Oy vey! What a list we have going! Now, where were we?
God is omniscient. He knows what I’m going to pray before I even think it, much less say it.
True. You’re spot on. But this reminds me of that old joke about the wife who complained to her husband on their fiftieth anniversary, “Why don’t you ever tell me you love me?” Her husband answered, “I told you the day I married you. Nothing’s changed. If it does, I’ll let you know.” Paging Dr. Phil. We’ve found your next guest for your show.
Do you know why God created humans in the first place? I mean, stop and think about it for a moment. He’s God. He can have or create anything in the heavens He wants. I’m sure the holy refrigerator is packed solid with cartons of Blue Bell ice cream—times a million. All those amazing flavor combinations minus the calories and fat grams, of course. After all, we are talking about heaven here, amen? Then again, heaven is so far beyond our comprehension that to yearn for earthly things like ice cream is kind of silly. Even Blue Bell’s Banana Pudding ice cream or Blackberry Cobbler ice cream probably tastes bland in comparison to the phenomenal foods that await us in heaven. There will be food in heaven, right? Please tell me there will be food. Anyone?
Here’s the point. God needs only to think it, and anything He needs and wants is at His disposal. So He certainly didn’t need us, which can only mean one thing: He must have wanted us. Why? I did a quick study of the scriptures on that exact question. Oddly enough—wannabe Bible scholar that I am—I didn’t find an exact answer to that question. But Genesis 2:7 tells us: “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.” Unlike the rest of His creation, God gave humans a living soul. That much we know.
Then, in Genesis 2:18, we read: “The LORD God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’” Whoa, did you catch that? Right there, we can sneak a glimpse into God’s heart. He’s concerned that Adam would be too lonely without someone to relate to. He made Adam, after all. He knew that there was a vacuum in Adam’s heart without a companion, someone to do life with. Could it be this is our clue revealing God’s omniscient awareness of our need for relationship?
You know the rest of the story. Knowing Adam would be freaked if God just reached down and took a rib from his side (ouch?), the Creator introduced the first recorded use of anesthesia and BAM! He knocked Adam out, sending him into a deep sleep.
Verse 22 says, “Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.” I don’t know about you, but I’m guessing Adam had the shock of his lifetime when he woke up and took a look at Eve. “Whoa! Who are you, and what did you do with my rib?” Actually, I’m guessing it was probably more like, “Whoa, baby! Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Can’t you just see the two of them checking each other out? (Am I the only one blushing here?) Somehow I think Adam was ridiculously happy to see Eve, and vice versa, don’t you? And they didn’t even know what was in store for them. They just knew it was nice not to be alone.
The point is, God understands our desire for companionship. How so? It’s not that big a leap to realize He understands that desire because He above all has that same desire! If you read ahead in Genesis 3:8, it says, “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as He was walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” God took a walk in the garden, knowing Adam and Eve were there. He wanted to be with them! Unfortunately, they’d just bitten off more than they could chew (so to speak) and committed the sin that would affect all of humankind throughout the rest of history (Genesis 2:16-17). So what did they do? They ran off and hid. Like God couldn’t find them? Adam. Eve. What were you thinking?
It was that choice that got them in trouble. Yes, God could have created robotrons, automatically wired to be perfect, make no mistakes, and readily equipped to be in a relationship with Him. But that would never do. God wanted us to want that relationship of our own free will. So He gave us a choice: either to follow Him and have a personal relationship with Him, or to reject Him.
Scottish-born minister and teacher Oswald Chambers put it this way:
The most important aspect of Christianity is not the work we do, but the relationship we maintain and the surrounding influence and qualities produced by that relationship.1
How’s that for a big picture? Merely by making that faith choice to follow Him, each one of us have the astounding opportunity to become a vessel of His love to the world around us. Are you getting this? Do you realize the magnitude of your relationship with God? Probably not. Because if we truly got it at the very core of our being, we’d have no problem understanding the depth of the relationship God offers to us and we would run with it. My question to you is this: What’s keeping you from running with it? Hmm?
So you prayed for a pony and didn’t get one, proving once and for all that prayer is a waste of time.
Maybe yours wasn’t a prayer for a pony; but more than likely, at some point in your life you’ve prayed for something you didn’t get. My pastor, Pete Wilson, gave a message on prayer, specifically citing this idea many of us have that prayer is a kind of transaction. Beside him on the platform, an object the size of a refrigerator stood cloaked beneath a black cover. He said, “Most of us have reduced prayer down to a transaction. A way to manipulate what we want. A vending machine.”2 At that point, he yanked off the cover revealing a large vending machine, loaded with all kinds of snacks. He inserted some coins and pushed the button for peanut M&Ms (smart man, my pastor). Nothing happened. He hit the machine a couple of times, tried to rock it. Nothing.
