Thoughts on Prayer

I wrote this for a post for one of my classes. It was kind of quick and off the top of my head and I didn't go back to edit so there might be some miss haps but I thought I would post it and see what your thoughts were.

This is kind of lengthy and so if you don't have the time just read the last paragraph.

Read your bible and pray every day is something that most of us have heard from day 1. It is something that is foundational and yet something that so easily has been pushed to the back of our minds behind the more pressing issues of figuring out whether I am a covenant or dispensational theologian, or whether I think there should be elders or deacons, or whether I think people should be allowed to drink or not, or whether I am pre-trib or post trib, or what my view is on the trinity and whether I think there is just some type of economic subordination or some type of ontological subordination, or figure out if I think some gifts have ceased for today or if they haven't or if they have all ceased, or just to figure out what type of epistemology I think is legitimate. So, there is so much that has come to the forefront in my life and dominates the every day demands of my life and my pursuit. Not to mention the day to day push of work and ministry whatever aspect of ministry is pressing upon us in our lives. To spend time thinking about read your bible and pray every day just seems like an almost afterthought like even though we know we always need to grow in that area it really isn't that important to give it a lot of thought. What am I trying to say? What I am trying to say is if you pinned any one of us down and asked if prayer and saturation in the word were important and if we needed to grow in those areas of course we would all say yes but if you actually looked at our lives or I should say if you actually looked at my life you would probably have to ask me "did someone ever teach you that you should read your bible and pray every day?" Now some might start to have the term legalism creep into their mind after that statement but I'm really not worried about it at all so you should probably just get over your obsession with pointing out legalism in people's speech and ask yourself if you are attempting to make a loophole for the freaking laziness that is in your life. Again I am speaking more at myself. It's like the old answer to the version debate "I just wish you would pick one and read it" I want to say I wish you would stop worrying about legalism and get on your knees or take a walk or whatever so that you can talk to the God of this universe the one who made you the one who has called you, justified you, sanctified you, and will glorify you. The one who's mercies are new every morning. The one who stepped down into time laying aside his heavenly rights and became a human and bore our wrath and took our curse and died in our place so we could experience reconciliation and we could be deemed Righteous. I want to stop making excuses for why I don't talk more to the one who I claim that I love with all of my heart. I want to quit playing games pretending like I have the sweet constant dialogue with God throughout the day where I like talk to him when my mind isn't on other things and it is just the constant communication with him. I want that to be true and more. I am not married and I don't have a girlfriend but if I did I sure would want to talk to her a little more than just some type of nebulous "I do it throughout the day when my mind is not on other things..." I would want to talk to her for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours. Of course we can't take 3 hours every day to get alone and talk to God. We don't have time. Our 40 hour a week job just doesn't make that possible. I'm fine with that. But maybe the reason's why we don't are pretty weak. Maybe we really don't need 40 hours a week so that we can purchase a bigger house and have a nicer phone, and drive a nicer car. Maybe we need to cut back to 30 hours a week so that we can give more time to our families, our school, and our God instead of playing the "oh we need to be wise car" when really we are trying to justify needing more money to provide for our needs so that we can give each of our kids there own room, and own our own home, and drive a better car, and have cable, and an HDTV, and "i" whatever. Of course we don't have to pray 30 min. or 1, 2, or 3 hours a day to be spiritual. Of course it would be stupid to attempt to go from only praying 10 minutes a day to trying to pray 2 hours a day. What I want to know is why after 20 years are we still at 10 minutes a day...or less? Of course if we go a day and don't get away for 30 minutes it does not mean that we were less spiritual that day or less in love with Christ. What I want to know is why is the reverse true of my life that the rarity isn't the missed day but the rarity is the day that I do do whatever I do.

