he who has eyes...

“Yet not as I will, but as you will.” [Matthew 26:39]

When asked recently how I would define prayer, my immediate response was, “It’s a conversation with God.” That sounds about right, doesn’t it? When we pray, we are talking with God, He’s talking back in some mysterious way, and something is accomplished because of it. But, come to think of it, I didn’t entirely know where this definition came from. I’m pretty sure I was just re-spouting what I’d been told after years and years of being around church people. So, when faced with the challenge of leading a Bible study on prayer recently, I actually had to go to the Bible to look it up.

Have you ever done that? Had a preconceived notion about what something is. But, when you actually look up the definition, you find it’s something completely different?

Well, let’s just say that upon doing some further research, I’ve decided that prayer is not best understood as a conversation with God as we typically understand it. Sure, we should speak to God through it, and in some way we gain something from God in the process, but is prayer a conversation with God? And sure we should be seeking to listen to God in our day-to-day lives, but is the act of doing so prayer in and of itself?

Maybe most surprising to me was that the word “pray” doesn’t appear in the Bible until Genesis 20. Now, prior to this moment with Abraham, who was seen as having a special connection with God, people didn’t consider prayer something that was done enough to even mention in the story. Yet, people still conversed with God before this. Very much so. It just wasn’t called prayer.

The Genesis 20 story has a foreign king who worshiped a different god (yet still fearful of Abraham’s God) ask Abraham to pray for him so that he might live and not go punished by God. In fact, God Himself is the first one who uses the word “pray” — while speaking in a dream to the foreign king. God is having a conversation with this king in a dream, and talks about prayer as if it’s something that Abraham has to do later, not what is happening at this moment — the moment when God is conversing with the king.

At least in this moment, prayer is not seen by God as a conversation. It is something different. (Again, let me state that having a conversant life with God is a good thing — people did it well before Genesis 20, for instance. But, I’m just not calling that “prayer.” And yes, to some extent, this is a semantics game. But play along.)

When looking up the word “prayer” in the Bible, it was striking that it is pretty well always used as a way for man to ask God for things — asking for healing, asking for favor, asking for wisdom. Is it necessary for God to answer such things in a conversational manner? Do we have to then listen to God once we ask for something?

I don’t think that we do. When God answers these prayers, for the most part, He does so by having certain events transpire, not by telling the one praying what the answer to their prayer is or how He will go about bringing this answer to fruition.

Or think about this common adage: When we ask in prayer for something from God like patience or humility or wisdom, do we just get magically granted these things? Do we just get wisdom handed down to us from on high? No. Instead, we are given opportunities in life to practice patience, to learn humility, and to gather wisdom. This is why praying for humility is such a dangerous thing. God will answer! And, not just by magically giving us more humility — but by humbling us. And this usually sucks for us.

So, in my preparation for this study on prayer, here’s what I’ve come across and what I’ve learned.

By God’s grace, in giving a recent sermon on asking for God’s provision, I didn’t miss the boat too much in teaching biblically. The basic conclusion I came to was when we ask God about things, the most important thing we need to do is make sure we are understanding God’s will and are seeking first His Kingdom — that we need to align ourselves with God’s will, and this is how He mainly provides.

That’s point number one on prayer.

1. Praying is about God’s will

We see in 1 John,

This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him. [1 John 5:14-15]

When we go to God with something, what is our confidence? That if we ask in His will, He hears. Not that He hears and answers everything we ask of Him, but that there is a certain requirement for us to have total confidence — that we must ask in His will.

I go back to this idea over and over again, because I think many people in the Church (myself included) think of God this way: God is not our genie who grants our wishes. Who is it that we think we are? Have we forgotten the debt owed to Christ and thus our respective places in a position of surrender and servitude? God is our Lord, not our ATM.

So when we ask God for things, we do so with the understanding that the way in which He often answers is through challenging and changing us and our desires to align more with His will.

Rob Bell put together a Nooma recently called Open. While I’m often a fan of Rob’s artistically created short-form sermons, this one left much to be desired, insomuch as it consists mostly of pretty speech that means very little in actuality and sounds more like new-age mysticism than biblical application (I might go so far as to say his viewpoint is a bit warped and perhaps dangerous, but I tend to stop myself from going so far). However, one quote in there that I think is absolutely brilliant and right on as it pertains to prayer:

Prayer changes things, but praying changes us.

When we pray, it does affect God to move and to do things. Prayer changes things. But, the action of praying and submitting ourselves to the authority of the Lordship of Christ changes us. Our wills are aligned with God’s as He continues to mold us into a more Christ-like disciple.

Allow Him to move in you in this way, because this is how He will most likely answer.

