A Low View of Prayer

There is a great mystery in prayer. The Scriptures clearly declare that God answers prayer, and not just in a perfunctory way when we happen to stumble upon His will. And when some suggest that God orchestrates everything and prayer is just an exercise and cannot change anything but can only align itself with what God is already decided, well that emasculates the essence of prayer. That is not to say that God is not sovereign or that He jumps at our every whim, but it is clear that in the mystery of prayer God glorifies Himself when He listens and acts to our requests. It is simplistic but true, God always says yes, no, or wait. The low view of prayer is to suggest that our requests are nothing more than an attempt to voice what already has been decreed without regard to any of our requests.

There are two extremes to theology is this issue. One such extreme is called “open theology” which ridiculously suggests that God Himself doe not know the future. Of course that is preposterous. The other extreme is Calvinism or what I call “closed theology”. That theology suggests that God not only knows the future, but He has orchestrated and decreed everything that will happen. That also is preposterous. But we know from the Scriptures that God listens to and acts upon the prayers of His righteous people.

“You have not because you ask not” is just one of scores of Scriptures that directly link our prayers to God’s intervention.

But do not discount the immeasurable honor just to communicate with God and the way we are changed just by residing in His glorious presence. That alone would be the ultimate gift. But somehow and some way God has mysteriously incorporated us into the fabric of His will and given us the command to obey Him and the ability to pray with faith and scriptural foundation. Of course God is sovereign over all of it, but divine sovereignty must not exclude any and all human interaction which is meaningful and substantive.

We are more than just created marionettes that dance at the whim of the Creator for His entertainment like a king surrounded by court jesters. The life of a disciple is more than just a card in a cosmic game of divine solitaire. The relationship between God’s sovereignty and man’s will always be a mystery, however it is still a reality. We dare not discard prayer as just a perfunctory exercise that like cotton candy enters the mouth with a promise of fullness but immediately reveals its hollow center. Prayer is serious business, and prayer that touches the heart of God is spiritual labor that cannot be allocated to a multi-task practice.

And therein lies the heart of the matter. Are we willing to spend significant time in prayer, time that we normally use for other pressing issues? Are we willing to lose sleep while we pray? Are we willing to refuse food in order to pray? If prayer changes nothing than of course no one would feel the need for such sacrifice, but if prayer is more than just a rhetorical duty, then perhaps we all must take a fresh and more penetrating look at our prayer lives.

Jn.15:5 - I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing."

What a profound and revealing verse of Scripture. If we can do nothing without Christ, than how are we sure we are operating inside His power and not our own? There is a direct and proportional relationship between how much power is of the flesh and how much power is of Christ with the defining factor being how much we pray. And yet most believers and most churches have many activities and outreaches with proportionately very little prayer. Most of our children have never seen or attended an all night prayer meeting, to say nothing of that on a regular basis.

How many children have opened their parents bedroom door to find one or both of them on their knees seeking Christ? How many have witnessed their parents refusing food for a day or more in order to crucify their flesh and receive His power in prayer? Have they ever seen their pastor on his face before God in weeping and brokenness as he intercedes for the souls of the lost? Maybe they have seen a church call for fasting and prayer for a building program, but that my friends is an affront to Almighty God. Precious souls hang in the balance and the church is on autopilot with their activities and programs.

The prayer closets have been abandoned and the power is gone, but like Samson we do not even realize it. The church has placed her faith in talk show hosts and political figures and forms of governments while the real enemy has laid waste to her relationship with the Risen Christ. She worships a doctrinal Christ and is content with the redundant and predictable expressions of Christianity which are nothing more than a form of godliness but void of the promise of spiritual power. And still the smiles and jokes sustain the average Sunday morning gathering which includes the powerless sermons which change no one.

Rarely does a believer travel to the morning gathering expecting to be changed at all. In fact, the same person who came last week enters the building this week by spending more time dressing up his body than in authentic prayer. And if the church will not even rise early on Sunday to seek and worship Christ, what can we expect on Monday through Saturday. Do I paint a negative and bleak picture of the situation? Oh, but the question you must ask is do I paint an accurate depiction of the western practice of Christianity? Jesus Himself proclaimed that His house should be a house of prayer, and yet the church does everything but pray. Have you ever entered the gathering and heard the pastor call the church to an entire service of prayer? But we will have concerts and pageants and guest speakers and youth days and many other designated days. Many churches will even have entire services in appreciation and loyalty to America, but never an entire service devoted to praying. The closest we get is a four part series ON prayer, but even among those four parts there will not be one Sunday morning where the entire church fall before God IN prayer. Not one.

There is a pervasive low view of prayer in the western church regardless of our doctrinal assertions and our bellicose rhetoric. Until that changes, today will be yesterday and tomorrow will be as today. Perhaps that is what quenches your thirst. I do not believe God is pleased with it, and He deserves more than the monstrosity that we have created and called “the church of Jesus Christ”. It is a fake Rolex to be sure. If we had the same love for prayer as we have for doctrine and music then revival would have already swept the country!