Evangelicals Now
Christian news worldwide
magnifying glass Search archives
home Home check the archives Archives Subscribe Subscriptions Advertising Information & booking of classifieds Adverts Find a local evangelical Church Find a church for the search engines and extremely curious! About us Contact us Site Map
Printable
Version

Praying with Vijay

Prayer - in conclusion
(Part 4 of Series)

In conclusion, there are three golden rules: Be short, be audible and don't worry about your grammar.

If God already knows what we need, why should Christians pray?
The faithful do not pray to tell God what he does not know, or to urge him to his duties, but rather to alert themselves to seek him by meditating upon his promises and unburdening their cares, and to testify that from him alone all good for themselves and for others is hoped and asked. As for himself, what he has determined to give, of his own free will and even before he is asked, he promises to give in response to our prayer. Both points are important: what he gives - he gives of his free will, yet, what we ask for we gain by prayer. He is the sovereign Lord, yet he does not take or override our free will.
God knows even before we ask; that is why I pray. Because I don't know what is good for me, and don't want to stick to the limit of my own wisdom. Further-more, the question itself shows that we have failed to grasp that prayer is sharing a conversation with God, sharing our helplessness with God and sharing in spiritual warfare.
So, prayer is not presenting a shopping list to God - there is nothing wrong with a shopping list, but it is what is on it that matters. Not what I want God to do, but what God wants to do through me. It is not a nagging session, but a united work, praying according to his will. Prayer does not win God to our point of view, but reveals God's view to us. Prayer does not condition God, but prayer conditions us.
We pray because Jesus has asked us to do it - in the Gospels many times. He did it himself. If he, the second Godhead of the Trinity needed to pray, how much more we should pray, to accomplish God's plan which he has for each one of us. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit has commanded us to do it through the Acts and the Epistles. Experience shows that God does act through prayer. Men who have been most used by God are those who have spent the most time with him alone in prayer.
So there is much more in prayer than getting things done. God uses our prayers as a means of teaching us more about himself. He says: 'My thoughts are not your thoughts,' and then he takes our thoughts as they come to him in prayer and patiently goes over them with us to point out where we are wrong and so make them more like his own.
By this, as we pray we are learning more about the mind of God, we are learning to make his interests our interests, and his wishes our goal, being conformed to the image of his Son.

Vijay Menon