I just started reading a little book on prayer by Oswald Chambers. He calls prayer a “Holy Occupation” while we often call it “the least I can do.” Why is it that when we hear of someone in need we will say something like “I cannot do much but the least I can do is pray for you”? Why do we say things like that? It is because we really do not know what prayer is. We think we do, but we really don’t. If we did, we would pray differently.
The introduction to Chambers’ book is pretty interesting and I believe that he hits the nail on the head. Check this out:
The job of every Christian is to pray. Plain and simple. Yet we want to do more than simply pray. We want to do something important for God; we want to be someone important to Him. We want to build; we want to mobilize; we want to show our strength and exert our influence. Prayer seems like such a small thing to do–next to nothing at all in fact.
But that’s not what Jesus said. To Him prayer is everything; it’s a duty as well as a privilege, a right as well as a responsibility. We use prayer as a last resort; Jesus wants it to be our first line of defense. We pray when there’s nothing else we can do; Jesus wants us to pray before we do anything at all.
But most of us would rather spend our time doing something that will get immediate results. We don’t want to wait for God to bring about the results in His good time because His idea of “good time” is seldom in sync with ours.
And so we try to help God along. Many times we even try to answer our own prayer. We have the idea that more people will become Christians if we can make God look good to them. So we try to convince them of God’s generosity by proving that He answers prayer. If we can just help God spruce up His image a little, we can get more people on His side. And that’s what He wants us to do, right?
Wrong. He wants us to pray. Always and about everything. During times of joy as well as sorrow. He wants us to talk to Him, not about Him. He wants us to talk to Him about unbelievers before we talk to unbelievers about Him.
Prayer is our business, our only business. Prayers our holy occupation. Plain and simple.
Is that not the way that most of us pray? Does that not describe how most of us pray? If we can present God as some type of supernatural bell-hop who is there to act on your every whim, then certainly that will be appealing to most anyone. We act like God is some Genie in a bottle, and that if you can warm Him up a little bit by rubbing Him and doing all kinds of good things; if you can just get Him started, then all that we need to do is to stand back and watch Him do His thing.
There is something special about being around people who really know how to pray. I have a special friend who I meet with about every 4-6 weeks who really knows how to pray. He is 90 years old and he has been praying for a long time. He is a very humble man and yet he prays with boldness and expectancy. Why is that? Is it because God has come through for him every time he prays? If that was the case, his wife would not have Ahlzeimers and he would not be separated from her because of Covid-19. If that was the case he would not have a grandson who is living a life that is separate of Jesus. If that was the case, Dan Simon would be attending NWBC right now. My friend prays for me. My friend prays for NWBC. My friend prays for Dan Simon by name and every time I am with him he asks me about our friend Dan. As he said to me the other day, “God is not in a hurry.” Man that hit me when he said that to me. I knew that before, but to hear it from a man who prays, really prays means something. How is it possible for him to continue so faithfully in prayer and God not do something? Because he knows that it is the job of every Christian to pray and to keep on praying. Because he knows that it is a privilege to talk with the Creator and Sustainer of everything that exists. He knows that God is in control and that He loves us and desires to commune with us. He has experienced the blessing of doing that for many, many years and it is obvious in his life. Do you pray like that?
I want to encourage you to consider this question as we close: When was the last time that you tried to see an issue from God’s perspective rather than ask Him to see it from yours? Think about that for a minute. Once you do that you will find yourself praying with boldness because as Hebrews 10:19 tells us we will pray with confidence because of the blood of Jesus. Perhaps our real problem is that we don’t truly understand what the blood of Jesus did for us. Keep praying. It’s your job!