“Your Father knows what things you have need of before you ask Him.” –Matthew 6:8.
Who wouldn’t like to lose weight without dieting? And, yes, we’d like to get healthy and have our muscles toned up while we sleep. Half the people I know would like to get a college degree without going to class or studying.
Forget it. Not going to happen.
In the same way, spiritual disciplines require purposeful effort from us. Whether we are fasting and enduring great tribulation for Jesus’ sake, or doing something as simple as studying our Sunday School lesson and offering grace before meals, conscious effort is required, and that means a strong focus on the Savior.
Prayer is hard work, we are told.
I respond that this is a half-truth. Overcoming our human tendency to “do it by myself” (like a petulant four-year-old) and our sinful insistence on hanging onto a sinful but enjoyable habit, those may indeed require discipline and effort. Making myself turn off the television or lay aside an enjoyable book to open God’s word and read and meditate and pray does require some effort from me.
But is prayer itself–talking with the Heavenly Father–actually work? Is it hard to talk to the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ who loved us and gave Himself for us our needs? Is it work to praise Him for His wondrous works?
Prayer should be as natural as breathing.
I take the position that praying to our wonderful Lord should be simple and natural and effortless.
Yep, you read that right.
In fact, we can pray without ever having to enroll in a class and without achieving superior status as a Christian. Even a child can pull this off.
There are so many reasons why prayer is easy and simple and should be natural and effortless. Here are several…
1) First, Romans 8:26 nails it: “We don’t pray very well.” (“We do not know how to pray as we should.”)
And that’s okay. (I love that statement! I knew I didn’t, but find it comforting that God’s word states it as the customary status for believers!)
Don’t miss that. It’s perfectly fine for us to not be able to pray as we should. After all, we don’t do anything else as well as we should. We do not worship the way we will around the throne in Heaven some day (to see how that will happen, read and enjoy Revelation 5). We do not know the Word or teach it as well as we should. Not only do we “see through a glass darkly” (I Corinthians 13:12), but everything else we do for Christ’s sake is in the same “dim” (partial, flawed) category.
That’s the whole point of “we walk by faith and not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).
2) Next, we’re told in Romans 8:26 that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us, and in Romans 8:34 that the Lord Jesus intercedes for us.
Here we have two members of the Trinity interceding with the Third.
Imagine that. (I cannot.)
Please pause for a second here and think about these two statements: both the Holy Spirit and the Lord Jesus are interceding for us. Wow. And in between these two statements, we have verse 31, telling us “God is for us.” (The ‘if God is for us’ means SINCE He is for us. The first 30 verses of Romans 8 established over and over again that the Father is for us!)
The great Oswald Chambers had a thought about the intercession of our Lord. He said, “Jesus Christ carries on intercession for us in heaven; the Holy Ghost carries on intercession in us on earth; and we the saints have to carry on intercession for all men.” Okay. I can’t get my mind around that totally, but I’m good with that, if that’s how it is.
3) Next, Matthew 6:8 says our Father knows what we need before we ask.
Nothing we say to Him in prayer will be a surprise. No request we offer will be news to Him.
He is way ahead of us when we stop and turn aside to pray. The young disciple says, “Why then do we pray, if He already knows what we need?” Answer: Look at the story of the healing of Jericho’s blind beggar at the end of Luke 18. Our Lord certainly knew exactly what this man needed. You and I do too! Even so, Jesus said, “What would you like me to do for you?” He wanted the man to articulate his request. “Lord,” he said, “I want to receive my sight.” And he got it!
Jesus knows what you need. The question is: Do you? And then, Will you entrust Him with this need? Will you ask Him?
4) “Your Heavenly Father will give good gifts to those who ask” (Matthew 7:11).
Asking is the condition. We’re told “you have not because you ask not” (James 4:2). But this means asking in faith.
If the Lord makes Himself available and all He wants is that I ask Him for whatever I need, then my failure to ask surely comes back to a failure to believe.
Prayer is need-driven and faith-powered. My needs drive me to my knees, but faith (belief in the Lord Jesus Christ) connects me with the Throne and makes this work.
5) “Ask and it shall be given you; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you” (Matthew 7:7).
Look at that. He’s literally begging us to ask.
Come on and ask! Please.
People say, “We should not treat God as a divine Santa Claus and go to Him with our list of requests.” I answer: Oh really? Look at all the times He urges us–almost begs us!–to “come on and ask!”
Are you asking Him for your daily needs? Your special needs? If not, why not?
Why we are not asking Him for our needs..
–Something is wrong with us.
–For one thing, we have mistakenly thought prayer was all about us! That we must say the right words, have sufficient faith, adopt the right posture, stay on our knees long enough. That we must earn the right to be heard by all our good works.
So foolish. we can never be good enough to deserve His love and His blessings.
It turns out, prayer is not about us at all.
–To those who think their prayers are not answered because their faith was insufficient, Jesus said, “If you had faith as a mustard seed, you could do miracles.” (Luke 17:6). That’s a smidgen of faith. I have that much, and I’m betting you do too.
So, just do it. Just pray.
There’s almost no way to get it wrong when we pray, if we will.
Dr. Chuck Kelley likes to say: “Nothing never happens when we pray.”
Brethren, let us pray.
Why aren’t you praying???