What is Prayer Anyways?

Introduction

I feel like I say this with all of the habits of grace that we have been looking at so far, but prayer is probably one of the most neglected spiritual disciplines. Why is it neglected so much? Let me give you a scenario and see if you have ever been here.

There is this really big need in your life, maybe your children have been wandering from God for quite some time. You have been praying it seems like forever for them, but it seems like you never see any hope of that child coming back to God. You pray and you pray and you pray. Until one day you get discouraged. What’s the point anyways? It seems like you never see any answers to prayer so why bother. Maybe you continue praying out of habit, but you have moved on from praying for that specific need. Maybe you gave up on it all together. Prayer takes time after all and why spend the time if it is meaning less to pray? Have you ever been here?

Laments

I have talked to many who have landed here in there lives and I think if we are honest many of us have struggled with this exact feeling. Why aren’t my prayers answered? I want to come back to this question as we progress through our series, but questions like this reveal a misunderstanding of what prayer actually is. Writers about prayer have debated back and forth about the purpose of prayer. In fact there is a debate raging right now as to whether prayer is an experience of God and fellowship with Him or is it a process by which we wrestled to be conformed to God’s purposes. Others see it merely as an opportunity to bring prayer requests.

Is it possible that we don’t value prayer because we don’t know what it is for in the first place? Maybe our version of prayer is unsatisfying because it doesn’t measure up to what God intended it to be for. It isn’t that we aren’t praying, but our prayers aren’t what they should be. Today I want to deal with three perspectives on prayer and show how they thrive and fall short on their own.

The Galactic Soda Machine

Scripture clearly teaches us to make requests of God in prayer.

1. God wants us to ask- Matthew 7:7 “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:”

I think sometimes we have this mental image of God that He is like our parents. Maybe growing up our parents could never be bothered to hear anything we had to say; so we just stopped asking. And that is how we treat God sometimes; we feel as if He has better things to do than to listen to our little prayers. But this is not the heart of God. 1 Peter 5:7 “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.” We should not be hesitant to ask God things.

2. Prayer allows us to make requests of God- Philippians 4:6 “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.”

All those little fears and worries we have, we can talk to God about those things and ask Him to do something about them.

3. We don’t need to be timid about asking Hebrews 4:16 “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”

Because we are in Christ, we have boldness to come before God. It is like the crown prince coming before the king. He doesn’t have anything to fear, he doesn’t need special permissions, and he can come basically whenever he wants. Notice God’s throne is called a throne of grace- It is the place where God dispenses his grace in our lives.

Most of us understand this basic idea of prayer. Unfortunately for many this is all they know of prayer. Prayer is not merely about asking and receiving. CS Lewis described the concept that many of us have of prayer when he said:

The very question “Does prayer work?” puts us in the wrong frame of mind from the outset.

“Work”: as if it were magic, or a machine—something that functions automatically.

How much of our prayer is consumed merely with this mind set? I have called this view when it stands by itself as the Galactic Soda Machine view of Prayer. This view sees God as a tool to be used to accomplish our will and our agenda. As long as we put in our quarters, out comes the soda that we desired. But it all revolves around us.

Lewis would go on to say in another book,

If your approaching Him not as the goal but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you’re not really approaching Him at all.

James 4:2–3 “Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.”

Probably the best illustration of this truth is the story of Job. Satan comes before God to accuse the brethren to which God replies, “Have you seen my servant Job, a perfect and upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?”

Satan’s response was Job 1:9 “Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought?” Of course its easy for Job to be godly, you have blessed him with so much. If Job really loved you for nothing, you could take away all these blessings and he would still worship you. If you take it away, Job will curse you.

Satan’s accusation was that Job viewed God merely as a Galactic Soda Machine. Job only worships you for what he can get out of you. Do our prayers not devolve to such thinking when all we do is pray through a prayer list?

Prayer is intercession and request, but it is not only that.

The Christian Mystic

Prayer is also about an experience with God. I have titled this Christian mysticism. Many people have reacted wrongly to such a phrase because so often it gets lumped in with Catholicism, but the term merely refers to an experiential relationship with God. You cannot miss that this is an intended purpose of prayer.

The connection between Prayer and an experience of God

Jeremiah 29:12–13 “Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.”

Jeremiah ties together the concepts of calling and seeking God. And then connects a promise, you will find me if you seek me with all your heart. The fulfilling of the promise that we will find God comes through prayerful seeking of God. God doesn’t just want us to ask things of us, He wants us to want to be with Him, to love Him. To seek Him for Him.

