A Short Discourse on Prayer

I recently had a conversation with a good friend of mine - lets call him Jeff - who has been dealing with some things. After an hour or so in which we framed the problem in a spiritual warfare model, I encouraged him to not only draw near to God in his personal life and via Scripture but to pray. I can't profess to know the inner workings of Jeff's spiritual life, but I know that he is a believer. One thing I cautioned against is exactly what I wanted to tell you about. What I said was this:

Prayer is not magic

"Well duh!" you might be thinking, "Prayer is talking to God and magic...well, isn't". The truth of the matter is, however unfortunate it is, many modern Christians that I've been exposed to treat prayer like it is merely a matter of saying the right incantation. We don't usually think of it this way, but magic is essentially trying to control the naturally uncontrollable by our own means or efforts. Prayer, by contrast, is the enacting of one side of a relationship. Just like we are given a measure of control over the things of this physical world (whether that be in our personal relationships or our buying power or our social media platforms, etc.) we are also given a measure of control over the things of the spiritual world, though these things are shrouded in mystery. When we pray we exercise this measure; this is why Jesus tells us to pray for our Father's will.

So what does this mean? A few things...

1. It means that we need not waste time and energy praying the same thing over and over as if God did not hear the first time. When we pray from our deepest person that God's will is done and made our preferences known, we then release the situation as we have done all that we can do.
2. It also means that we can be confident when a prayer of petition is not answered the way we want because God, who is our Father and the giver of good things to his children, wants what is best for us and thus will work things to that end within the confines of the contextual situation. We rarely know all of the factors that play into any one situation and though God does, he gifts all of humanity and angelic beings with truly free will (which necessitates that he does not intervene at his leisure). This is a picture of our incredible God who can allow for truly free creatures and still be in control of the larger picture regardless of our choices. We can trust this God and so when things don't work out the way we want, we can take comfort in the fact that it was the best that could happen with all of the factors in play.
3. It means that we ought to pray often. If we think of this in terms of voting power (though I think that this is an extremely limited analogy as prayer is intrinsically relational and voting is intrinsically legal), we ought to exercise our vote in God's favor all of the time. This is how we help the furthering of the Kingdom of God and help situations in which we feel powerless.

These are merely three of many many ways that framing prayer in this way is purposeful to our spiritual lives and I encourage all who read this to try to think of three more. Furthermore, scour Scripture for light in this matter; use the index in the back of your bible to look up passages on prayer, but don't look for a word-for-word "how to" (because it isn't there), instead look for a "how did" - that is, how did prayer function in this example? By this, we learn how to use our measure of control in the spiritual realm and thus serve God better.

peace,
C.M.