That Is Why We Pray

 

There is a God out there.  That is why we pray.

In awe or despair, we can’t help but cry out, “Oh, God!”  We need Him.

And when it comes down to it, that is why we pray.  He is there, waiting for us to realize that.

By simply praying, we are changed.  We cannot help but be made new, one prayer, one cry of the heart, one word at a time.

When we pray, life begins to look very different.  We remain in the same place, but with a new heart.  Even in those really difficult, dark, scary places, through prayer, God empowers us to walk towards the light.  We walk through the darkness, but we need not dwell there.  He is bringing us to another dimension in Him.

God whispers for us to enter in.  The porch light is on, the door not just unlocked but wide open, the coffee already brewing.  In prayer, there are no tricks of the trade, no secret ways, no magic words to gain entrance or His favor. We already have His attention. We don’t need to earn anything, nor need to perform, nor to be perfect, but just to come to Him.

The point is not getting results or self-conceived outcomes, but our relationship with Him.  Answers to prayer are not intended to be trophies, nor idols, on our shelf.

Prayer is also not defined by lists with columns to check off answered and not answered.  God is always working and His responses cannot be contained by a simple yes and no, but spread so far over generations that we cannot exactly know who prayed, or who was moved to pray, perhaps hundreds of years ago wandering in their own wilderness.  Prayer is not bound by time as we know it, but released into eternity.  We pray not knowing how, nor where, nor who will be impacted by it.

There is a God not just out there, but right here. 

“Draw near to me, hear this:  From the beginning I have not spoken in secret, from the time it came to be I have been there.”  Isaiah 48. 16

That is why we pray.

We are seen. We are heard. We are loved.

God wants us not just to grasp that, nor just believe that, but to practice that reality.

For an assignment, I have spent the past fifty-two weeks searching and researching prayer, and posting about it.  I do not now just view prayer differently, but I am praying differently.

I did not learn something more about prayer, but God changing me.  I have not come to the end of that. 

I never will.

Mark Those People

Every once in a while, God places ordinary people on our paths who live extraordinary lives of faith.   The first thing we notice about these “heroes of the faith” is that they know they are only ordinary people.  The difference about them is in what they love, the choices they make, the patterns and habits and practices that mold them.

They are not just “special people,” born with extraordinary abilities and giftedness.  But they make choices and are willing to respond differently.

Mark the faithful ones.  Psalm 37. 37   Watch carefully what they do.  How do they strengthen themselves spiritually? 

How would that look in our own everyday lives?

Tim Keller was one of those people.  He connected the dots between God’s Word and prayer as if his life depended on it.  Because it did.  He would be the first person to admit that.

For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us.  We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on You.  2 Chronicles 20.12

One of Keller’s spiritual secrets is no secret.  For about the past 20 years, he read through the book of Psalms every month.   In what sounds like an impossible venture, Keller was only following a morning and evening schedule first published in 1549 in The Book of Common Prayer.  Keller followed the schedule, covering about five psalms a day, morning and night, the bookends of his day.

…but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on His law He meditates day and night.  Psalm 1.2

Keller knew what it was doing to him.  God’s Word was shaping him.  Not just memorizing or praying the psalms, but his own prayers were engraved by the psalms. 

In a podcast, Keller noted that in the Psalms, we find ways to express our particular emotions before God.  “In the Psalms, you have every possible situation.  The more you read the Psalms, the more you will know how to pray.”

Through the decades, Keller experienced that impact on his life.  “When the psalms are coming through 150 every 30 days, there are going to be psalms that grab you….When I feel anxiety, I keep my psalms up and my exercise up,” said Keller in an interview eight months ago.   

One hundred fifty psalms every 30 days – a few in the morning, a few at night -- can be accomplished in less time than checking your Instagram account.  What is strengthening us?  What is lulling us into the mundane?  What is changing what we pray, how we pray, altering the patterns of our lives, and being changed by it?

Mark those faithful ones.  What has shaped them?  What is molding us?

 

How differently would we pray?  How differently would we live?

 

While You Were Sleeping

In the 1995 movie While You Were Sleeping, outward circumstances radically change the lives of a single woman and a multi-generational family in about a week’s time.  As the result of an accident, one of the main characters spends most of the movie in a hospital bed unaware of the life-changing shifts in his life and those around him, while he lies in a coma.

And while we are sleeping, we too are mostly unaware of the dramatic inward changes taking place in us.  We are not just prone and inactive.  During the night shift, our bodies go into hyper-drive, restoring brain function, reorganizing nerve cells, removing toxic waste, repairing cells, restoring energy, and releasing hormones and proteins.  We awake in the morning a little different than when we went to sleep, even though we may not be aware of most of the changes.  We need sleep to survive, for our well-being, and to function at our best.  Something very significant is going on in our bodies and our brains, far beyond feeling rested or not, and not as obvious as bags under our eyes.

And what about the underlying profound changes that take place while we are praying? 

To say that praying does not have a direct impact in us discredits what it is all about.  It is not just about taking turns speaking and listening to God, but about His forming and transforming, dealing with the higher order of things, healing of the soul, sharpening of our vision, recognizing our disordered loves, and realizing of who God is. 

While we are praying, something very significant is going on in our hearts and souls.

Because we pray, we think about things from a new perspective, see deeply, respond with a newly implanted hearts, approach the hard stuff and even the favorable in unexpected ways, and navigate old paths with fresh eyes, because we have come before the Almighty.  We do not just behave differently, but our hearts and minds are altered in the process, because we pray.

We open our eyes and move into our day, our difficulties all around us, our circumstances looming before us, and we realize, It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. Galatians 2. 20

In her book Amazing Love,  Corrie ten Boom points out, Where there is such prevailing prayer something is bound to happen.

It is not just about what we are praying but while we are praying:

God rearranges every cell in our body,

Restores our energy,

Works His goodness into the fabric of our days,

Changes our wardrobes,

Takes out the trash,

Opens the curtains and unlocks the doors,

Seeps His Spirit into the cracks,

Gives us hope for now and next,

Asserts His authority over our fears – both real and imagined,

Breaks up the hard ground, sows His Word, nurtures the fruit,

Writes His name over us in indelible ink –we are His,

Forgives our rebellions and softens our hearts of stone,

Sings victory songs over us,

Heals our wounds,

Appoints and anoints our steps,

And makes all things new.

We emerge a little bit different than before we prayed.  Stuff comes to the surface that draws us into intimacy with Him.  God reveals Himself in unexpected ways.

From the first Dear Lord to the final Amen, we are being changed while we pray, even though we may not be aware of the radical alterations.  We bring our cares and concerns and praises to God in prayer.   We offer them up and leave them at His feet.  We can’t help but be changed by coming before Him.   

 

He leads me besides the still waters.

He restores my soul.

                    Psalm 23. 2-3