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[Subie]

Tell me about prayer.

So with faith the size of a mustard seed, we can move mountains. Reach out with faith to touch the hem of his cloak, and we're instantly healed. Unless you're Job. Or Jeptha's daughter. Or Adam.

So the deal is, we pray, with faith, for His will, and trust His will above ours, and trust His goodness. And as the crops fail, and we're broke, and the baby's sick, and the world is burning, we praise and trust.

And we follow His will directly as possible as the Bible shows, and the rest of it is blind flailing. Is it His will? Well, I'm praying and believing, and then this little thing happened, so I think maybe He's telling me yes? No? Sometimes?

All the health and happiness of myself and family is counting on this, and we're all praying, and our lives are dedicated every second to God, and we hear the crickets chirping, i.e. nothing, and it doesn't happen, and it all goes to sh·t. Praise, God, right? His will. We have been taught something wonderful and valuable, we just have no clue what it might be, because anyone else would have just helped out with that mortgage payment so they didn't foreclose on us.

If they ask for a fish, do you give them a stone? Um. Yes. God does. He says with our gross sense of justice we can see the most obvious basics of good and bad, and wouldn't fill an outstretched hand with smoldering coals, but...

I mean, I could trust Jesus. But the God of the Old Testament thinks nothing of genocide, floods, pestilence and plagues, and sacrificing up various sons and daughters.

Two things that freak me out, basically:
1. hurling hope, faith, and will into the darkness and hearing the echoes as you chew your nails to bits over giant decisions, and
2. perpetually talking to yourself and reading fate and angels into all sorts of banal details and niggly choices of your every day with no clue how much is pure ego-invention, accompanied by the constant lurking hunch that a real diety wouldn't give two shakes of a rat's ·ss.

I believe life has primed you particulary for responding to the former.

As a tiny child I was so terrified at the reverberating nothingness when I repeatedly "asked Jesus into my heart." I suppose my tender imagination literally expected a voice, or at least a cherub or two to welcome me into the fold. After a time, I accepted the "trust and obey," and let my "faith" grow with the habit of living the "Christian" life, of which I really had little choice. I did pray. All the time. It was habit. But it wasn't too hard to eventually interpret it as talking to myself. If I'm honest, I did make a pretty conscious choice to just stop it, and follow my own will. But when I try to remember any real sense of communication with the Almighty, it all seems pretty far-fetched. Echoes frighten me. I don't want to hear my own voice and pretend it's not. I far prefer to just listen to it. For a number of years now, mostly provoked by our communication, any time I have an urge to try to pray, I always end up reciting the Lord's prayer, and trying to instill it with some personal meaning. Because anything else that jumps to my mind I want to spit out with a sick taste. I hate the sound of "praying." I hate the words, "Dear God," "Dear God." "Dear, God..." "Hey, Man, how's it goin'? What's up, ol' Chum?" "You know, could you do something about this hangnail? Oh, yeah, and starving kids in Asia..."

So I start, "Almighty God, King of Kings..," and then choke, because for my imagination to even come close to grasping what that means (which it can't), I can't make sense of a "conversation." And the idea of "Him" wanting to talk to me, or any other snivelling idiot, just cheapens the whole thing somehow. Yes, yes, that's the whole point of the gospel. He actually loves us, just give up the wickedness and self-will and follow, foollow, ollo, olo, o l ooo...

[jimwalton]

I will try to approach answering you from several different angles.

I wish to start with the book of Job. It deals with the dicey question of “Can righteous people expect to be blessed at a higher rate than average? Can we rightfully expect that God will actively and obviously bless the righteous and harass the wicked?” The answer of the book is a resounding NO. Practically speaking, if God were to bless the righteous at a higher rate, the first effect we would expect to see is people acting righteously just to get the prize, which, of course, wouldn’t be acting righteously. It would only be a show to force the hand of God. Secondly, the motives of any and every “righteous” person will come under question, because the idea of “blessing” will even subconsciously be lurking. Ultimately, such a policy will devastate any notion of righteousness on the earth.

But what if the righteous fare worse than the average? That scrapes against all sense of justice. What kind of God punishes his own people by deliberately making things worse for them. Ultimately, such a policy will frustrate any motivation toward righteousness.

Is there a 3rd Choice, where it all seems haphazard, non-sensical, unpredictable, and sometimes just downright irrational? Our choices are actually narrow: God be accused of ruining righteousness because he blesses people, God be accused of unjust cruelty because he doesn’t bless people, or God be accused of not even being there in any detectable way. Hm. Sounds like a Catch-23, -24, and -25.

Maybe there’s another choice. Maybe it’s really hard to tell where the blessings of God are and where they aren’t, but people with eyes to see, who learn to recognize the hand of God, see them in enough quantity to bring a smile to their face and a word of praise to their lips. As far as others can tell, it’s just the law of averages. It’s not unlike a wife who learns her husband’s mannerisms so well that she can see the signs of his love that others easily miss.

