The Death of Prayer

The sad reality is that many of God’s faithful become disenchanted with prayer as they journey through life.  They don’t get what they ask for time and again.  They’re broken when they’ve prayed faithfully with a yearning spirit for someone dear, only to have them taken.  They find that being quiet in the presence of the Father is painful as the light of His glory shines on their shortcomings.  Though these are true, it seems that the most common reason people find futility in prayer is that they really don’t believe it works.  They look at God’s Plan as unchanging and predetermined.  Or in their hearts they truly don’t believe in a “living God,” but in the “Devine Watchmaker” of Deism.  Simply put, they don’t see any evidence that their prayers work, or that God hears them.  “So, why bother?”  This mindset can quickly change the perspective of a person from that of divine hopefulness of the newly transformed, to the toxic fatalism of the Christian curmudgeon.

It is easy to understand how this metamorphosis takes place.  There are many scriptures that talk about our never changing God that seem to support the notion that the predestined fate of humanity negates any real purpose or power for prayer (Heb 13:8, Rev 1:8).  After all, if God doesn’t change how can his plan be altered?  And if we can’t prompt change, why pray?

Some of the most unfortunate contributors to the demise of prayer are the misguided teachings of pastors and teachers that promote the idea that people can pray their way out of problems.  At times these are circumstances created by our own decisions. At times they’re caused by our lack of planning or procrastination.  Other times they’re a direct result of sin. Prayer can’t be used like a “morning after pill.”  Unfortunately, more often than not the things we earnestly seek divine intervention for are connected to the realities we face in our battle with mortality.  Resources, health, and relationships for ourselves and those we care about are typically of paramount concern.  These are not self-seeking or wrong.  They aren’t prideful or wanton. They’re of true importance and worthy of our passion.  So why do we, and those we love, find defeat in the face of our mortality?
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To accelerate the slide away from prayer there’s the all too common encounter with the fact that God’s answers to prayer are not what we expect.  They’re often misunderstood, or probably more frequently, not what we want to hear.  God’s response can be missed in the cacophony of our daily lives.  It can be misunderstood or misinterpreted.  And many times, the answer is just be plain, “no.”  This is hard to embrace as we try to rationalize the world around us.  This is especially true for the immature believer.  They pray using all the right words, with hearts full of passion and pleading, and are regularly not satisfied with the answers they receive.

There are many attempts by the well-intentioned to rationalize this quandary.  Unfortunately, their remedies lack the power to slake the thirst of a true searcher.  They invent a prayer formula and teach that using the right words, in the right place, with the right amount of passion will yield the results we want.  They even create a focus on faith.  Teaching that God’s plan will conform to our will if only we have enough faith.  In truth faith is the key.  But the faith they push is the magic ingredient to get God to do what they want.  What’s missed is that what we need is not the faith to change God. What we need is the faith embrace and thrive in His plan.  In His promise.  In His word.  In the fact that, “all things work together for good to those that love God…  (Rom 8:28).”  Not a faith to change the Creator of the universe, but the faith to trust in His goodness, power and love.  Prayer is not about changing God’s mind, its about preparing our hearts and minds to embrace His plan.  Don’t let the trials of this world be the death of prayer.  Cling to the truth that our Savior so clearly gave us as he agonized over the inevitability of the cross:  “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours… (Luke 22:42).”

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