Discipleship 101
a beginner's guide to
Christianity
Chapter 12
Responding to Jesus with prayer
How do we respond to the risen Jesus? The book of Hebrews tells us:
Since
Jesus has risen into heaven as our great high priest, then we can have
confidence to enter God's presence, and because of that, we should enter
his presence (Hebrews
10:19-22).
"Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the
heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess....
Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive
mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need" (Hebrews
4:14-16). In other words, since Jesus has risen from the dead, we should pray,
and we should do it with
confidence.
The risen Jesus makes a difference in our lives through
prayer. Because he is now in heaven, we have the guarantee that our prayers
will be heard. We pray "in Jesus' name" — he intercedes for us, prays
for us! God listens to us just as well as he listens to Jesus himself.
There are many misconceptions about prayer. The following article
sheds more light on what prayer is, and how we pray.
Prayer: a cry for help
Some people make prayer sound
like a duty, as a work that faithful Christians must perform. Some make it sound like we
ought to pray seven times a day, or three times a day, or all night long, or rise before
dawn, or spend at least two hours every day, following the example of this or that famous
person.
I think Christians should pray not as a duty, but out of
need. After
all, prayers are requests. There are no biblical commands for us to pray at certain times
or in certain ways. We are not told to follow Jesus’ example in praying all night, or
Daniel’s example of facing Jerusalem.
But Scripture everywhere assumes that God’s people
do pray. We are
not told to pray for specific amounts of time, but all the time (1 Thessalonians 5:17; Ephesians
6:18). We are not told to kneel or stand or lie on the floor when we pray. Rather, we are
told to do everything while praying (Philippians 4:6).
Why so much prayer?
Prayer is, in its simplest sense, a request. The most common Hebrew and
Greek words for prayer mean "ask." Whenever we ask God for anything, we are
praying—and it is right that we ask. Paul told the Philippians to ask for whatever
they wanted (Philippians 4:6).
That is why we should pray: We are to ask God for the things we need.
The better we know ourselves, the more we will know that we are incredibly needy people.
Of ourselves, we can do nothing. If we want to accomplish anything worthwhile, we must
seek God’s help. We must depend on him. Prayer is a cry for help. And since our needs never end, our prayers
should never cease.
Rely on God
Self-reliance is sin. It is arrogant for us tiny creatures to think
that we can do whatever we want, that we can control our own destinies, that we can decide
for ourselves what is right and what is wrong. The truth is that humans do not have the
wisdom or the power. The universe exists only because Christ is upholding it by the word
of his power (Hebrews 1:3). We exist only because our Creator supplies our needs (Acts
14:17).
Yet (I speak from experience) even believers sometimes forget about our
minute-by-minute need for God, and we may go through the day with scarcely a thought,
scarcely a thanks for what God is doing for us. He is upholding us even as we ignore him.
Even when we face problems, we sometimes struggle on and on, trying to
solve the problems with our own strength, with our own strategies, instead of realizing
that needs and desires should be shared with God in prayer (Philippians 4:6). We act as if
everything depends on us, when everything actually depends on God. He knows our needs, and
he wants us to trust him.
Thankfully, the Holy Spirit intercedes for us, especially when we are
too unthinking to ask for ourselves (Romans 8:26-27). The Holy Spirit stands in the gap and
helps us in ways that we do not know. So when we fail to pray constantly, the Holy Spirit
steps in. Even so, we cannot turn all prayer over to the Holy Spirit and let him do all
the talking while we go through life unawares.
We need to pray. We will be happier, less stressed, more fulfilled, if
we keep in mind that we live in the presence of God, that in him we live and move and have
our being (Acts 17:28). The more we are aware of God, the better our understanding of life
will be, for God is the frame of reference that we need. When we see life in his context,
we see it accurately.
God is not a genie who grants our every wish. That is
because we often do not understand what we really need. We may pray for escape from a
trial, but God is using that trial to teach us something far more important than temporary
comfort. We may pray for a neighbor to come to Christ (and we should have that
desire), but God knows this may not be the right time. God may want us to be more involved
in the person’s life.
Frankly, there are so many things wrong with this world that we should
have many desires, for ourselves, for our churches and for this world. We have much to
pray about.
Prayer is our cry for help. In prayer, we admit that we are not
self-sufficient, that we cannot handle everything on our own. In prayer, we acknowledge a
relationship between God and us, a relationship in which God has promised to provide our
needs and to bless us in ways he knows are best. Prayer is an act of worship, for it
acknowledges that God has power and that he is dependable.
Thanks
God supplies our needs, and it is appropriate for us to thank him for
doing so. Every breath we take is a gift from him. All the beauty in nature is a gift from
him. The wonderful variety of sights, sounds, smells and textures is a gift from him. Our
conversations with God should include thanks as well as requests. This is a form
of praise, to acknowledge that he is the giver of every good thing.
As we thank God, we remind ourselves of our place in the
universe—a place of great honor as a target of God’s affection, and a place of
dependence on his graciousness. Giving thanks is a way to know who we are and why we
exist; it reminds us that the universe functions only through his gift.
Some may say: "I already know that. Why do I have to keep saying
it?" I think it is only through saying it that we are really mindful of it; it is too
easy for us to go through the day without really being aware that life functions best if
we remember it as a gift. This is supported by the biblical commands for us to be
thankful, and to continually give thanks to God in our prayers (1 Thessalonians 5:17-18).
The Bible similarly tells us to
pray with persistence, giving the same request again and again. We know by faith
that God heard us the first time, and that he knows our earnestness even without
our persistence, so I conclude that his command for our persistence is really
for our own good. We need to tell ourselves again and again what the desires of
our heart are, and that we trust God with them.
This does not mean that prayer is just a means of talking to ourselves,
or of reminding ourselves of abstract truths. No, Scripture assures us that prayer is a
genuine conversation with God. Our requests really go to heaven, and are really heard and
answered by God. Our thanks really go to God; we must see him in the picture.
Often, it is in prayer that God speaks to us, when we grow in our understanding
of what he wants us to think or do.
We have never-ending thanks for what God does for us day to day, thanks
for the promises he has made for our future, and thanks for what he has already done in
Christ to ensure that future. Our thankfulness for Jesus Christ turns naturally to dedicating
ourselves to doing God’s will. We eagerly want to respond with faithful allegiance
to one who loves us so much.
Our existence, our joy, our pleasures, our sanity, are all dependent on
God’s day-to-day favor toward us through Jesus Christ. We have much to be thankful
for—indeed, everything we have and ever hope to have is a gift for which we need to
be thankful.
Our thanks should include our appreciation for who God is, and here our
prayers blend thanks and praise. We exalt his power, his wisdom, his mercy, the beauty of
his love. We praise him for who he is, not just for what he gives us, for in actuality, he
gives us himself.
My cry for help
Finally, my friends, I ask you to pray for your local church. It takes
God’s strength for your congregation to make a difference for the kingdom in your
community. You need divine help to work together and to tackle the impossible. You need to
pray. Pray for your local leaders, too. Those who lead worship music need
divine blessing. Those who speak should speak the words of God (1 Peter 4:11), and this
cannot be done from human wisdom.
And pray for me, too. Even the most talented human could not do the
work God sets before me. I need divine help, and I pray for it, and I receive it. And just
as Paul asked his churches to pray for him (Colossians 4:2-3, etc.), I ask you to pray for me,
too. The difficulties I face personally, and the difficulties I face in serving the
church, mean that I need God’s help. We all need help. We all need to pray.
Joseph Tkach
To
the next article in this series:
The Holy Spirit |
