The Spirit helps us in our weakness.
We do not know what we ought to pray for.
Romans 8:26
Our Lord set the disciples such a glowing example in
prayer that they pled with Him, "Lord, teach us to pray,
just as John taught his disciples" (Luke 11:1). As they had
heard Him pray, a yearning had sprung up in their hearts
to know a similar intimacy with the Father. We do well to
echo their request.
Prayer is an amazing paradox. It is a blending of
simplicity and profundity. It can be an agony or an ecstasy.
It can focus on a single objective, or it can roam the
world. It is "the simplest form of speech that infant lips
can try," and yet at the same time is "the sublimest strains
that reach the Majesty on high." Small wonder, then, that
even Paul, spiritual giant though he was, had to confess:
"We do not know what we ought to pray for."God's Interests Must Come First
To the maturing disciple, God's interests will always be
paramount. The prayers of the immature Christian usually
revolve around self. In response to the disciples' plea to be
taught to pray, Jesus said, "This, then is how you should
pray," and He gave them a pattern by which to model their
prayers. It is noteworthy that in the prayer recorded in
Matthew 6:9-13, the first half of the prayer is totally
occupied with God and His interests. Only after that do
personal petitions find a place. Worship, praise, and
thanksgiving have first place. As would be expected, the
prayers of Paul follow the Master's model.
The Disciple Can Pray with Authority
We are engaged in a relentless spiritual warfare that
knows no truce. Our foes are unseen and intangible, but
they are powerful. Against them only spiritual weapons
will prevail. Paul wrote:
We do not wage war as the world does.
The weapons we fight with are not the
weapons of the world. On the contrary,
they have divine power to demolish
strongholds. (2 Corinthians 10:3-4)
Of these weapons, prayer is the most formidable and
potent in our conflict with "the spiritual forces of evil in the
heavenly realms" (Ephesians 6:12).Restraining prayer, we cease to fight,
Prayer makes the Christian's armour bright;
And Satan trembles when he sees
The weakest saint upon his knees.
(William Cowper)
The fulcrum on which defeat or victory turns is our ability
to pray aright and make intelligent use of our weapons.
Jesus nowhere envisages His church in retreat. To the
seventy eager disciples who returned from an evangelistic
foray elated with their success, He made this powerful
statement: "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I
have given you authority to trample on snakes and
scorpions, and to overcome all the power of the enemy"
(Luke 10:18-19; emphasis added).
The unmistakable inference is that through the exercise
of this delegated authority in their own sphere of service,
the disciples, too, would see the overthrow of Satan. This
promised authority was never withdrawn. But later, when
the disciples lost faith in the promise, they were powerless
to deliver a demon-possessed boy. They were paralyzed
by their own unbelief. Jesus told them the remedy: "This
kind can come out only by prayer" (Mark 9:29).
Restful and trustful prayer has an important place in the
Christian life, but Paul taught and practiced a different kind
of praying. Only strenuous and aggressive prayer that laid
hold of the power released by the cross and the
resurrection would dislodge the enemy from his age-long
stronghold. It is that kind of praying that releases the power
and resources of God and brings them into play in
the field of battle.
Samuel Chadwick contended that Satan fears nothing
from prayerless studies, teaching, and preaching. "He
laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles
when we pray."
To the captious Pharisees, Jesus gave the illustration of
a strong, well-armed man, feeling safe in his fortress:
"How can anyone enter a strong man's house and carry off
his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man?
Then he can rob his house" (Matthew 12:29).
It is the responsibility of the disciple to exercise this
delegated authority in prayer in his conflict with Satan and
the power of darkness. In this way Christ's triumph
becomes the triumph of His weakest follower.
The Disciple Should Pray Audaciously
The mature disciple should be no stranger to this kind of
praying. In the light of the wide-ranging promises to the
intercessor, it is surprising that our prayers are so tepid.
They seldom soar above past experience or natural
thought. How seldom we pray for the unprecedented, let
alone the impossible!
Thou art coming to a King!
Large petitions with thee bring,
For His grace and power are such,
None can ever ask too much.Scripture bears witness to the fact that God delights to
answer daring prayers that are based on His promises.
Jesus encouraged His disciples to ask as freely for the
impossible as the possible. He said to them, "If you have
faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this
mountain, ‘Move from here to there' and it will move.
Nothing will be impossible for you" (Matthew 17:20-21).
All difficulties are the same size to God.
The Disciple Will Sometimes Wrestle in Prayer
"Epaphras, who is one of you and a
servant of Christ Jesus . . . is always
wrestling in prayer for you." (Colossians
4:12)
That type of prayer is the experience of the mature
disciple. Epaphras was one of these. But how pale a
reflection of the praying of Epaphras are our prayers.
It is from the Greek word for "wrestle" that we derive
our word agonize. It is used in the New Testament of men
toiling until they are weary; of the athlete on the track,
straining every muscle and nerve; of the soldier battling
for his very life. This kind of prayer has been termed "an
athletic of the soul."
The Disciple Should Pray with Importunity
Jesus enforced the necessity of importunity and persistence in prayer
by telling two parables-the three
friends and the unprincipled judge. In each He taught by
contrast, for God is neither a lazy, selfish neighbor, nor is
He an unprincipled judge.
The Three Friends. In the parable recorded in Luke
11:5-8, one friend found himself in the embarrassing
position of having no bread to set before a visitor who had
dropped in on him unexpectedly. He hurried to a friend
and asked for the loan of three loaves. From behind closed
doors the "friend" replied that he was in bed and couldn't
be bothered getting up to oblige him. However, the
embarrassed host persisted until at last his lazy friend,
because of his importunity, rose and gave him what he
needed.
