Imperishable Inheritance

I have admit­tedly, my whole life, had a low view of prayer. I admit­tedly, to this day, have a low view of prayer. It has started to become evi­dent about how impor­tant this facet is to one’s spir­i­tual endeavor in Christ, and it is also evi­dent when it is lack­ing in one’s life. I have started to feel at times as though I am just talk­ing to the wall. It is frus­trat­ing to do some­thing that you know is Bib­li­cal, but yet you are deriv­ing noth­ing from the endeavor. It is times like this that I see the dif­fer­ence between liv­ing reli­giously and liv­ing in the Spirit.

I sit down to a meal and pray in a generic fash­ion. It’s then as though I checked off that bul­let. I pray cor­po­rately for the approval of men, and that is one of the things men­tioned lit­er­ally by Christ as some­thing to not do sev­eral times (cf. Mat 6:7). (My friend Jason Wing wrote a neat arti­cle on seek­ing the approval of men through cor­po­rate prayer.) I admit­tedly rarely pray with the inten­tional thought of, “how can I glo­rify my Father dur­ing this time?”

When I present the Bib­li­cal basis of mis­sions, I often gloss over prayer in the five ways you can imple­ment a world Chris­t­ian lifestyle into your life (I means “mis­sions minded” not “worldly minded”). There is one pas­sage that strikes the cord for me as to how God views prayer and our role in doing it. Jesus exem­pli­fies both His love and com­pas­sion and how prayer is involved in the out­pour­ing of those char­ac­ter­is­tics. If this doesn’t con­vict you on your prayer life, I don’t know what will!

Jesus was going through all the cities and vil­lages, teach­ing in their syn­a­gogues and pro­claim­ing the gospel of the king­dom, and heal­ing every kind of dis­ease and every kind of sick­ness. See­ing the peo­ple, He felt com­pas­sion for them, because they were dis­tressed and dispir­ited like sheep with­out a shep­herd. Then He said to His dis­ci­ples, “The har­vest is plen­ti­ful, but the work­ers are few. “There­fore beseech the Lord of the har­vest to send out work­ers into His har­vest.“
Matthew 9:35–38

I came upon my lower view of prayer a lot from my study both in God’s immutabil­ity and sov­er­eignty. Chris­tians who hold to a reformed under­stand­ing of pre­des­ti­na­tion see the doc­trine as being all inclu­sive. That means, that pre­des­ti­na­tion doesn’t sim­ply refer to elec­tion but also every­thing around see­ing the elec­tion man­i­fest itself (meta­phys­i­cal deter­min­ism). When I debated the Open The­ists who thought strongly that prayer could in fact change God’s mind by con­tort­ing pas­sages such as Moses’ inter­ces­sion for Israel in Exo­dus 32, I became more and more dis­heart­ened at the idea that prayer doesn’t change God’s mind.

Many Chris­tians have strug­gled with the ques­tion, “if God’s unchang­ing and every­thing is set, why should I bother to ask Him for any­thing.” And as I myself think about it I can empathize more and more with this ques­tion. I often tell peo­ple who bring up this ques­tion that pray­ing is sim­ply the act of obe­di­ence and some­thing we have the priv­i­lege to do. I try and con­vey the thought that if you’re wor­ried about God chang­ing for you then you have your desires in the wrong place. Jesus even under­stood this idea. Despite His oncom­ing suf­fer­ing, He still asked His Father to relieve Him of the suffering.

Then Jesus came with them to a place called Geth­se­mane, and said to His dis­ci­ples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and dis­tressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.” And He went a lit­tle beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, say­ing, “My Father, if it is pos­si­ble, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.“
Matthew 26:36–39

This is a pow­er­ful pas­sage, because we see Jesus’ human nature act out of true fear and dis­tress. But what is inter­est­ing is that even in His fear He did not sin (1 Pet 1:21–22). He under­stood that His request would not be met, and He exem­pli­fied His under­stand­ing of His nec­es­sary sub­mis­sion to accom­plish redemp­tion when He said, “…yet not as I will, but as you will.” He rein­forces this by say­ing shortly after the first prayer:

He went away again a sec­ond time and prayed, say­ing, “My Father, if this can­not pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done.“
Matthew 26:42

I think I, and all of us, can learn much from Jesus’ exam­ple in this pas­sage. I need to remem­ber that prayer at first should be about our com­plete sub­mis­sion to God. It is in this under­stand­ing He grants under­stand­ing of what must take place for His Name (Mat 6:9; cf. Luk 11:12). It is time for me to build a healthy view of prayer. I don’t know much, but I do know (on yes, expe­ri­en­tial evi­dence) that when we turn to Him and delight in His Name and purpose—He pro­vides com­fort and rest.