Think about how Christ prayed. The primary example you probably think of when you think of Jesus praying is the Lord’s prayer:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. [Matthew 6:9-13]

See? Right there. It’s Jesus first asking for God’s will to be done, and then asking for provision.

But more to the point to me is when Jesus is praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. He is beginning the agonizing act of carrying the burdens of the world’s Sin to the cross, and is thus under a great deal of distress. In this place of sheer suffering and pain, He cries out to God in prayer, asking for the burden to be taken away.

Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” [Matthew 26:39]

As much as He desired for God to take this burden from him, he still submitted to God’s will in this. And you know what? God answered this prayer. He did!

He said no.

Jesus had a desire on his heart and went to his Father with it, but he did so with a humble heart of submission — that whatever God decided would be right and good. And Jesus went along with it. Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane didn’t change the course of his life and where it was headed (the cross), but it did change him. From this point on, he humbly accepted his place and his suffering. He was aligned fully with God’s will.

Could we seek to do anything less in our own prayers with God?

1a. Praying is an act of worship

I would call this point number two on prayer, but once the idea of worship gets hashed out a bit more, you’ll see that this is just another way of saying point number one. The reason I am including this as a point is that so often people go to this as a definition of prayer: Prayer is worship.

Or, people go to the Lord’s prayer and look at it as the ideal by which we should train ourselves to pray (which it is), and they come away with the idea that prayer should follow a certain format — something like the ACTS model for prayer. Since the Lord’s prayer starts off with Jesus speaking of the hallowed-ness of God’s name, we should likewise begin in adoration. And, isn’t this what worship is? Telling God just who He is and how much He means to us?

Well, yes and no.

When we look at the Greek words for worship used in the New Testament (as I’ve done before), we see the following:

proskyneo – This literally means either to kiss the hand of, or more commonly to fall facedown (to become prostrate) before someone as an act of respect or supplication.

latreuo – This literally means to serve for hire, or more commonly to render religious service as an act of worship.

Our natural response to what God has done for us is played out in our acts of worship — becoming less and less so that Christ can become more and more (falling facedown), and serving God with our whole lives (becoming living sacrifices).

So, worship is indeed our telling God what He means to us, if of course what that means is that He is everything to us and our lives as they were are nothing. And, we should not just seek to tell God what He means to us, but we should go about actually doing something about it by seeking to enact His will here on earth. By worshiping, we should be actively seeking self-change so that we can understand more fully what God’s will is for our lives and in our communities. In this way, worship is a transformative experience, both for us and for our communities.

So, just as prayer is an experience we can partake in to seek out God’s will in our desires and in what we ask for, worship is an experience of recognizing this Being who deserves (nay, requires) praise and adoration and allowing our wills to be aligned with His.

In short, prayer is an act of worship when done correctly (as every action we do should be) — we are asking God for something, but then having our desires transformed by desiring above all that His will be done. This is quite simply the definition of proskyneo worship.

But, worship isn’t necessarily prayer. So the two aren’t exactly equivalent ideas.

2. Praying is about being obedient

Again, this probably isn’t exactly unique enough to merit another numerical heading and deserves to be called point number one-b, but I’m going to give it it’s own number because it is indeed a unique aspect not previously covered, as you’ll see later. As of right now, consider the following biblical ideas on asking God for things.

Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. [1 John 3:21-22]

and

When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. [James 4:3]

God is a good Father. And, just like any good father would do when his son or daughter asks for something that is bad for them or will hurt them or is simply not beneficial in the long run, God does not always give us what we ask for. So, when we ask for things with wrong motives or with disobedient hearts, we tend not to receive — not because God is mean and doesn’t love to bless us, but because we have to (… wait for it …) align our will with God’s when we ask. He knows what is good for us, and we should be asking for those things.

Now then, this living repentant lives thing does introduce another aspect as yet unexplored in our discussion on prayer. Point number one (proper) said that praying is about God’s will. When we ask for things, we should ask according to God’s will and it will be done. These passages we’re talking about here take it a bit farther.

Not only should we ask according to God’s will in order to receive, but we are also commanded to live our whole lives in accordance to God’s will by being obedient and doing what pleases God. In the moment of prayer, it is necessary to be within God’s will in what we ask, but we should also maintain lives that are upright and obedient.

Imagine being the father of a completely disobedient child who only comes to you when he wants something. In all other instances, he does exactly what you tell him not to do and constantly goes against your better wishes. Now suppose this child figures out that in order to get a good gift from his father, he just has to ask in that moment in the proper way and for the proper thing and it will be given to him. But, outside of this moment, he is still as disobedient as ever. Would this work for you as a father? Probably not.

Doing what God wills for our whole lives, not just asking for things in accordance with God’s will, is extremely important in establishing our understanding of God as Lord, not just as gift-giver or ATM.