In applying the parable, Jesus contrasted by implication
the surly selfishness of the reluctant friend with the willing
generosity of His Father. If even an utterly selfish man, the
argument ran, to whom sleep was more important than a
friend's need, will reluctantly get up at midnight to comply
with his friend's request because of his unabashed
persistence, how much more will God be moved by the
importunate entreaty of His children? (11:13).
The Unprincipled Judge. In the second parable,
recorded in Luke 18:1-8, a widow who had been swindled
took her case to court. The presiding judge was a man
who "neither feared God nor cared about men." Time after
time he rebuffed heartlessly the woman's entreaties for
justice to be done. At last, exasperated by her persistence
and in order to rid himself of the nuisance, he dealt with her case, and justice was done.
The argument is that if a nagging widow by her
shameless persistence can overcome the obstinacy of an
unprincipled judge, how much more will God's children
receive the answer to their urgent prayers, since they are
appealing, not to an adversary, but to a caring Advocate
whose attitude is the antithesis of that of the uncaring
judge.
Thus, by luminous parables Jesus depicted by way of
contrast a true delineation of the character and attitude of
His Father. He is not like an unjust judge who dispenses
reluctant justice to a defrauded widow only because her
persistence creates a nuisance.
The lesson to be drawn is that it is "shameless
persistence" that comes away with full hands; and the
opposite is also true. Tepid praying does not move God's
arm. In contrast, John Knox cried, "Give me Scotland or I
die." If our desire is so feeble that we can do without what
we are asking and it is not something we must have at all
costs, why should our prayer be answered?
Adoniram Judson of Burma said, "God loves an
importunate prayer so much that He will not give us much
blessing without it. He knows that it is a necessary
preparation for our receiving the richest blessing He is
longing to bestow.
"I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything but
it came at some time, no matter how distant a day-
somehow, in some shape, probably the last I would have
devised, it came."That naturally raises the question: Why can God not
simply answer the prayer without requiring us to
importune Him for an answer?
Why is importunity necessary?
God has assured us that there is no reluctance on His
part to bestow any good gift. It is not that He wants to be
coaxed. The repeated "how much more" in the above
parables assures us of that. So the answer must be looked
for elsewhere.
The necessity of importunity lies in us, not in God.
William E. Biederwolf suggests that importunity is one of
the instructors in God's training school for Christian
culture. Sometimes He delays the answer because the
petitioner is not in a fit state to receive it. There is
something God desires to do in him first.
The Problem of Unanswered Prayer
The mature disciple will not stumble because of
apparently unanswered prayer. He will not, however,
adopt a fatalistic attitude; he will examine his prayers and
seek to discover the cause of failure.
The plain fact is that God does not always say yes to
every prayer (though we usually expect Him to do so).
Moses entreated the Lord earnestly that he might enter
the Promised Land. But God answered no (Deuteronomy
34:4). Paul prayed repeatedly that his "thorn in the flesh"
might be removed, but God said no (2 Corinthians 12:7-
9). However, He promised compensating grace. God is
sovereign and all-wise, and we should be sensible enough and humble enough
to recognize His sovereignty in the
realm of prayer.
Our Lord's brother gives one reason for unanswered
prayer: "When you ask, you do not receive, because you
ask with wrong motives" (James 4:3; emphasis added).
God does not undertake to answer every self-centered
petition, but He does promise to answer every prayer that
is according to His good and perfect will.
It may be that our prayer was not the prayer of faith,
but only the prayer of hope. Jesus said, "According to your
faith will it be done to you" (Matthew 9:29), not according
to your hope. Are many of your prayers only prayers of
hope?
Or we may have been substituting faith in prayer for
faith in God. We are not told anywhere to have faith in
prayer but to "have faith in God," the One who answers
the prayer. This is more than a matter of semantics.
Sometimes we sigh, "Our prayers are so weak and
ineffective!" or, "My faith is so small!" Jesus anticipated
this reaction when He said, "I tell you the truth, if you have
faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this
mountain, ‘Move from here to there' and it will move.
Nothing will be impossible for you" (Matthew 17:20).
The naked eye sees little difference between a grain of
sand and a mustard seed, but there is a world of
difference between the two. In one is the germ of life. It is
not the size of our faith that is important, but is it a living
faith in a living God?
The mature disciple will not become discouraged-because of a delay in the answer to his prayer. He k
nows
that a delayed answer is not necessarily a denied answer.
Unanswered yet? Nay, do not say, ungranted,
Perhaps your part is not yet fully done.
The work began when first your prayer was offered,
And God will finish what He has begun.
If you will keep the incense burning there,
You shall have your desire-
Sometime, somewhere!
(Ophelia R. Browning)
God's timing is infallible. He takes every factor and
contingency into account. We often want to pluck unripe
fruit, but He will not be pressured into premature action.
If He in His wisdom delays the answer to our prayer,
that delay will in the long run prove to be for our good
(Hebrews 12:10). It will be either because He has some
better thing for us, or because there is something He
desires to achieve in our lives that can be effected in no
other way.
As we mature spiritually and get to know our heavenly
Father more intimately, we will be able to implicitly trust
His love and wisdom, even when we cannot understand
His actions. Jesus prepared His disciples for this
experience when He said, "You do not realize now what I
am doing, but later you will understand" (John 13:7).