The Principles of Prayer LII

 Farmers plant seeds to obtain a harvest. Beekeepers go through the labor of keeping a beehive to obtain honey. Individuals the world over go on diets to shed a few pounds. Young people go to medical school to become doctors. These are not abstract notions, nor are they ill-defined, but specific and purposeful, as to dispel any ambiguity or confusion. You don’t go to medical school to become a mechanic, and you don’t plant corn to harvest broccoli.

I know why I wake up every morning and pray. I know why I wake up every morning and study the Word. My purpose is clear, and knowing what my end goal is allows me to see the progress, incremental as it may seem day to day.

There is a well-defined and specific purpose as to why certain people do certain things, and what they hope to achieve or obtain by doing them, and defining terms when it comes to prayer, being absolute in our intent, and what we desire to get out of it is likewise necessary for us as individuals. What is your stated goal? What do you hope to achieve by dedicating yourself to prayer consistently and faithfully?

Every journey must begin with a destination in mind, otherwise you’ll be circling the block until you get blisters on the soles of your feet or pass out from dehydration. Define the goal clearly and succinctly, and determine what you desire to achieve at the end of your journey.

If what you hope to achieve is tethered to the material, then the time you put in reciting the laundry list of things you think you need in order to be fulfilled will not reap much reward. If, however, what you hope to achieve is tethered to the spiritual, and your singular desire is more of God’s presence in your life, then the return on your investment of time will be light years beyond what you hoped or envisioned.

When men complain that the time they spend in prayer reaps no reward and seems wasted, it’s usually because the things they’ve been praying for have nothing to do with the presence of God and everything to do with their selfish desires. They prayed once, twice, five times, or ten, and no Ferrari showed up in their driveway. As it has been said before, God is not a genie in a bottle we rub whenever we want something. He is the Alpha and Omega, the Creator of all that is seen and unseen, and to want anything other than Him demeans who He is.

Given vision, consistency, and enough time, men took a hunk of rock, a hammer, and a chisel, and fashioned them into such wondrous statues and works of art as to stand the test of time and be remarked upon hundreds and thousands of years later.

Each started with a piece of stone, no experience, and desire. For everyone who succeeded in creating a work of art, there are likely thousands who gave up along the way, who are not remembered by history, and who thought that making something beautiful out of a hunk of rock was an impossible task. What separated those who succeeded from those who failed was persistence and consistency, not giving up at the first sign of resistance, not surrendering at the first roadblock, but pressing on, being diligent, and putting in the time.

What separates those with robust, powerful, and effective prayer lives from those who’ve seen no results and given up on the practice thereof is that some persisted, having the anecdotal evidence of those who came before them as confirmation that prayer works, while others capitulated because they deemed it too taxing.

All men fall into one of these two camps. Either they set their sights on a genuine, lasting, and reciprocal relationship with God and pursue it with such abandon that nothing stands in the way of their stated goal, or they find reasons to put off spending time in prayer, then pointing to their stale spiritual walk insisting that nothing they could have done would have made any difference.

Well, diet and exercise don’t work for me. Have you tried dieting and exercising? No, I haven’t, but I just know it won’t work. That’s how some respond when asked if they’ve truly ever pursued a prayer life, in order to see the benefits thereof. They never personally tried it, but they just know that even if they did, it would produce no results.

The selfsame people who insist prayer doesn’t work for them, and therefore can’t work for anyone else, fail to address or adequately explain away why the Son of God would not only insist upon but Himself practice something that has no quantifiable result or benefit.

Not only did Jesus pray consistently, but He also went out of His way to highlight the importance of prayer and extol its virtues in various ways at various times. Why would Jesus encourage His followers to pursue something of no value? If there were anything more beneficial to their spiritual man than prayer, why would He not insist upon that?

Was He holding back? Was He trying to keep true knowledge away from those for whom He would later lay down His own life? Not only doesn’t that make any logical sense, it would go against His nature of wanting to see those who would deny themselves, pick up their crosses and follow after Him walk in the authority rightly theirs.

Prayer works. It may not work in the timeframe you desire it, in the manner in which you think it should, and oftentimes the response to the thing we’ve been asking is a resounding no, but it does not take away from the reality that every sincere heart who came before the throne of grace with a burning desire to know more of the God they worship was not turned away empty handed, or absent the feeling of intimacy that can only come about in His presence. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.