livin’ on a prayer
Part Two of the sermon series on “Livin’ the Dream” was on prayer. Below is a recap:
As I read this Scripture over and over this week, it became ever so clear to me that it truly is God’s will that we pray to him. Literally Colossians 4:2 says, “Devote yourselves to prayer.” In case you are wondering what this really is meaning and saying, it says “YOU MUST PRAY!” It’s not a suggestion; it’s a command that God places on our lives. If we are going to live life in abundance; if we are going to live life fully; if we are going to live the dream (meaning be in God’s will), we must devote ourselves to prayer.
But you know what’s so great about God? It’s that He loves for us to come to Him and ask Him for things. God knows we are dependent upon Him and so He wants nothing other than to always be that source of dependence. And, so He desires for us to ask for whatever we need. Scripture says, he delights in our prayers! Proverbs 15:8 literally says, “the prayer of the upright is His delight.”
Interesting enough, not only does our prayers make God happy, but He’s also excited at answering our prayers. Isaiah 65:24 declares that God is so eager to hear and answer our prayers that, “before they (us) call, I (God) will answer; and while they are still speaking, I will hear.” Out of all the people in the world (there is approximately 7 billion), God is so excited to hear our prayers that He hears the whole prayer while we are praying and begins to answer our request before we have even finished our asking.
Pastor John Piper says it best, “The Creator of the Universe, who holds our life in his hands and rules the world, is the kind of God who loves us to the point that he wants us to ask him for things.” Revelation 5:8 even states that God loves our prayers so much that they are like incense to Him. If God loves prayer that much, I think we should pray as often as possible don’t you?
Some of the most devout followers of God have written things like: “Early will I seek Thee” (David, Psalm 63:1); In Acts 6:4 the apostles vowed that they would give themselves continually to prayer and the ministry of the word; “I have so much business I cannot get on without spending three hours daily in prayer” (Martin Luther); “God does nothing but in answer to prayer” (John Wesley); and I Could go on and on…
But you see, real prayer is something we learn. The disciples asked Jesus in Luke 11:1, “Lord, teach us to pray.” They had prayed all their lives, and yet as they watched Jesus pray, the realized they hadn’t figured it all out yet. Richard Foster, says, “It was liberating to me to understand that prayer involved a learning process. I was set free to question, to experiment, even to fail, for I knew I was learning.”
So my question is this, are you still learning to pray, or have you given up on it?
Interesting post. A question came to mind as I read it. What does it mean for a prayer to “work”?
Great question. I think prayer “works” when we use it as a means to begin the process of aligning ourselves with God’s will. I totally don’t believe our prayers change God’s mind, but I do believe when we are praying in accordance to His will things happen that wouldn’t normally. Although I have to admit, I don’t know what all that even fully means. I think it’s one of those things we’re we have to have faith in the prayer. What do you think?