Matthew 6:8 NIV
Do not be like them,
for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
Why Do You Pray?
A couple of years ago we were awakened by a violent
shaking near our bed. It wasn’t an
earthquake but for us something much worse.
Our youngest son still slept in a small bed at the foot of our bed and
in the middle of the night started having a seizure. He had never gone through one before and we
had not experienced a seizure ourselves nor seen one of our kids have one. The disorientation caused by just having been
asleep and the shock of witnessing one of our children experiencing something
so terrible threw us into a panic. His
eyes were rolled up into the top of his head and his body was stiff as a bamboo
pole. Not knowing what to do, we called
911 and soon emergency personnel were at our house helping us with Ben. I rode with him in the ambulance and after a
couple hours, we were sent home, reassured that the seizure had not harmed him
and did not mean that he would have other seizures. Throughout this ordeal, both Mary Jo and I
prayed for Ben, prayed for wisdom about what to do for him, prayed for the
nurses and doctor to know how to help him and prayed that he would recover
without damage to his brain. We did not
hesitate to pray when the seizure began and never questioned the value of
continuing to pray on the way to the hospital, while in emergency and after we
returned with the doctor’s clearance.
Prayer is one of the most frequent activities
engaged in by people world-wide and specifically within the Christian
community. Those who pray rarely
question the logic of it or its validity when doing so yet there may be many
times when we wonder if we should keep praying about a matter and countless
hours and perhaps even days when prayer does not cross our mind. Why do we pray? What is a father whose child is addicted to
meth hoping to accomplish by praying?
How come a woman going through a divorce prays or a young man needing
work prays? Why does a high school student
pray when facing a tough final? Is there
a reason why a mother prays for her family or a grandparent prays her
health? What do you hope to accomplish
by praying?
It seems so simple, right? We pray to get something. We see in the Bible plenty of examples of
people who prayed and did hope to get something. The accomplished and mostly good King
Hezekiah found himself in a tough spot.
In the fourteenth year of his reign, Hezekiah’s country Judah was being ransacked
by a huge Assyrian army and now they were at his doorstep, surrounding his
hometown of Jerusalem. It was an
impossible situation; he had no hope of being able to fight off the Assyrian
invaders…starvation or capitulation seemed to be the only options he and the
people of Jerusalem had. The general of
the Assyrians mocked Hezekiah and the Hebrews for believing the Lord might
answer their prayers and rescue them. "Do
not listen to Hezekiah, for he is misleading you when he says, 'The Lord will
deliver us.' Has the god of any nation ever delivered his land from the hand of
the king of Assyria? Where are the gods
of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena and Ivvah? Have
they rescued Samaria from my hand? Who
of all the gods of these countries has been able to save his land from me? How
then can the Lord deliver Jerusalem from my hand?" (2 Kings 18:32-35 NIV)
Many of us have felt like it was hopeless to pray
and perhaps Hezekiah did too. The Bible
does not say that Hezekiah himself prayed for deliverance from the Assyrians
although we might assume he did. We do
know however that he sent messengers to Isaiah the prophet and asked him to
pray for God to drive off the Assyrians.
Isaiah’s reply was, “Tell your master, 'This is what the Lord says:
Do not be afraid of what you have heard — those words with which the underlings
of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.
Listen! I am going to put such a spirit in him that when he hears a certain
report, he will return to his own country, and there I will have him cut down
with the sword.'" (2 Kings 19:6-7 NIV)
But the Assyrians did not leave immediately. More threats came from their general and
Hezekiah himself prayed. Now, O Lord
our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all kingdoms on earth may know that
you alone, O Lord, are God." (2 Kings 19:19 NIV) That night one hundred and eighty-five
thousand Assyrian soldiers were struck dead by a plague sent from the Lord and
Hezekiah gained fresh insight into the Lord’s power and care for him and the
nation of Judah.
At the age of thirty-nine, the Lord told Hezekiah
through the prophet Isaiah that he was about to die. Devastated by the news, he prayed for God not
to take his life. Hezekiah turned his
face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, "Remember, O Lord, how I have
walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what
is good in your eyes." And Hezekiah wept bitterly. (2 Kings 20:2-3 NIV)
Of course Hezekiah was overjoyed when the Lord through the prophet Isaiah
promised him fifteen more years of life and he did gain them. Something interesting happened though in
those fifteen years. Hezekiah lost his
interest in praying. Things went so well
for him and he was so prosperous that it seems he became comfortable and his
interest in God casual. There were all
sorts of issues he faced we can be sure but he solved them on his own. Hezekiah was smart and a talented leader and
it seemed to him that everything was going so smoothly that he didn’t need to
waste his time praying or bother his head with it…and it is true. He was doing well. He was successful, popular and content.