Some are going to answer this with saying that my focus should not be on this but my focus should be on looking at Christ and how glorious and wonderful he is and look at the gospel and that is where my focus should be and that prayer and everything else will fall in to place. You know what? I totally agree. But the fact remains that if that has been your focus for so long, focusing on Christ and the positive instead of the negative, why do we still pray like pansies? I agree the remedy is not saying "I need to pray more, I need to pray more, I need to pray more." It is obviously to pursue a vision of God high and lifted up and to see how awesome and glorious he is that drives me to my knee, I should be pursuing and understanding of the gospel more and more every day and pursuing to see the supremacy of Christ more and more every day but again I ask why are there so many that claim to have that as the focus and yet they still don't talk to God...or the answer is "I had quality time not quantity time". There is a place for that...I agree that someone can kneel down and say more worth while stuff to God in 1 minute than some can say in an hour. Sometimes I have experienced the grace and love and righteousness and holiness of God more vibrantly in 30 minutes than I did in 4 hours. But still, why should that stop me from wanting 30 of those precious minutes all of a sudden one day stretch out into 3 more just like it. Really this boils down for me that prayer reveals how much I truly think I am dependent on God. The more I pray the more I reveal that I truly believe I am dependent on God in every aspect of my life. The less I pray the more I reveal that I am a very proud person and the less I pray the more I reveal that I truly think I am dependent on myself and I can get things done. I am not asking for us to be legalistic and check off a list every day and I am not asking all of us to be like Luther, or Mueller...at least right away...I am just asking myself if I truly love the one I claim to love and if I really believe that I am absolutely dependent on Him for every aspect of my life. Prayer is a glorious gift. I just wish I would realize how glorious the gift really is.

It is also a difficult struggle for myself and I am sure for many because prayer from a rationalistic standpoint is difficult because when I am doing something with my hand or being productive so to speak with my body where I can see results I always feel like those things are much more worth my time. I do not see the value of prayer. It is not real to me. I do not see that I am walking into the thrown room of the king so it is much more productive and easier in my eyes to go clean my toilet then it is to get on my knees. I don't see the reality and concreteness of prayer it seems abstract and unproductive.

I also think that our strong view of the sovereignty of God, which I think is totally right, tends to weaken our prayer lives. Yes we know that prayer is still tantamount in importance but in our stupidity we let our view of theology push prayer down the scale because God has everything planned out.

Prayer and whether it is effective or not should not be judged by the number of prayers answered or not. I understand the way people's faith works and why they like to keep a list in a journal of all of their prayers and which ones have been answered and the date and what not. I understand that. I just think it is too narrow. It should be enough for us that we are allowed to talk to God. That is all. That is all. That should be enough to say to me how can I not talk to the God of the universe. A few thoughts from Piper make this point. "The main way that God deepens, strengthens, and awakens confidence in prayer is not answered prayer it is by the word of the living God. When God says I hear you we should believe him...I was praying this morning for my children and for myself Eph. 3:14-21 and I stopped. I have prayed that for myself hundreds of times. Hundreds. And it hit me. I've been praying this prayer for 29 years at this church that God would grant me to know the height, and depth, and length and breadth of the love of Christ that passes knowledge and you know what came into my mind. That's the reason you have seen what you have seen about the nature of the love of God being the glorification of himself in people's lives. My way of talking about the love of God today is that you are loved not when God makes much of you but when he at great cost to himself gives you the inclination to make much of him and the joy of making much of him. I do not believe I would have seen that if I had not prayed that pray a hundred times. So now, of course the skeptic would say I think you would have thought that even if you hadn't prayed that prayer. I think you would have seen that in the bible and you would have taught it even if you hadn't prayed that prayer. To which I would say I guess that's what you are going to believe. But this morning at the bottom of my soul it seemed to me God was saying the reason you see what you see is because you have asked to see it a hundred times. I've heard you. It's no accident that you've seen John 11:1-6 in relation to John 17:1-5, 24 the way you do. I don't give everybody that. I give it too you. I give it to hundred others thousands others. I give it to people who want it so bad they pray Eph. 3:14-19 over and over and over and I store it up in a bottle and then one day in a conversation with someone or while you are studying the Bible I pour it out and you see what you would not have seen."