In the next several posts, I want to look at some of the misconceptions that many of us have about prayer. The things that prevent us from praying like we should. And many of these come from my own experience.
I think that, in general, we see prayer very differently from the way God sees it.
We want it to be a “magic button” that we can push to get what we want. Whereas, God wants us to pray so that we can remain close to Him and accomplish what He wants.
We want prayer to be there when we need it. God wants us to pray because we need Him.
We want to be comfortable and not have to spend too much time in prayer or get up too early. God wants prayer-warriors.
We want the easy road. God wants people who can boldly storm the gates of hell.
We want to build the greatest entertainment center in the world. God wants us to build His kingdom.
In Judges 3:1-2, God reveals that He put His people in battle simply for the military training that it would provide and, according to verse 4, to test their obedience. This was a generation that was “soft.” They hadn’t learned the disciplines and skills that come with being in battle and with obeying wholeheartedly. And so He puts them into one just for training. He wants strong warriors.
I believe that it’s the same with prayer. Too many of us are “soft” in the discipline of prayer. We don’t know how because we don’t practice it. We don’t see the power in it because we don’t see the purpose of it. And when the silence comes or we don’t get the answer we want, we think that God doesn’t care about us. And so we give up on Him. Or we question our faith and our worth.
But I think that the times of struggle are His “training ground.” The more that we struggle with our questions about prayer, the more we grow in knowledge about it. The more knowledge we gain, the more we believe in it. The more we believe in it, the more we do it. And the more we do it, the more we impact His kingdom and the spiritual world.
Once we realize the incredible power in prayer and the necessity of it to remain close to God and to get His Will done, we can’t be flippant about it anymore. To do that means that we are choosing to be ineffective Christians with distance between our hearts and God’s.
I think that if Satan can keep us convinced that there is no real need for or power in prayer, that our thoughts are good enough, and that it doesn’t really matter if we pray because God will always do whatever He wants to do anyway, he can keep us ineffectual and weak.
And he loves it when there’s distance between us and God. He loves it when he can get us to worry over things instead of pray over things. Because worry kills us slowly. But prayer and faith lead to his undoing.
But once we begin to take our responsibility to pray seriously, we will see God’s power move on this earth and in the spirit realm in a way we never have before.
Our goal should not be to make our nice, little life more comfortable. It should be to fight for God’s kingdom and righteousness, to make a difference for all of eternity.
We should be living in such a way that when Satan sees us on our knees, he says, “Oh, no! Not them again!”
So let’s see if we can find anything that prevents that from happening, anything that causes us to be soft, non-threatening “prayer worriers” instead of strong, bold “prayer warriors”!
