Subject: Purpose of Prayer? |
Bible Note: tgs, I'll enter into the topic here with a section from Oswald Chambers, "If Ye Ask". I think it defines very well the purpose of prayer. "Prayer alters CIRCUMSTANCES through me It is only when a man flounders beyond any grip of himself and cannot understand things that he really prays. It is not part of the natural life of a man to pray. By “natural” I mean the ordinary, sensible, healthy, worldly-minded life. We hear it said that a man will suffer in his life if he does not pray; I question it. Prayer is an interruption to personal ambition, and no man who is busy has time to pray. What will suffer is the life of God in him, which is nourished not by food but by prayer. If we look on prayer as a means of developing ourselves, there is nothing in it at all, nor do we find that idea of prayer in the Bible. Prayer is other than meditation; it is that which develops the life of God in us. When a man is born from above (rv mg), the life of the Son of God begins in him, and he can either starve that life or nourish it. Prayer is the way the life of God is nourished. Our Lord nourished the life of God in Him by prayer; He was continually in contact with His Father. We generally look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves, whereas the Bible idea of prayer is that God’s holiness and God’s purpose and God’s wise order may be brought about, irrespective of who comes or who goes. Our ordinary views of prayer are not found in the New Testament. It is not so true that “Prayer changes things” as that prayer changes me, and then I change things; consequently we must not ask God to do what He has created us to do. For instance, Jesus Christ is not a social reformer; He came to alter us first, and if there is any social reform to be done on earth, we must do it. God has so constituted things that prayer on the basis of Redemption alters the way a man looks at things. Prayer is not a question of altering things externally, but of working wonders in a man’s disposition. When you pray, things remain the same, but you begin to be different. The same thing when a man falls in love, his circumstances and conditions are the same, but he has a sovereign preference in his heart for another person which transfigures everything. If we have been born from above (rv mg) and Christ is formed in us, instantly we begin to see things differently—“If any man is in Christ, there is a new creation“ (rv mg). The good of praying is that it gets us to know God and enables God to perform His order through us, no matter what His permissive will may be. A man is never what he is in spite of his circumstances, but because of them. Circumstances, as Reader Harris* once said, are like feather beds—very comfortable to he on top of, but immensely smothering if they get on top of you. Jesus Christ, by the Spirit of God, always keeps us on top of our circumstances." Speaking the Truth in Love, BradK |