Let’s move on to the second angle. Maybe prayer is like the moral of Job. “Can I rightfully expect that God will actively and obviously answer my prayers at a rate greater than average?” It’s an intriguing proposition. The answer should be “Of course.” Practically speaking, if God were to answer the prayers of his people at a higher rate than average, I would form certain (no doubt self-oriented and self-centered) expectations about how I can, more often than not, get what I want. It’s an insidious attitude, but impossible to avoid. Yes, look at me—I can turn the hand of God. The motives of every pray-er would come under question, because the idea of “control” will even subconsciously be lurking. Ultimately, the such a policy will devastate the purity of the human heart. Prayer was not given to people to make them master over God.

But what if my prayers are the kiss of death? If I pray for it, I can almost guarantee you that it won’t happen. What kind of tragic relationship with God is THAT?

Is there a 3rd Choice, where where it all seems haphazard, non-sensical, unpredictable, and sometimes just downright irrational? Our choices are actually narrow: God will be accused of ruining godly hearts because he has an OBLIGATION to answer prayers for them at a higher rate, and we all know about the corrupting leverage of power; God will be accused of cruelty as he deliberately ignores the cries of his people when he has asked them to pray to him, or God will be accused of cavalier apathy because he’s not responsive in any detectable way. Hm.

Maybe there’s another choice. Let’s talk about the reality of prayer. I talk to God, most of the time, not to get stuff out of him, but because I want to talk to him. I love him, and I want a relationship with him. So I talk. Just as I talk to my spouse, I am invited to talk to God about anything. It’s my relationship, not a wish list. He’s not Santa Claus, but my God.

I have learned (at least) three things from the Bible about prayer that I wish to bring out here. First, almost all of what God promises to do for me in Scripture is internal, not circumstantial. If I follow the Bible, if I’m going to ask anything from God in prayer, it’s 90% of the time going to pertain to inner qualities: patience, strength, clarity of thought, the power of the Spirit, and the like. This is what the Bible instructs me to ask for. Second, almost all of what God does circumstantially is through other people. If God is going to answer my prayers about something in my circumstances, it will likely happen through rather normal means: the actions or words of a person, something I read, a thought in my head. But how am I supposed to tell what is normal occurrence and what is God’s hand? A Secret Service agent is trained to look for certain things, and when in a crowd, he knows what to look for and how to recognize it. His eyes are different than mine. So also an accountant poring over ledgers, a hunter in the wild, a detective on the scene, a psychologist in a session, or a teacher assessing her pupils. Our training legitimately affects what we see, how we interpret it, and our attitude about it. So also a Christian. Through reading the Bible, and growing in our Christian walk, we are trained to see the hand of God; we understand how he works, what his activity looks like, and how to recognize it. Others will just see normal things, no different than if I were to look over ledger books or go hunting. I won’t see squat. The trained eye will see another world.

Third, answers are often not what I had in mind. In the Bible people prayed for stuff, and as you analyze the story and its causes and effects, you see that they got what they prayed for, but not at all what they prayed for. It’s like the poem:

I asked God for strength, that I might achieve,

I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey.

I asked for health, that I might do greater things,
I was given infirmity, that I might do better things.
I asked for riches, that I might be happy,
I was given poverty, that I might be wise...
I asked for power, that I might have praise from men,
I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God.
I asked for all things that I might enjoy life,
I was given life, that I might enjoy all things...
I got nothing I asked for, but everything I had hoped for.
Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.
I am among all men most richly blessed.

For instance, in the OT, the Assyrian army was threatening Jerusalem. They had already crushed and burned the cities of Judah; now the capital was in the crosshairs. The king and the prophet prayed for Jerusalem to be spared. Over the course of the next period of time, a rat infestation annihilated the Assyrian camp with disease, and they had to withdraw. Well, that’s not quite what the king probably had in mind, but it was an answer to the prayer. Then it tells us that the Assyrian emperor was murdered by his own sons. That was 20 years later, but still considered an answer to the same prayer. Weird, huh? But that’s what I’m talking about. Once you understand how God works, you see things that others think “just happened.”

So what is prayer? Seeking the pleasure of God’s company. I talk to him because I love him. If it’s all gimme-gimme-gimme—well, who wants a friend like that? He’s not the fairy God-Father. We shut out the noise of the earth to commune with the song of heaven. And life goes on with its blessings and tragedies. My circumstantial life is no different than anyone else’s, but my inner life is a treasure trove of immense difference. I have learned to see the hand of God around me, and it often surprises me in all its forms. God is all around me, actively at work. Do I get what I pray for? Only like the poem. Not what I ask for, but answers none the less. God is taking care of me. Sure, I get stones some days and fish others; some days I’m Job, some I’m in mountain mode. I never hear a voice, and I’ve learned not to trust the thoughts that come to me in prayer. Some are trustworthy, and some aren’t. They need to be assessed, because my mind is an unreliable source. I talk to God in prayer; he talks to me through his Word (Now THERE’S a treasure trove).

Hurling hope and faith into the darkness? No, just a sometimes peaceful and sometimes agitated heart taking time to talk it over with the Lord. Sometimes I try to picture him when I talk. Not the old guy with the geezer beard, but the fathomless I AM beyond space and time. My mind gets lost in the immensity and grandeur, but it helps orient me to whom I’m really speaking. I talk in real words, not grandiose poetic ones.

Don’t get me wrong. Prayer is anything but a smooth road. But I’m learning. Just like I’m learning how to be a good husband. One of these days, I’ll catch on a little better. Meanwhile I show my love in every way I can. Good communication is an important part of that picture.