In order for prayer to be real, two things must be present - trust and necessity. I must trust the one to whom I'm praying, and I must have a genuine sense of need. This is true not just of intercessory prayer, but prayers of repentence and thanksgiving too.
Trust, in this context, is really just another name for faith. However, the word trust places the emphasis on the character of the person being prayed to, rather than the faith of the person praying. No amount of faith will help if the one to whom we're praying can't be trusted or is unreliable. I can't make my prayers more effective just by willing myself to have more faith.
Knowledge and experience of the trust-worthiness of God are what lead me to trust that he will respond to my prayers in the best possible way. At first I trust God because the Bible and the witness of the Holy Spirit assure me that he is faithful and loving. Over time my trust grows because I have experienced for myself that God is trustworthy. Prayer is not an all or nothing activity, but something that develops and changes.
The second essential for real prayer is an understanding and acceptance of our neediness, our reliance on God for everything. To pray 'Give us this day our daily bread' while counting on our own efforts is not true prayer. I'm not suggesting that no effort is required on our part to meet our needs. But we must understand that no amount of effort will supply our needs if God does not respond to our efforts by providing for us. Whether we're praying for food for today or the salvation of a whole city tomorrow, we must recognise that "unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain." (Ps 127.1) Prayer takes nothing for granted except God's goodness and generosity.
If this is 'real' prayer what does 'unreal' prayer look like? What does it look like when either trust or necessity are missing? Could you flesh this out a bit? We really hope you don't feel like we're interrogating you! We're really not, just asking questions as we talk about it and we're interested in what you think!
ReplyDeleteGood question, Liz, and no, I don't feel interrogated. Perhaps 'authentic' would have been a better word than 'real'. Briefly, I'd describe inauthentic prayer as praying without reflecting on what it is we're asking or who it is we're speaking to. If we lack trust, we don't expect any answer, either because we don't really believe God is able to answer, or we don't think he cares enough to bother. We're just making a Christian virtue of wishful thinking.
ReplyDeleteIf we lack a sense of necessity, the prayer becomes a formality, a way of "christening" our own agendas. Our prayer becomes like that of the Pharisee in the temple.
I'd like to unpack this a lot further in future posts, but I hope that gives you some sense of what I had in mind.