if i were to ask you a question such as "why should we pray?" what would be your answer? if you're like me and you've been groomed in church life right out of the womb, then i'm sure you could go on and on with the "obvious" answers. God wants us to, the Bible says so, it's our way of communicating with God, etc etc etc.
sunday school sure prepared us well, didn't it? perhaps the more pressing question to ask is "so why don't we pray more?"
i can only speak for myself on this issue. and just for legal and political purposes, i just want to say right now that my views are not representative of intervarsity or anything like that. this is just my own small soapbox.
in all honesty, when i found out at rec week that this year's vision for AACM would focus on prayer, i was pretty hesitant. i saw it as too huge of a risk. i felt like prayer was something that couldn't be measured. for my own selfish reasons, i wanted some sort of concrete gauge of how successful we were of implementing the vision. for example, if we focused on the outreach aspect, then we could simply count heads to measure how "well" we were doing. but prayer? prayer is something that you can't force people to do -- it's a personal thing. and how do you measure that? by minutes? by the number of "amen's" muttered? basically, implementing a vision of prayer in the fellowship seemed like a distant pipedream.
i guess the most discouraging part of the whole ordeal was the fact that i felt terribly inadequate. back in high school, i considered myself as somewhat of a "prayer warrior," but looking back, i could not have fooled myself more. sure, my prayer life has improved dramatically over time, but i still struggle with my view of prayer.
i used to naively look at prayer as a sort of spiritual vending machine. when i needed something from God, i would simply put some prayer into the machine, and hope that the machine wouldn't get jammed on me. in a worst-case scenario, prayer would be a sort of spiritual umbrella, you know, something to use on a rainy day. gotta problem? pray about it. no problems? then it's all good; save prayer for later.
slowly, i learned to view prayer as less of a crisis hotline to God and more of a conversation with Him. but at the same time, it still wasn't real to me. i was just going through the motions every good Christian boy should go through. you know, bow my head before every meal and before going to bed at night so i can fulfill that daily quota the Bible requires. i didn't really see the point of the whole thing. i mean, if God knows and sees everything, then what is the point of praying? He already knows what i've done, what i need, what i'm gonna ask for. am i just sending up empty words here?
i think the thing that i struggled with most was praying for the improbable. i could drop down to my knees with no hesitation to pray for things like healing a fever, doing well on tests, and safety on road trips and such, but those were all things that i expected to happen anyways. there was no risk there, you know? i was wary of praying for things like a relative's bout with cancer, a friend's decision to accept Christ, and things where i had no idea what would happen. i suppose in a way i was trying to shield my faith. sorta like parents not wanting a child to discover that santa claus was nothing more than a nice story. i didn't want to go through the spiritual trauma of praying so hard for something and having my prayer go "unanswered." it was just so much easier for me to pray for the easy things that required almost no faith at all.
it wasn't until my view of prayer changed that i actually began to realize its true significance. i don't know the exact time or date or anything dramatic like that, but sometime in the past year, prayer has changed from "talking to God" to surrendering to Him. at last it hit me that prayer is not a facet to ask God for things. praying was a way for me to show him that He is in control of my life -- my friendships, my direction, my decisions, everything.
prayer has become a way for me to thank Him for all the ways that He has blessed me, to let Him know that contrary to every fiber of my being, i am not taking everything that i have for granted. prayer has become a way for me to call upon Him for guidance and a sense of purpose. prayer has become a way for me to confess my deepest struggles, finding comfort in His forgiveness and seeking a revival in my faith. prayer has become real to me.
over the summer, i read a book called "fresh wind, fresh fire" by jim cymbala. this book was amazing, and trust me, i'm not what you would call an avid reader. or even a reader. let me give you some cliffsnotes real quick. basically jimmy boy is trying to start up a new church in brooklyn, the brooklyn tabernacle. one day, he hears a life-changing whisper from God, and this is what he tells his congregation:
"It's not fancy or profound or spectacular. But what I want to say to you today with all the seriousness I can muster: From this day on, the prayer meeting will be the barometer of our church. What happens on Tuesday night will be the gauge by which we will judge success or failure because that will be the measure by which God blesses us.it wasn't easy. this little speech of his didn't bring in 5,000 prayer warriors to the first meeting. but who said it's supposed to be easy? prayer is a tough thing. not just the "staying awake" aspect of it, but prayer requires an immense amount of faith. you gotta have faith that God is listening, and you gotta have faith that He will indeed answer.
If we call upon the Lord, he has promised in his Word to answer, to bring the unsaved to himself, to pour out his Spirit among us. If we don't call upon the Lord, he has promised nothing -- nothing at all. It's as simple as that. No matter what I preach or what we claim to believe in our heads, the future will depend upon our times of prayer."
but hey, you know what they say about having the faith of a mustard seed..
after cymbala's sermon that sunday morning, he introduced a minister from Australia to the congregation, who shared the following statements:
"I heard what your pastor said. Here's something to think about:and again i ask, "so why don't we pray more?"
You can tell how popular a church is by who comes on Sunday morning.
You can tell how popular the pastor or evangelist is by who comes on Sunday night.
But you can tell how popular Jesus is by who comes to the prayer meeting."
