The Principles of Prayer L

 To claim victory over anything, a battle must be fought, whether it is physical, spiritual, or mental. Victorious living has been bandied about so often and with such gusto that it has become a cliché absent definition, with no nuance or detail as to what it means, or what is required to achieve it. In order to be victorious over our thoughts, we must take them captive. In order to be victorious over our inclination to procrastinate and find other worthless things to fill our time with rather than come before God in prayer and supplication, an active, disciplined, and focused plan must not only be thought of but also implemented and put into action. We are victorious only insofar as we overcome the obstacles in our path, defeat the enemy of our soul, and press on even when the road gets hard and all you want to do is lie in bed in the fetal position and wait for the sweet embrace of sleep.

It’s when you least feel like doing something that you must purpose in your heart that you will let nothing stand in the way of starting it, and also finishing it. Some of the most refreshing, rewarding, and memorable times I’ve spent in prayer before God were those instances where everything seemed to be crumbling around me, when there were a dozen other things vying for my time, and when my mind insisted that I could put off the prayer time for a day because there were just too many other things to do.

Make the conscious choice to prioritize prayer not as something you’ll get around to when you can, but something you must do every day, consistently, without wavering or delay.

It comes down to desire and whether being in God’s presence is the single most important thing on your schedule on a given day, or if He’s somewhere in the middle of a long list of things we need to get done.

There is also a pervading theory that I am inclined to believe, that the harder fought a battle, the sweeter the victory at its end, when the dust settles and the battle is won. The things we work hardest for seem to be the most fulfilling and rewarding, perhaps not in a material sense, but in the sense of having accomplished something others might have thought you incapable of accomplishing.

I like chopping wood. Not with a chainsaw or some mechanical contraption, but the old-fashioned way, with an axe and plenty of sweat equity. Whenever I visit Romania, I set aside a day to find someone in a village who has wood that needs chopping, and I offer my services. It may seem like a small thing, but if you’re pushing eighty with a hunched back and arthritic fingers that can’t hold a fork, never mind an axe, having someone show up and offer to do the job for you free of charge is a blessing.

As is the case with shoveling snow, I think the reason I enjoy chopping wood is that I can assess the progress at a glance. By the time the day is done, all my muscles are sore, I’ve likely changed shirts three times, but the satisfaction I get from seeing the job done and all the wood chopped and piled by the side of the house is indescribable.

The harder it seems to get alone with God on a given day, the more you should strive to do it because you know it is essential, even existential, for your spiritual growth and maturing. If you know certain things are required for survival, you prioritize those things over other trivial matters first because, in order to accomplish anything else, you must first ensure that you are alive and breathing.

The western church has been in the cycle of putting the cart before the horse for so long it’s forgotten that there are certain basic yet essential practices it must contend with, grow accustomed to, and practice consistently in order to attain or achieve the things they’ve been focusing on and pining over with such fervor.

If your church has courses on how to be a prophet, spark revival, or something more ambiguous like unlocking your spiritual sensitivity, but not one on how to pray, they’ve essentially put the cart before the horse and are hoping to teach something that can only be gifted by God to the faithful who are walking in the way and have a consistent relationship with Him.

Well, I don’t pray, but I want to prophesy. That’s like saying I can’t read, but I want to write the Great American Novel. I can’t swim, but I want to free dive for clams. I can’t drive, but I want to be a Formula 1 driver. I struggle with basic math, but I aspire to be a mathematical statistician.

It’s telling that of all the things the disciples could have asked Jesus to teach them, they asked Him to teach them to pray. They’d seen Him perform miracles, they’d heard Him preach, they’d seen Him teach, yet the one thing they considered worth knowing above all these was that they knew how to pray.

Conversely, if they’d never seen Jesus pray, or never awakened to see Him far removed from them in communion with the Father, they likely would never have grasped the importance of prayer and how significant a role it must play in the life of the believer. It is not a leap of logic to conclude that the disciples had seen Jesus praying so consistently as to conclude it is the one thing they needed to learn to do first before anything else they might desire to know.

If the adage that success leaves clues holds true, then the disciples were wise enough to see the clues clearly enough to ask Jesus to teach them to do as He did. More often than not, everything boils down to whether or not what we are doing is effective. Does it work? That’s the most important question. Not whether it’s exciting, flashy, or if you feel a tingle running down your back, but whether or not it works.           

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.