I know you exist... but do you care?

07-08-07

Prayer is one of those disciplines that has never come easy to me. There are times when I have felt my prayers have been more effective at reaching the throne room of God and beseeching the king of kings to partake some sort of action at the behest of my prayers. At no time have I ever considered my own eloquence or manner of speech to be the catalyst for the Lord’s movement – I hope I never do. As much as I have always wanted prayer to be one of my gifts it never has been so.

Like many disciplines, no one person is blessed with all of them all at the same time (Jesus excluded). We all have our own strengths and foibles, though my failings are many my strengths, though much less are great still. Unfortunately, one of those strengths is not prayer. I know I’m not alone. I know I’m not the only one who prays at night before bed as an effective means of disengaging my insomniac tendencies. I know also I’m not the only one who can be praying with some degree of focused intensity only to be distracted by an itch or by some vapor of a thought quickly passing from my left ear to my right. I may be the only one distracted by my own prayers, praying for a situation and only to find myself playing out the resultant conversations, effects, and expected desires of my prayers. Apart from the last of my examples I know I am not alone.

Well, I am not going to sit any longer without exercising my prayer muscles. I want to be one of God’s mighty men – a true prayer warrior in its greatest sense. I want to be an effective prayer, consistent, persistent, and ever vigilant for situations where I can praise, honor and glorify the Lord in my prayer life. I want my life to speak of a heart devoted to prayer, and I want that life to point not to my own determination, but the Lord’s effective ministry in my own heart, despite my own feelings to the contrary. I believe this is something the Lord is wanting to teach me, and I believe I am ready to learn.

My text book apart from the bible is Pray with your eyes open by Dr. Richard Pratt, and I am taking it slowly so I can absorb, use, and reuse over and again the principles to an effective prayer life. Tonight I read the opening chapter and will meditate over the next week during my morning prayers over what he defines prayer as: the communication a believer has with God. He says the essentials of this communication are
1. God
2. The believer
3. Communication
Without any of these three main essenitials prayer can not work. Unessential but important are the ways and methods I use to communicate to God. These frameworks are simply frameworks, structures to start with but malleable enough to change and evolve with my own current circumstances. After reading the first chapter, I came across this point that Dr. Pratt makes, which I found especially important, “The same words, said in the same way, at the same time, over and over will drain all the life out of communication with God. Yet, if we learn from the Psalmists and other biblical figures and begin to imitate the freedom and creativity of their prayers, then we can expect our communication with God to grow richer and more inspiring by the day.”

For this week my goal will be praying prayers according to the different facets of God’s character, being thankful for the great blessings he’s given, and staying steadfast in praying for my friends and loved ones, asking for my prayer requests as I go on through this week. I also endeavor to complete the list of prayer exercises listed at the end of this chapter. By keeping a consistent journal of my success or failings at achieving my aforementioned goals I will be able to see my progress through the week and the various disciplines I still need to focus on in the next week.

There is a second reason that I think I’ve been desiring to take God up in prayer and that is to see him closely. To see how our relationship really is. Here’s the scary part for me, and the part that has tripped me time and again in these prayer pushes – the what if’s. What if God doesn’t show up? What if he never answers a single one of my prayers? What if he leaves me be? What if the situations I pray for just get worse and worse instead of better? What if he’s not really listening? What if I never was a believer to begin with? What if there is no God at all?

First of all, I know that some of these questions push pretty far past faith, but I’m sure even the greatest believers question a God they’ve never seen. ie. I don’t question Richard’s existence for example, nor do I question my own, as far as I’m concerned we are both mutually attested to and both exist. But if someone came up to me and told me dragons exist and they live in Moose Jaw, Canada my doubts would tend to rise since I’ve never seen a dragon much less a dragon residing in Moose Jaw, Canada. My faith is what tells me God exists and I see the effects of his work in my life. I see the effects of his work in my own heart and I see the difference in my own life from before I had Christ and when I accepted Jesus as my savior.

When rubber hits the road I know God exists – the question is does he care?