Today, whilst going for a run, I noticed that there has been a shift in the way I ask God for things in the past year or two.   It’s a relatively subtle change, but one that I believe has been important in my life and in my relationship with Christ.

In the past, I typically would seek wisdom from God in one way:  ”God, please show me what to do in this situation. Please make it clear so that I will know the right thing to do.”  Or I might say “God, if this is Your will, please open the doors. If it isn’t, please close them.”  Something like that.  Very familiar…very common.

What I noticed this afternoon is that I very seldom pray like this anymore.

Experience has taught me that God is rarely going to tell me what to do before I do it.  He’s rarely going to give me a sign or impression that will give me 100% confidence in a course of action.  More likely, He will equip me for these things in small ways that sometimes are easily missed and often unseen when I am not looking for them.  These small nudges come in a million different forms: people, scripture, circumstances, feelings, ad infinitum.  The result is my continued sanctification (which is God’s will and promise for us all).

I tried to think of an analogy for this and I will admit I did not come up with anything perfectly fitting.  My first instinct is that this is like a path throught the forest that only He can see.  That he keeps me in the clear places between the dense forest on each side, even though I can’t see the big picture. I can’t see where the path is going.

Another example I thought of is the way a vine grows towards the sun. It never sees a plan or gets specific instructions, but its environment results in a very distinct change in the direction of its growth.  I thin it’s a bit like this with us.

The point is this:  God is sovereign.  He knows all, sees all, and cares for all.  He is the guarantor of my life. The non-refundable deposit for my sanctification, so to speak.  If this is true, if I can trust God with the outcome, I have no need to know specifics.  I don’t need to pray for a map when the very universe I have the privilige of living in exists and progresses at the discretion of God and God alone.  He has a million ways to lead me in His will and it seems presumptuous to ask for only one.

I think I used to pray like this because it left me in control in someway.  It was a bit like telling God “I’ll do what you want to do if you send me the instructions.”

Now I pray “God, give me wisdom. Help me to see truth instead of lies. Help me to seek light instead of dark. Guide me in Your paths. May the outcome bring glory to You.”

This, at least in my case, helps me remember that I am small and He is big.  That His ways are higher than mine.  That my plans are so short sighted and laughable next to His.

“But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” - 2 Corinthians 12:9

I have a confession to make.  Sometimes I pray for things so that I can get credit for having prayed for them.

I know. It’s bad.  Fortunately this isn’t really my primary motivation; it’s a sneaking temptation that invades my thoughts gradually. It starts out with a pure intention: I have a need/desire/something that concerns me and I begin to pray about it.  I may even recruit others to pray with me about it.

As I continue to pray about it over days or weeks (depending how long my attention span lasts) my thoughts begin to move towards anticipation.  ”With as much prayer as I have given this, God will have to answer my prayer.”  As nonsensical as this thought is, the subsequent thought is worse: “How awesome will I look when I am able to share this story of what God did because of my faithfulness in prayer.”  With this thought, mental images of me “humbly” relaying the details of God’s generousity and my perserverance flood my brain.

And just like that, my supplication becomes a self-glorifying venture. It is no longer a humble request of mighty God, but a means to a prideful end.  It is no longer about God’s glory but my own.

How sad it is that the means of righteousness can be so easily perverted to be the means of sin!

The truth is, we have probably all seen this particular temptation acted out many times before.  We’ve heard stories of men who prayed every day for 7 years and how God miraculously came to their aid–because of the prayers of a great man/woman. We’ve seen graphs of unthinkable monatary success with God given a footnote of credit.  We’ve heard people say “I know if I hadn’t prayed for my husband that night he would have died.”

Don’t get me wrong: there is nothing wrong with telling of God’s great works, we just have to be careful we aren’t using God’s generousity on our behalf as a means of self-promotion.

Paul had more to boast of than anyone but he chose to boast in what God did despite him, not because of him.  He said he would boast of nothing but Jesus.  He was thankful for anything that kept him from being able to take credit.

Recently I found myself thinking in just this way.  I simply had to repent and say “God, if you give me anything may it always be in spite of my best intentions. May I be as a blind man who occassionally stumbles into the light by your grace. May I never be able to take credit for Your works.”

I would much rather be a fool that God blesses anyway than a self-described wise man who knows just what to ask for.

“Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him”
- Matthew 6:8

“The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing;
he frustrates the plans of the peoples.
The counsel of the Lord stands forever,
the plans of his heart to all generations.”
- Psalm 33:10-11

Growing up, the way I heard prayer talked about in churches and Bible studies sounded a lot like an economics lesson. It went something like this:

1. Prayer is powerful.
2. The more faith you have, the more powerful prayer is.
3. Pray to God with as much faith as possible to increase the chances your prayer will be answered.

Now, granted, I never heard it spelled out that…terribly. But, the implications and the way it shaped my thinking were the same: Get as much faith as you can and spend it at the God store.

In reality, prayer is nothing like economics.  Without delving into the huge discussions of each and every aspect of this subject, I’m going to list the fundamental, Biblical ideas about God and prayer and then focus on addressing the seeming paradox that inevitably surfaces.

Let’s begin:

1. Prayer is essential to the life of a believer.
2. God is sovereign; He is in control. Nothing can impede his purposes. (See above)
3. God is outside of time and has unlimited knowledge of what happens in time.
4. When we pray, God knows what we will ask before we ask it. (See above)
5. God also knows what He will do in response to our prayers.
6. If our prayers are not in alignment with God’s will, He will not answer them. (See James 4)

What can we conclude from these six tenets? We can conclude that because God is sovereign, because He is in control, the future is for all intents and purposes set. It can’t be altered by Satan, sin, demons, us, or even our prayers.

Our prayers do not alter the future. To say they do suggests that time is unfolding in a certain way and that God alters things on our behalf in a way they otherwise wouldn’t have unfolded.  It suggests that He waits to hear our requests, carefully considers their merit, and then acts. It’s nonsensical when we consider God’s sovereignty and omniscience.

This might be hard to reconcile with the way you’ve typically heard prayer preached, but, I firmly believe that all of these things.

So, that leaves us with the question I opened with: Why pray?

Simply put, prayer is the means by which God acts in our lives and in the world. Just as God has chosen to save others through our testimony, God acts through our prayers.

We aren’t responsible for the fact that God knows the future and we don’t. We pray not knowing the future, trusting God with the future.

At its simplest level, prayer is talking to our Father. When we start looking at it as a tool for manipulating future results instead of a way to work in concert with God’s plan, we essentially alter the true nature of prayer.

As I have talked with others about this subject, many questions have come up:

Why does the Bible seem to give us cause/effect examples of prayer? Why does Jesus say that the more faith we have, the more our prayers will accomplish? Didn’t Hezekiah pray for more life and God grant it?

For the first, I would say that the Bible presents a cause and effect view of prayer because that is how we experience it. God doesn’t burden us with the paradoxical nature of prayer, He simply gives us prayer and tells us it is important and tells us to pray and gives us examples of what He does in response to those prayers.  We can’t adjust God to match our misconceptions.

For the second, I would answer it similar to the first, with this alteration: The more faith we have, the more aware of God’s master plan we will be, and the more trust we will put in God to handle the future the way He knows best.  Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane “If there is any way that this cup can be taken from me ” finishing with “not My will but Thine”. If faith were a currency by which God is obligated to act, isn’t it safe to say Jesus, in His human form, had more faith than any man before Him? Jesus’ faith compelled Him to seek His Father’s will over His will.

As far as Hezekiah, there again we see an object lesson where God presents a person with a situation, knowing the outcome but testing their faith by it.  It may seem that God extended Hezekiah’s life and that this wasn’t part of the original plan, but I don’t think it’s a reasonable assumption.  Genesis speaks of God “repenting” that He made man, implying that God didn’t realize how much pain man would cause and wished He could change His decision. This passage, like the Genesis one, must be held in the light of everything else we know about God.

There is only a paradox if we allow ourselves to get hung up on one aspect of prayer, and hold that up against and above the other things we know to be true about God.

So, how would we think about prayer?

• We should pray, knowing that we don’t know the future, and that God does.
• We should pray knowing that God has a plan for all generations and that plan cannot be impeded.
• We should pray honestly, recognizing that it is possible what we want is not part of God’s will.
• We should pray remembering the importance of prayer as a (if not the) central way God acts in our lives and the world.
• We should embrace the blessing and gift of prayer and the way it enriches our relationship with our Heavenly Father.