So, when asking for something, even what is seemingly within God’s will, analyze not only your motives for asking but also your continual behavior and general state-of-being in living an obedient life.

3. Praying is about having faith

This one is a bit confusing and a touchy subject for some (myself included). There are two passages I think of most often when I think of prayers being answered because I have enough faith.

I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, “Go, throw yourself into the sea,” and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. [Mark 11:23-24]

and one I discussed in my God Speaks sermon

If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. [James 1:5-6]

The general understanding of this is that when I ask for something from God, I need to not doubt, because if I have doubts that God will answer in my heart, it will not be done.

Why is this a touchy subject? Well, consider something like the following, which I’ve seen play out more than once. You’re praying for someone to be healed of a lame leg. God ultimately wants this person to be healed — I mean think of what heaven will be like for this person. They’ll certainly be able to walk! But, when you pray for them, it doesn’t happen. And why? Well, you obviously didn’t have enough faith.

That’s a feeling that really sucks. And it leads to a snowball effect of being damaging to a person’s faith. It’s very easy to just give up on praying for people because you just never see anything happen. Why even try anymore?

One of the reasons I love the Vineyard (the association of churches that I am a part of) so much is that they constantly preach within a Kingdom theology. What I mean by this is that there is a future time at which the complete breakthrough of God’s Kingdom will be evident in the whole world — and a new Jerusalem will come to earth and God Himself will reside with us. This final glorious time, complete with a resurrection of the dead, was first brought to this world through the person of Jesus. The firstfruits of the final resurrection were seen in Jesus’ resurrection. With his conquering of death, he brought about our spiritual resurrection as well as a hope in the final bodily resurrection that will one day come.

Until that day comes however, we live in a time between the times. We have experienced the firstfruits of Kingdom but haven’t experienced it in its fullness yet. We are, as countless Vineyard pastors will tell you, living in the “now and the not yet.”

So, when we pray for healing and it happens, praise God! We are seeing examples of His Kingdom breaking into our now. But, when we pray for healing and it doesn’t happen, well then it’s just another example of the fact that we are living in a broken, incomplete world that is still longing and yearning for it’s culmination as His Kingdom eternal.

While this idea certainly takes a lot of the pressure off of us when praying for healing for someone, it still doesn’t explain the idea that we are told in the Bible that faith does indeed play a role in our prayers being answered.

Moreso, what if I really believe and have faith that God will give me something that is outside of His will to give me? What then? Is what Jesus said in Mark 11 not true? I sure hope not.

Well, consider how you can believe and not doubt. If you are praying to God, and you understand that this God has given us a whole book dedicated to explaining who He is, there are a lot of opportunities therein to discern God’s will. Moreover, the teaching of point number one (proper) still holds, and has probably been uncovered by you in your search of the Scriptures to believe and not doubt on a topic: praying is about aligning your will with God’s.

So, I ask you, is it even possible to pray with absolute belief and not doubt if you are asking for something outside of God’s will? Not an easy question, but something at least worthwhile in exploring.

———

Finally, let me leave you with the following story from Scripture. Once upon a time, the great king David (a man after God’s own heart) fell in love with a beautiful woman named Bathsheba. The problem was that Bathsheba was married. No worries, David is king and takes her anyway and gets her pregnant. Oops. Well, after trying to hide the infidelity by having her husband Uriah sleep with her (which he refuses to do while battle is going on), David orchestrates Uriah’s death in battle so that he can take Bathsheba as his wife and thus have the son born in wedlock. Good cover David. Well played.

Problem is, God knows these things. And he tells his prophet Nathan, who confronts David. David, being the man after God’s own heart that he is, repents and confesses. God spares David’s life, but says that David’s son born from Bathsheba will surely die. And David begins to plead with God. He fasts. He mourns. He weeps. And God answers his prayers.

He says no.

David pleaded with God for the child. He fasted and went into his house and spent the nights lying on the ground. The elders of his household stood beside him to get him up from the ground, but he refused, and he would not eat any food with them.On the seventh day the child died. David’s servants were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they thought, “While the child was still living, we spoke to David but he would not listen to us. How can we tell him the child is dead? He may do something desperate.”

David noticed that his servants were whispering among themselves and he realized the child was dead. “Is the child dead?” he asked.

“Yes,” they replied, “he is dead.”

Then David got up from the ground. After he had washed, put on lotions and changed his clothes, he went into the house of the LORD and worshiped. Then he went to his own house, and at his request they served him food, and he ate.

His servants asked him, “Why are you acting this way? While the child was alive, you fasted and wept, but now that the child is dead, you get up and eat!”

He answered, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought, ‘Who knows? The LORD may be gracious to me and let the child live.’ But now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.” [2 Samuel 12:16-23]

Here was a man who understood prayer.

Not my will but Yours be done, Lord.