Its kinda like your kids. Parents, does it ever seem like all your kids ever want is for you to do something for them. Get them a snack, some money for something they want to buy, a ride to the game; but the never really just want to be with you. God longs for a relationship with us and part of the experience of that relationship is prayer.

Psalms are prayers expressing a desire for an experience of God

Psalm 27:8 “When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek.”

Psalm 63:1–3 “O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: My soul thirsteth for thee, My flesh longeth for thee In a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; To see thy power and thy glory, So as I have seen thee in the sanctuary. Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, My lips shall praise thee.”

Look at the wording, the experience, the emotions of the Psalms and then come tell me that these prayers were not a desire for an experience of God. In Psalm 63, David says he thirsts for God, he longs for God, he wants to see God and seek God. These are not words of petition, they are words of relationship and real experience with God. It isn’t enough for Him to just come to church, sing a few songs, give some money and do some spiritual actions. David wants a real and personal relationship with God.

When I am experiencing anxiety in my life, I want to be able to call out to God and find the God of peace. I need peace, but not as a request but as a part of who God is. As I hold on to him my fears melt away. Its kinda like when you have had a really bad day and all you need is someone to just hold you.

Psalm 116:1–2 “I love the Lord, because he hath heard My voice and my supplications. Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, Therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.”

The example of a godly man experiencing God’s through prayer

Daniel 9:2–4 “In the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem. And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes: And I prayed unto the Lord my God, and made my confession, and said, O Lord, the great and dreadful God, keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love him, and to them that keep his commandments;”

Daniel shows us this Christian mysticism in practice as he prays to seek by prayer. Notice how he begins his prayer. It isn’t a list of requests, but it is pure worship.

The great and dreadful God

The covenant keeping God

The merciful God

The God I love and obey

Daniel is consumed with who God is not what he can get out of Him.

The Transformative Prayer

Luke 22:42 “Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”

CS Lewis once said:

There are, no doubt, passages in the New Testament which may seem at first sight to promise an invariable granting of our prayers. But that cannot be what they really mean. For in the very heart of the story we meet a glaring instance to the contrary. In Gethsemane the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from Him. It did not. After that, the idea that prayer is recommended to us as a sort of infallible gimmick, is dismissed.”

Prayer is also transformative. It changes us. I don’t always know how it does its work, but I know that there is a connection between prayer and the renewing of our minds. Just as scripture renews our mind, prayer can renew our minds.

Prayer challenges us to submit our wills to God’s will.

Luke 22:42 “Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”

When we pray, we often want our will to be done. The longer we pray we may come to realize that sometimes our will is not God’s will. Then we have to wrestle with that.

1. “Why doesn’t God’s will align with my will?”

2. Have I asked amiss?

3. Can I accept that the answer is No or not yet?

4. Is there something God wants me to do about pursuing the answer to that prayer?

If you haven’t ever faced the depths of unanswered prayer, I don’t know what you have been praying. Moments like these challenge us to wrestle with God and to submit to his will.

Genesis 32:22–32 “And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two womenservants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford Jabbok. And he took them, and sent them over the brook, and sent over that he had. And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, an…”

Sometimes God has to hollow out our thigh before we will listen to him. Sometimes it isn’t that God won’t answer the prayer but he has a lesson for us to learn in the wrestling. Jacob eventually was heard and blessed, but he had to wrestle first.

Prayer changes our thinking

I have recently been discovering more and more the connection between biblical lament and the process of renewing our minds. Let’s take one example from Lamentations 3:19 “Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.” Jeremiah pours out his complaint to God in lament. This is how he feels. Earlier in the chapter, he says God is like an archer who has shot him full of arrows, like a bear who has ripped him in pieces, like a brick layer who has built a cage around him. As he meditated and prayed about all the affliction, misery, wormwood and gall of his experience, it brought him low. Lamentations 3:20 “My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me.”

But lament isn’t merely about complaining to God. All biblical lament continues on to meditate on the greatness of God and our trust in Him. Verse 21 is the switch in his lament. Lamentations 3:21 “This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.” What is it that he remembers?

Lamentations 3:22–24 “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.”

At the beginning of Jeremiah’s prayer of lament, all he saw was evil, grief and pain; but in prayerful lament, he renewed his mind and found hope. Lament changed his thinking when things were dark and it changed his life.

Conclusion

Tonights message was intended to ask, Why do you pray? What is the purpose of your prayers? The next few weeks, we will begin looking at different types of prayers that we should be praying, but tonight I just want you to evaluate your motivations for prayers.