Prayer (Part 1)

Last Sunday, Pastor Brendon ended his message with a challenge from John 14:13-14:

“Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.”

Instead of making prayer an obligation or duty, Pastor Brendon implored us to believe how generous God is to us. If we really believed that God would give us anything we ask in his name, we would pray. If we realized that our redemption is found in Christ alone, we would pray. Prayer was never meant to be a moral obligation for every Christian. Jesus saved us to have a relationship with God, so prayer is part of that joy.

You might be wondering what in the world does prayer have to do with counseling. But I think it’s on this very challenge to pray that our church will be able to effectively counsel one another. However, this means we need to change how we ask for prayer and how we pray. Since it is a lot to tackle at once, this blog post will focus on changing how we ask for prayer.

We've been learning that having close relationships with one another does not simply mean talking to one another or knowing things about each other. Just because we know a lot about each other, it doesn’t automatically make us care for one another. The best conversations are not ones where you tell me about the events of your day or week; they happen when I get to know how those events affected you – the thoughts, emotions, hopes, and fears. A close relationship means that what you say and do affects my life. It doesn’t matter very much to me if you can recite my schedule backwards and forwards or even if you know my secrets; I want to know you care.

However, this thinking seems to go out the window when we ask for prayer. (David Powlison writes a great article about asking for prayer requests here.) We ask for prayer for topics like “health, travel mercies, finances, doing well on a test, finding a job, or the salvation of unsaved relatives”. If it is not for those things, we often make our prayer requests very general like “pray that I know God better” or “pray for my future spouse”. God does care about these things, but his main focus is for us to know HIM. Prayer is where we meet God. Just like our close relationships don’t consist of an exchange of facts about each other, prayer deals with how God is affecting your life, right now. How is God challenging you? How is God reassuring you? How is God changing you? How is God showing his overflowing love and mercy for you? And on your side: how are you responding to God in your life? How are you grateful for Him? Are you angry that He has not given what you expected? Where are you stuck and need his help? How are you responding to other people? This is the arena where we meet God. This is where the most important issues in life are played out.

Dear Church, let’s meet with God. When we meet with each other, let’s ask for prayer and pray for each other in the things that matter.