Serious

We are gifted with a dangerous power. We are given a dangerous weapon. 

Prayer.

Do we truly believe the power of prayer?

Do we see how dangerous it is?

If prayer, as one author put it, moves the arm that moves the world, shouldn’t we be careful what we ask for? We say that glibly but shouldn’t we really take a step back?

Do we really think about what we pray for? Really take our requests and ourselves as seriously as God does?

Taking prayer seriously—it causes us to think, to reflect, to examine our hearts, to see if this prayer request lines up with God’s wisdom, the way he has worked creation, the way he is working in this world and history, if it lines up with his values and desires. A serious endeavor in prayer thus causes us to become like Christ and to seek God’s heart. “Lord, this is my heart’s desire. This is my plan. But is it in line with yours?”

Endeavoring in prayer is to continually form in us the image of God. To ask, to make known, to speak, to plan, even in prayer—this is what it means to be human, to be made in the image of God. We can passively just pray, “Lord, whatever. Your will.” This is not a relationship but a flat capitulation that allows no imaging, no intimacy, no forming. Nor in this case do we use our God-given dominion in the name of Christ, by which we are being restored to the image of our creator. What is man that he is mindful of us? (Ps. 8:5). Christ, the true Adam, has the true dominion that Adam was supposed to exercise (Gen. 1; Rom. 5; 1 Cor. 15). But we are being renewed in his image, and he has delegated his authority in his name (Mt. 28: Lk 10; Col. 3:10). Amazing. Incredible. I’m in awe and tremble as I reflect on that again. God has allowed us the privilege to be causal agents in his name. He ordains our prayers as his means of working on the earth. “Thy kingdom come!” we cry out and it is through us he chooses to work.

Endeavoring prayer is intimacy. But a dangerous, scandalous, un-shame-cannot-exist intimacy. A burning intimacy. We are told to ask, seek, knock. There is something in voicing, in asking, in making petitions known. I get this image of a child with a father—“Daddy, this is what I want.” The child is sharing her heart, her desires, entrusting the father with this precious treasure. Asking, petitioning, is part of presenting our whole heart and our whole self before God. To not do so holds part of our heart, part of our love, life, self back from God. To present our desires before him invites life and light into places of our hearts and minds that may be a little askew. Laying petitions before the Lord brings his penetrating light and Spirit into those. 

Yet, we are finite.

We ask wrongly. James 4 makes it clear that we all can ask wrongly. Even Christians.

Fear.

Here, hear, the comfort of the Trinity comes in, the comfort of our God!

God—God is bigger than our prayers and our mistaken desires. He is sovereign over all answers. I am not so sure we can “change” God’s mind, but rather he ordains the means (our prayers) as well as the ends. He knows the hypothetical. He truly hears, truly inclines his ear (Ps. 10:17; think of it! The most powerful one actually bending down to hear us!), truly responds. Our prayers truly are effective; as James writes:

“The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit” (James 5:16-18).

Yet God in his sovereignty places desires on our hearts to pray for, uses our prayers as his means for his sovereign end. We can trust he will work out all things for the good of those who love him (Rom. 8:28; Gen. 50:20).

God the Father is not only sovereign but good. We need not fear the power of our prayers because of the nature of God. God is Father. Will he give us a snake if we ask for bread? (Lk. 11:11) Our Father who searches our hearts, knows the hearts of man, knows what we truly need and truly desire (Mt. 6:8).

Jesus—we pray in in Jesus’ name, according to his will. Prayer requires both a bold confidence to make our requests known, but it also requires a submissive trust, “if it be your will.” We pray not in our own name or our own power or our own access. We pray in Jesus’s name. It is his mediatorial blood that allows our prayers to be heard. It is prayers in his character and his name that have power. Gillian’s name means nothing except in union in with Christ (even the demons know other names have no power, as the seven sons of Sceva found out).  

Spirit—the Spirit sanctifies our prayers. We pray imperfectly, in weakness, in finitude. The Spirit takes our prayers, groans with us, sanctifies them, presents them before the Father as a prayer of incense (Rev. 8; Ps. 141:2). I think there is a perfecting of our prayers in that. He knows what we ought to pray for, how we ought to pray. He searches both our hearts (desires, plans, dreams) and the Lord’s (his perfect will). And I think the Spirit, in prayer, helps make our hearts and requests align with the Lord’s if we pray with surrender. Spirit.

So taking prayer seriously and yet fearlessly and wrapping it all in the submissive trust (not my will, but your will) keeps prayer from being neither passive, defeatist (too scared to ask, or God will do what God will do anyway) nor desperate or demanding (if I don’t pray, it won’t happen! it depends on me! What if I don’t pray hard enough? God, I deserve this. I want this. I ask this.). It is a hard, hard tension to keep, but God in his perfect wisdom, arranged things to keep this balance. This is the tension we see in the psalms, too—they are bold, so bold. Yet, they leave the exact workings out to the Lord. “Lord! Deliver me! Save me! But you know when and how. I trust.”