He continued. “Most of the time when we go to God, it’s because we want something. If we get what we want, we turn and walk off, satisfied. If we don’t get what we want, we get frustrated; we kick the machine and blame God for not answering our request.”3
Pete warned that this “transaction” view of prayer will always disappoint us because at the root of it, we think it’s all about us.4 But prayer is so much more than giving God a list of our wants and needs or, in some cases, our demands. Prayer is communication. It’s talking and listening.
Let’s look at another Oswald Chambers quote.
“Your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him” (Matthew 6:8). Then why should we ask? The point of prayer is not to get answers from God, but to have perfect and complete oneness with Him. If we pray only because we want answers, we will become irritated and angry with God. We receive an answer every time we pray, but it does not always come in the way we expect, and our spiritual irritation shows our refusal to identify ourselves truly with our Lord in prayer. We are not here to prove that God answers prayer, but to be living trophies of God’s grace.5
“To have perfect and complete oneness with Him.” I love that. Can you even imagine what our lives would be like if we aspired to that kind of oneness with God? How often have we settled for mediocrity because we’ve never really understood this basic truth that prayer is communication? How many times have we shunned God because our M&Ms didn’t drop down after we inserted our coins?
Let’s dig even deeper. If you were handed a printed transcript of all your prayers to God over the last week or month or even a year, what would it look like? Chances are it would be a repetitive list of give me this, give me that, gimme-gimme-gimme. When I think about the times I’ve been stuck in these “gimme” prayers, I can actually imagine the expression on Jesus’ face as I blab on and on about gimme-this and gimme-that. I can see Him rolling his eyes, unsuccessfully stifling a yawn as He shakes His head. Finally He drops His head back and closes His eyes.
I’m sure He has way more patience than that. But by now you know I’m a visual person. It helps me to picture Him that way when I get carried away with myself. And face it. When we spend our whole prayer time uttering nothing more than a long laundry list of gimmes, we sound like a bunch of spoiled brats, don’t we? Guess what? We
are. But we’re hardly alone. Most of us probably have similar if not identical transcripts because we’ve never moved beyond our childish motives.
The fact is, God always answers our prayers. He just doesn’t necessarily answer them the way we expect them. My husband always speaks of God’s perspective toward our lives using the illustration of a parade. If we’re riding along the parade route, we can see what’s just ahead of us and what’s just behind us. That’s it. But the TV reporter way up in the helicopter sees the route from start to finish. And that’s how God sees our life’s journey. He’s got the view from the Holy Blimp. He can see what lies in the path directly ahead of us and waaaaaay beyond. So when we pray, He answers each prayer with our best long-term interest in mind. He may say no, He might say yes, or He may tell us to hold our horses and wait. Our challenge is to accept his response and trust Him— completely.
Oh, and one more thing. About that prayer for world peace? God gave us a roadmap for that long, long ago. It’s called the Ten Commandments. Check out Exodus, chapter 20. That about covers it.
I can never stay focused. My mind wanders. I figure that’s an insult to God, so I’m better off if I don’t pray at all.
Ah, a case of PADD. Prayer Attention Deficit Disorder. Happens to all of us, my friend. But rather than give up, get help. Get organized! I promise if you’ll make the effort to rein in that mind of yours, even for just a few minutes each day, you’ll start to see a difference. In Chapter 7 I’ll give you some specific tools that will help tremendously. But for now, let me share my favorite verse in the Bible. It’s my life’s verse. Are you ready for this? “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you” ( James 4:8, NKJV).
Stop right there. Read it again. Can you hear God calling out to you in those eleven words? Can you even comprehend the promise He’s offering you? Unlike the empty promises and meaningless words of today’s culture, God doesn’t mince words or spill out fluff. He is good to His word. And He’s reaching out to you. He’s promising to respond personally if you’ll only draw near to Him.
I’ve loved that verse for over twenty years, and it still gives me goose bumps whenever I think about it. Here’s another verse along the same lines: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13).
Take Him at His word. Don’t give up. Don’t miss the blessing!
I’m lazy. There. I said it. Satisfied?
Pssst. Wanna know a secret? If you strip away all the excuses we dish up to God day after day, you’ll find they all come down to this: laziness. It may show up in different disguises, especially when we’re trying so hard to hide it. Hiding from God? See previous Adam and Eve reference above. Enough said?
We are a lazy people when it comes to spending time with God. Wouldn’t you agree? If so, what does that say about you and me? But admitting it and doing something about it are two different things. In the following pages, I’m going to challenge you to arm yourself with all the ammo you need to blast those lazy germs to smithereens. Which I think is somewhere near South Dakota. Come on, Rambo and Ramboettes, let’s go for it!
I don’t have time to pray I’m too busy!