Later, a contingent of Babylonian merchants and
politicians came to Jerusalem to meet with Hezekiah and the king welcomed them
with open arms. Hezekiah received the
messengers and showed them all that was in his storehouses — the silver, the
gold, the spices and the fine oil — his armory and everything found among his
treasures. There was nothing in his palace or in all his kingdom that Hezekiah
did not show them. (2 Kings 20:13 NIV)
Now, this seemed like a lovely gesture of comradery and
neighborliness. Hezekiah was smartly
hoping to form an alliance with an up and coming international power that could
help both him and his country in the future.
Of course it was a little boastful on his part, showing off his riches
and bragging a bit about his accomplishments but he had great reason to be
proud of his work and what harm was it anyway to show off some. The Lord immediately sent the prophet Isaiah
to Hezekiah to explain the ramifications of what he had done in welcoming the
Babylonian contingent into Jerusalem. Then
Isaiah said to Hezekiah, "Hear the word of the Lord: The time will surely come when everything in
your palace, and all that your fathers have stored up until this day, will be
carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the Lord. And some of your
descendants, your own flesh and blood, that will be born to you, will be taken
away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon." (2
Kings 20:16-18 NIV)
Hezekiah’s reaction to this rebuke from God is
fascinating but quite representative of how the mind responds to the Lord when
it has lost its sensitivity to the way God thinks. "The
word of the Lord you have spoken is good," Hezekiah replied. For he
thought, "Will there not be peace and security in my lifetime?" (2 Kings 20:19 NIV) God had
nothing more to say to Hezekiah after that reaction to the warning. Hezekiah was not thinking like the Lord; it
was as if they had nothing in common with each other. Now we realize that there are plenty of
people who don’t care how their actions will impact the generations that follow
them. They don’t worry about what their
career move will do to their children, how their divorce will impact their
grandkids, what will happen a hundred years from now if they choose one school
over another. Who thinks that way? God does.
He cares what sort of life we lay down for future generations and it
matters to Him the decisions we make and their ramifications for ourselves and
others.
There is an interesting statement Jesus makes about
prayer and praying that has confused many Christians and non-Christians. Talking about pagans and all who
misunderstand what is to happen when we pray, Jesus commented, Do not be
like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matthew
6:8 NIV) Now it is easy to confuse this
statement with those of atheists who teach that praying is irrelevant and
useless. That is not at all the gist of
this as Jesus goes on to explain how prayers should be presented to God. In fact immediately after this verse He then
gave us the model prayer to be certain we all know how praying should go. If prayer is not giving God key information
that He might not be aware exists, then why do we tell Him about what we want
and what we need and about our concerns?
It is because as we pray, our mind comes in contact with God’s mind and
all we care about becomes immersed in Him and is transformed by His thinking. The panicked minds or the calm and
faith-filled minds are all changed by going to the Lord in prayer. As we
bring before Him the things He already knows and cares about, we find that we
lose our own view of what we face and we begin to see it as He does. It is not a terrible storm. It is Christ in the boat. It is not a devastating loss. It is the Lord lifting us to a new
opportunity. It is not the end of the
world. It is the beginning of a more
important journey.
Every situation we face, whether we deem it good,
bad, frightening or inconsequential, we can go through it with God’s mind
thinking through our mind or push forward on our own. When we pray to Christ for help or guidance
or simply to honor Him, we put ourselves in touch with God who miraculously
guides us through what we face and gives us His thoughts about what is before
us and what we do not yet see. Hezekiah
stopped thinking that it was important to see things God’s way but you
haven’t! You want God to tell you to
relax and trust Him. You look forward to
being guided by Christ through your next crisis or job opportunity. You want the Lord to tell you what to think
about your trials as well as your victories.
Prayer is how our Savior shows us the way…even when we don’t realize we
need directions. It takes practice
learning how to recognize when it is God leading you and when it is just you
forming an opinion. That is why we need
to pray all the time that His voice is not a stranger to us when we need to
know it is Him!
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