Real Prayer vs. Religious Prayer

We have made prayer part of religion, and now most of our people don't know how to do it, and it has little impact in their life. 'Praying for you' has become a nice little religious cliche' that might mean someone is praying for you, or might not. It means 'we care, and if we think of it we'll pray for you' rather than 'we will consistently intercede with the Father for His will to be done in ______' (not true for everyone, but for most).

Prayer has been minimalized and marginalized. We have found a way to package and process prayer, thus hyper- and pseudo-intellectualizing what should be a terribly simple thing: talking with God. (After all, a Christian does know Him, right? And people we know we usually don't have trouble talking with, right? And if we do, it's in part because of some problem in the relationship, and since God is perfect and doesn't create any problems in our relationship, talking with Him should be easier than talking with even your best friend, right?)

If you called a 'prayer meeting' most wouldn't come, some because they wouldn't know what to do. They would want to know 'what are the rules?' Told that the only rules were that there were none, they wouldn't know what to do.

People think of prayer in much the way as they do a 'program' or a religious rite. Their practice of it is routine but shallow and relatively powerless. This isn't intentional on their part, but praying to God is, to many people, a mildly comforting release, a magic-genie-list of requests, and since God occassionally comes through with 1 or 2 of the things on their list, they'll keep trying it. It's just part of the rest of the relatively powerless religious grid. I know that sounds harsh, but consider the prayer lives around you. Consider the power or lack thereof, flowing around you.

Think about it with me: What is prayer? Communication with God. So, must we have our eyes closed and heads bowed? (Not that either are bad; they have purpose). Must we creat a 'list' first (as if God didn't hear the first time, when we made the list)? Is prayer supposed to be us telling Him what we want?

Prayer is communication with God, which should be to spiritual life as breathing is to physical life. Yet for those who want to go deeper in prayer, we have prayer classes. That's not all bad, but did anybody have to teach you how to breath?

Talking with God should be natural. It is how we enter the supernatural. More importantly, it's how the supernatural enters into us, meaning His wisdom, comfort, peace, counsel, by the Holy Spirit. (This also comes from studying the Word of God) It is not merely for the very spiritual (whatever that means). I know people who, when they have a need, make sure pastors and spiritual leaders in particular are praying for them. What? Do they have 'more direct access?' Can't anybody who knows God do this? Yes. (As a pastor, let me say I'm very glad to pray for people, but my point is that I am no more capable of powerful intercessory prayer than someone's Sunday School teacher or Godly neighbor).

Prayer is almost always man telling God what He wants. Listen, in this whole talking with God idea, WHO NEEEDS TO HEAR FROM WHOM?

Prayer is communication with God, not communication at God. And if I have any sense at all, and I meet God (and I have and do, though I'm also preaching to the man in the mirror in this entry), I'll listen more, talk less. I won't put on my figurative religious robe, I'll just communicate. That looks like this:

I share my heart with God, usually briefly (since He does know already; though at times pouring out your heart to God at length is necessary). As I do that, I state to Him what I know from Scripture is His will about a situation, if I indeed know that. Then I ask Him to speak to me. That happens by the Holy Spirit, which reminds us of all Jesus has taught, i.e., brings to our mind Scripture at the times we need it. He also gives peace, comfort and counsel. These are the things I usually need in prayer.

This goes on anytime I want it to and anytime I'm prompted to by the Spirit or others' needs. It's like a conversation, but it's a conversation on spiriutal steriods. How do the comments in a conversation go? Me. You. Me. You. You. You. Me. Me. Me. You. Me. It's sort of back and forth, sometimes more one than the other for a little while. That's conversation. There's no reason it should be any diferent in prayer, EXCEPT THAT, if I'm having a conversation with a person very knowledgable in an area I need to learn about, I listen more than I talk. Well, since we're conversing WITH GOD . . .

In short, we've sold prayer short, tucked it into our religious closet, and we pull it out to rub the magic genie, or in utter desperation. Kind of like holding your breath until you just HAVE TO breath.

Let's pray. Really pray. Say something. Then listen.

. . . At Every Turn of the Mind

At every turn of the mind we must surrender to Christ. The battle is in the mind, and it is our human nature's desire to turn every thought to ourselves. We must take every thought captive. I find most thoughts battling for self-fulfilment. Most thoughts are my ideas about how to fix something, fix someone, or make myself more 'comfortable.' Before these thoughts are complete I must give them over and let the Spirit give me His thoughts. Self-fulfilment -- read: even self-thinking -- is shallow, substitutionary pleasure and fulfilment, at best. Spirit fulfilment is fullness, freshness, freedom -- and power. Power to impact the world.

Leave It Alone

If you are walking with Christ, and you are not satisfied with your circumstances (in whatever realms of life), more often than not you should 'leave it alone.' So often man tries to interfere with God's plan. "God has me pretty much on track, but let me help out by _______" is the way it plays out. Oh, man doesn't actually think that way in his head, but in his heart he does, and he tinkers with things.

