Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Prayer is an interesting study. To billions the idea of talking to God seems pointless or even ludicrous. Billions of others consider it perfectly rational for created beings to speak with their Creator and Savior.
Encouraged and commanded to pray, Christians who do so regularly report a wide variety of experiences. These range from nothing at all to answers bordering on the miraculous. While thoughts, feelings and opinions on the subject vary, certain aspects regarding prayer can be discovered fairly simply. Chief among them is the need for it. From the presence of pain and suffering to our ability to hope and dream, humanity's constant desire is to better its condition. Recovering the all but lost art of strategic personal and corporate prayer plays an essential role in achieving this and every goal.
Prayer is the most natural way to respond to God. Childlike in simplicity, lifting our thoughts and feelings towards Heaven expands the soul. Reaching up, we hope to both touch and be touched by the presence of Divine peace and power, forgiveness and love.
To humanity’s credit, we’ve certainly been inventive in our attempts to talk to and listen for God. Buddhist mantras and fasting. Tibetan wheels and bells. Shinto shrines and incense. Hindu temples and beads. Islamic salah and Mecca. Jewish Torah boxes and yamakas. Catholic rosary and saints. Charismatic shoutin’ and dancin’.
Even so, the elephant in the room remains obvious. Prayer is broken. Particularly within Christian circles, this inconvenient truth is rarely spoken. Yet, the fact remains that like a stopped clock, bonafide answers to prayer are occasional at best.
Phillip Yancey’s book entitled, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? notes that when a doctoral student at Princeton asked, “What is left in the world for original dissertation research?” none other than the renowned genius Albert Einstein replied, “Find out about prayer. Someone must find out about prayer.”
So why pray? What if no One's listening? Is there proof God exists and is approachable as the Bible claims? If God's Omniscient, why should we waist our time telling Him what He already knows? Does prayer work? Are there tangible results that make it worth the effort? Answering such questions begin with appreciating that the reasons for prayer are as numerous as its potential benefits. These include, but are not limited to the following:
▪ A reasonable response to the realities and hazards of mankind’s precarious existence.
▪ A desire to know and please God.
▪ To organize and express, as well as work through, our thoughts and feelings.
▪ To seek relief from anxiety and fear.
▪ To obtain Divine help in times of need. For ourselves and family.
▪ To petition and thank God for resource and blessing.
▪ To intercede on the behalf of others.
▪ To understand why we are here.
▪ To comprehend the heavenly vs. hellish eternal consequences of earthly life.
Who can pray is another crucial concern. Thankfully anyone who wants to can. Yet, while not religiously correct to say so, the Bible sets conditions on who can pray so God will hear. See R. A. Torrey's excellent compilation of Scriptures on the subject. QC offers the following prayer summary to help identify methods of prayer. We also hope our Quantum Prayer Series may be of value.
For those interested in engaging in serious prayer, there are several ways to do so. The following are seven modes of prayer. These include:
1. The Prayer of Silence: Designed to clear the mind and acclimatize our souls to the importance and practice of serious prayer. Silence honors and gives God a little equal time. Listening fosters hope regarding such important topics as honesty and humility, genuine and living faith, salvation and discipleship, fellowship and worship.
2. The Prayer of Repentance: Clearly brokenness and repentance are integral aspects of approaching and worshiping Omnity acceptably. Particularly at a time when the quantity and quality of personal and corporate Me-ism and sin are at all time highs.
3. Conversational Prayer: The most common form of prayer taken to a whole new level through growing in discernment and spiritual sensitivity.
4. Contemplative Thanksgiving: Taking the time to thoughtfully give thanks and count our blessings.
5. Prayer of Petition: How and why to recapture the lost art of personal and corporate intercession. Waiting on and wrestling with God. Pressing through to realizing the power of answered prayer. The critical importance of developing a strategic and extensive daily prayer list.
6. Prayer of Complaint: Refusing to take no for an answer. Crying out to God in lament like Jeremiah or bewilderment like Habakkuk. Humbly yet boldly approaching God when life and/or prayer, leave much to be desired. Like Mary’s perfect insistence and the persistent widow Jesus lauded, asking, seeking and knocking until the answer is given.
7. Prayer of Stillness: What to do when every mode has failed to bring the answers we desperately need. See Modern Psalm entitled Be Still.
Another often overlooked question is in regards to levels of prayer. Unfortunately many presume that simply tossing up a prayer now and then should suffice. Serious prayer is more a process than event. Progressing along the path of regular and lengthly prayer is a true reflection of compassion and care, exemplified by the level of our diligent and appropriate response:
- Wishful Thinking: This introductory style of prayer is largely spontaneous. It knows little of Scripture or spiritual experience. Disappointment in this arena accounts for billions prematurely deciding Biblical authority and faith is unreasonable. Thus signaling both the beginning and end of honestly pursuing the answers to life’s ultimate questions.
- Prayer On the Go: The next incremental investment for most of Churchianity might loosely be described as phoning it in. Nearly synonymous with windshield time, it’s basically little more than wishful thinking expressed with slightly more quantity and quality.
- Pausing For Prayer: Hundreds of millions recognize the need to at least treat God with the respect due a stranger. Rather than daydreaming on the run, these pause for at least a moment now and then, pitching a prayer heavenward hoping it will stick. Unfortunately, this level may exemplify, or even exceed the commitment level of the average modern Christian.
- Attaching A Scripture: Those interested enough to admit septs 1-3 rarely work often try increasing their odds by adding a Bible promise. Unfortunately the vast majority of Christians remain basically prayerless, stopping to pray less than ten minutes a day. Adding to our dilemma is massive Biblically illiteracy. The inability to quote, much less correctly understand 10 verses in a row. Most, adding a Scriptural promise to lukewarm prayers, do so with little or no concern as to the corresponding conditions of such passages.
- Occasional Intercession: The next common waypoint along the path of developing a committed prayer life is the occasional investment of 30 minutes or so practicing the art of intercession. When answers are more miss than hit, believers are left with 3 options. (1) Give up: Some go so far as to create mistaken doctrines like cessation to justify spiritual failures. (2) Pretend: The favored choice of hundreds of millions, charismatic or not. (3) Seek God’s Face: The serious study and whole hearted implementation of Scripture.
- If My People: God’s perfect plan for repentance is found in 2 Chronicles 7:14. Those putting this simple algebraic formula into practice soon develop the spiritual insight to become Prophetic Christians on their way to judging all things.
- Scheduled Intercession: Upping the ante can be done individually or collectively. Nevertheless, as with nearly all Christian disciplines, efforts are far more effective when done in concert. Corporate meetings should reflect a quality and quantity of prayer indicative of the difficulties being addressed.
- Sanctification: Devotees interested in learning to pray effectually soon feel the need for growth in radical personal and corporate sanctification and discipleship.
- Pressing In: When prayer still largely goes unanswered, the committed soldier on, doubling down through triple fasting; i.e. food, prayer and good deeds.
- Praying Through: When all is said and done, those refusing to take no for an answer redouble their efforts with semiweekly, if not daily, extended times of prayer. Practicing 1 or more of the 7 prayer modes, they major on being still and waiting on God through the prayer of silence. Such rare men and women give God no rest, day and night, until they and those for whom they pray are demonstrably filled with both the fruit and gifts of the Holy Spirit. They remain committed to travailing in prayer to the point of prevailing with men and circumstances, Satan and God.
Some of QC’s GodBlog articles on prayer include the following:
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