt as to what God was doing in their lives.

The older I get the more I resonate with the statement that “there are no simple answers.” I feel this way about the question of whether prayer makes a difference. And yet I simply do believe that prayer in fact does change things. Scripture along with all of history is clear about the “power” of prayer. But if we are honest, we all have times of doubt.

A couple of years ago I read Peter Enns book entitled The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our “Correct” Beliefs. Reading this book stirred in me my insatiable desire to have all my Biblical and theological “ducks in a row.” And by the way, this is not always a good thing. Why? Because in doing so, intimacy with God sometimes gets misplaced.

What Enns book leads me to think in dealing with the question of “does prayer change anything?” is that the simple answer of “Yes!” may just be enough. The clarity of Jesus when he tell his disciples, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7) should be trusted. This doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t seek answers to my questions concerning prayer. But what it does mean is that at the end of the day, when the answers don’t seem complete (or correct) enough, I bow my head and seek the face of God.

There is quite a bit left unanswered in this short essay concerning this question about prayer. For example, how does God’s sovereignty work in relation to our praying? Perhaps more can be written later about this. But for now, the point is to trust that prayer effects change. I don’t always see it, but it could be that my vision is a bit cloudy. So I keep trusting. I keep praying. For what else shall I do? It is God who is my creator, salvation, sustainer, rock, and hope and it is to him in which I turn.