But if we are indeed walking with Christ, He has everything -- every detail -- in control. We don't need to call around to see what's going to come down in the next big business meeting. We don't have to try to get Person A to tell Person B something that helps position us better. Etc. Etc.

If we walk with Him, carry ourselves in integrity, then He'll do far better at positioning us than we will do. He'll bring about the opportunities in His way, in His timing. In so doing, He'll save us from things we thought we should do that would only have been trouble, failure or major distraction, and align us exactly where we should be.

When you feel anxious, as if you should do something, check yourself; if you are not walking with Christ, the only thing you should do is get back in right relationship with Him. If you are walking with Christ, then leave it alone.

Words Matter

“You will never realize the significance of words until you realize that the first words spoken were not from man, but from God.” -- Paul David Tripp

So shouldn’t this give some priority order to words? As in, ‘His first, mine second.’ My encouragement to you is several fold:

a) Since He spoke first, let’s let Him speak first every day, and in every situation.
b) Since He put His ‘words’ in The Word (the Bible), let’s spend a meaningful amount of time (i.e., not a 5-minute warm fuzzy devotional that someone else wrote) imbibing His Word daily.
c) Since Jesus was the Word who became life, let’s focus on Him and trust Him daily.
d) Let’s measure every word we speak against His word. Two things would happen: 1) we would say less (and honor God more!) 2) We would speak more truth in more grace.

Hear More, Say Less

Watchman Nee reminds us that merely learning more Scripture isn't growing it in Christ; being filled more and more with Jesus is growing more in Christ. Most of us who follow Christ need to listen more and talk less -- in our relationship with God and with man. God desires to speak to us, but we grab five minutes of 'quiet time' here and there, listen to Christian radio, catch a snippet of a sermon and actually think we've been with God. We're fooling ourselves. Our earthly relationships require real time. So does our heavenly one.

As we grow in Christ, we yearn, hunger, pant for, more time with Him. When you feel that hunger, satisfy it! Time will work itself out accordingly. He redeems time when we spend it first on Him.

NOW!

Many Christians live with grand visions for the future, always planning, always excited about what God is going to do. How about now? The challenge I face is to do what God wants me to do today. This minute. With the next person I meet, the next call I get, the next minute I live.

If all we do is look forward to what He's going to do -- and there is a place for that, vision is vital and preparation for the future is important -- we may miss the privilege of being Gods hands, feet and mouthpiece here and now. His desire is to live through us minute-by-minute. Let's start NOW.

Think About It . . .

'Lordship Salvation' Is Redundant

Seeking Him with your Whole Heart

“Blessed are those who keep His testimonies, Who seek Him with the whole heart!”

What does it mean to seek Him with our whole heart? Until we come to the end of ourselves, we really won’t do this. We’ll seek the ‘benefits’ of relationship with God, His rub-the-genie effect, so to speak. We’ll seek the fellowship of God’s people, because we find a presumable nicer, cleaner, more acceptable set of companions. We’ll seek some peripheral ‘God stuff,’ but we won’t seek Him with out whole heart until we realize there is something in us that needs to die and that we aren’t able to kill it. We must desire to NOT be like us, and to be like Him, and we must realize that in our own power we don’t stand a chance of this. At that point a person can begin to seek Him with His whole heart. Everything short of that is religious wrappings.

Does Anybody Have Anything Meaningful to Say?

I’m sitting in Panera studying and wi-fi’ing, and there’s a man sitting behind me who is so excited about his favorite thing that he can’t keep his mouth shut. He’s talking to a client about The Eagles. He knows everything about the Eagles. The new album has been out for months, and he is detailing its songs, telling how many it has sold and how that compares to the other mega-bands of the past few generations. He has told her about all the concerts he has attended and the outrageous price he paid for tickets. He has everything the Eagles ever produced. He is probably in his mid-50s, and apparently the one thing he can passionately speak about in his life is The Eagles.

His dialogue (actually, diatribe, as she hasn’t said a thing; he apparently hasn’t noticed that she couldn’t care less about The Eagles) is a commentary on the condition of man in our culture. Most people get excited about what doesn’t matter, and pay little attention to what does. We are a surface society, deep in needs, shallow in substance, pursuing the topical, dying in the inside. What if this man knew Jesus? How could he be part of changing the world if he was talking excitedly about Jesus?

But how about those who know Jesus, and just sit there and engage in the same type of conversation with such a man, never transitioning it to what really matters. What about all of us (I’m guilty!) who don’t speak so excitedly about the most important thing to us? If I could explain about Jesus, the Cross and salvation the way the man behind me can unpack the Eagles, more people would be coming to Christ!

The Eagles can’t save this man. My Jesus has saved me. And it’s secure! The ONLY way that living in eternity (which we are already in) with Jesus is like the Hotel California is that I can check out any time I want, but I can never leave! That’s something worthy of talking about.