What do your prayers reveal about your relationship with God? I don’t know about you, but I’ve had some moments of real surprise in my prayer life. Let’s see if any of this sounds familiar to you?

“Dear God, please be with my friend, Shirley. She’s going in for surgery on Tuesday at 2 PM MST and I’m asking You to please guide the doctor’s and nurse’s hands. Grant her Thy strength as she recovers and give her the peace that passeth understanding. May her insurance company be pleasant to deal with and please give her family patience and helpfulness as she recuperates. We come together to ask this in Thy name, because Matthew 18:19 clearly says, ‘Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven’ and I know that Thou wilt honor Thy Word. In the powerful and effective name of Jesus, we pray, AMEN.”

I began to notice that my prayers assume that…

  • God doesn’t know about my friend Shirley or her surgery, so at least one function of my prayer is to raise God’s awareness.
  • God only speaketh, understandeth, and respondeth to King James’ English.
  • God needs a high degree of supervision – if I don’t give God detailed instructions, my prayer might lead to some very unintended consequences. Explanations need to be literal and precise and avoid anything that might be misconstrued, require interpretation, or lead to independent thinking on God’s part.
  • God’s arm needs to be twisted before anything good will happen. God needs to be reminded about what the Bible says in case God was thinking about not following my detailed instructions.
  • Prayers are a bit like a magic spell. You have to perform your incantations – I mean prayers – with the proper form or nothing will happen – or worse – the prayer could backfire!

 

Sometimes when I stop and listen to myself, I’m amazed at all of the things that my prayers reveal about my view of God. I see evidence of belief in a God who is angry, vengeful, capricious, mischievous, reluctant, recalcitrant, and probably worse. So how would I pray if I really believed that God already knows what I need and loves me and is working all things together for good?

Let me start by saying that I don’t like the idea of ending prayers to God. If God is available for us to talk to, why would we EVER want to cut off communication? Start your prayer to God, but don’t shut the door of communication with an “Amen” of dismissal – leave the door open. You never know when you need to hear from God. It’s okay if you are talking with other people. Let God be part of that too. Remain available.

A big part of this life seems to be about trust. Lots of things happen to us every day that unsettle and scare us. When we respond with fear and when we get defensive and when we counter-attack, we reveal our belief in a powerless god. What if we really believed in a God who is the Creator of the Universe with limitless resources and creativity? What would it be like if we had a different response to big scary things? What if we just tapped into our open link with the Creator of the Universe and said, “This thing just happened and it scares me, but I know you’ve got this – is there anything I can to help? How can I cooperate with your plan for this situation?” And then we trust and listen.

Some of us are probably still holding on to the idea that we need to have a relationship with God – not because God is the most interesting being in the universe, and worth the relationship – but because God is our ticket to heaven. I challenge myself (and you) to consider what it means to have an open link to a Being who is loving, available, helpful, creative, powerful, relational, and knowledgeable. I don’t know if our prayers change God, but I’m pretty sure that prayer has the potential to change us – and what a privilege that is!