We Must Pray
0 comments | Posted by Steven Layson on 21 Mar 2010 in From Steve's Study ::
There is no greater “motherhood and apple pie” statement you can make in church than “we should pray more”. We all know it’s important & yet my feeling from talking to people is that we also all find it incredibly difficult to even start. Why is this?
One reason could be that we don’t really appreciate the privilege it is to be able to bring our requests to God. Imagine being granted an audience with the Queen. Just think how exciting it would be to walk into the gates of Buckingham Palace and to be ushered in to one of the many sitting rooms for a cup of tea with a monarch! And yet that would be nothing compared to the incredible privilege of talking with the King of the Universe. It is amazing, but he actually invites us to share our hopes and needs with him. He’s never too busy to hear from us, nor is there anything that is too “trivial” to bring before him.
The incredible power, knowledge and majesty of God could fool us into thinking that we don’t need to pray, since he already knows what we need anyway. But, to quote the great reformer John Calvin, “Those who argue thus attend not to the end for which the Lord taught us to pray. It is not so much for His sake as for ours. He wills indeed, as is just, that due honor be paid Him by acknowledging that all which men desire or feel to be useful, and pray to obtain, is derived from Him. But even the benefit of the homage which we thus pay Him rebounds to ourselves.”
In other words, our prayers are an important part of bringing us into line with the will of God – we are changed as we pray. To quote another, “Prayer is surrender —surrender to the will of God and cooperation with that will. If I throw out a boathook from the boat and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore? Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God.”
And so, Jesus reminds us today that we “must always pray & not give up”. Let’s take up the challenge of coming into God’s presence each day and allowing him to mould us into the people he wants us to be.
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