WHAT PRAYER IS NOT
Time won’t allow us to address each of the definitions, but let’s talk briefly about a few common ways people think about prayer.
Exodus 33:11 tells us that Moses talked with God face-to-face as a man talks to a friend. I think it’s possible to build a faulty theology of prayer based on a misapplication of this verse. While part of prayer is talking to God as you would a friend, this definition by itself is an oversimplification.
Jesus was God in the flesh. So every time the disciples had a conversation with Jesus, they were talking to God just as they would talk to anyone else. If prayer meant merely talking to God, and Jesus was God, then shouldn’t we see every conversation someone had with Jesus as prayer? I don’t think Jesus saw it that way.
When Philip asks Jesus to show them the Father, Jesus replies, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Jesus seems to say, “Look no further. If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen God” (see Heb. 1:3). When the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray, however, he doesn’t respond in the same way. He doesn’t say, “Well, if you’ve talked to me, you’ve talked to the Father.” Instead, he gives them instructions. He gives them a template on how to address someone other than the person standing right in front of them: “Our Father” (Matt. 6:9–15; see also Luke 11:1–4).
While prayer is more than casual conversation with our Creator, it’s far from twisting God’s arm to get what we want. God is all-powerful. We can’t twist his arm. He’s too strong. We can’t barter with him any more than my infant daughter can barter with me—she doesn’t own anything I need or want. We can’t demand anything from God because it’s impossible for someone without needs to be coerced.
See what I mean by the difficulty of understanding what prayer is? It’s not as cut-and-dried as the definitions we may have grown up with and taken for granted.
WHAT IS PRAYER? GOD’S PRESCRIPTION FOR LIFE IN A FALLEN WORLD
Think of prayer as God’s prescription for life in a fallen world. This prescription works like any other. Imagine being prescribed a medication for an ailment that’s been bothering you. You may leave the doctor’s office with nothing but a sheet of paper, but something changes. What causes you to smile even when your present sickness is severe and your circumstances haven’t changed? One word: hope. A prescription isn’t the medication itself. It merely connects you to the medicine. Your illness may still be bothering you, but the prescription reminds you that your sickness is temporary because you’ve found a solution.
Like a prescription, prayer eases our concerns before repairing our circumstances. Take Psalm 13. We’re unsure of the exact circumstance that led David to pen this psalm, but everyone who reads it has had similar experiences.
Psalm 13 begins with David’s depression: “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (v. 1). But by the end, David is celebrating deliverance: “I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me” (v. 6). The psalm is only six verses long. How did David go from depression to deliverance that quickly? Not by his circumstances changing, but by taking his concerns to God, asking him to do what he said he would do, and being confident that he would do it.
David learns that prayer is more about “Will you? Won’t you?” than it is about “When will you?” Though he starts out concerned with the timing of God, he resolves by the end of the psalm to rejoice in the God who loves him and will deliver him. God’s character and promises preserved David’s joy, even when his circumstance hadn’t yet changed. Like a prescription, prayer provided the hope that David needed to persevere: God has made a promise, and he always makes good on his promises.
[1] James R. Estep Jr., Michael J. Anthony, and Gregg R. Allison, A Theology for Christian Education (Nashville: B&H, 2008), 6.
Content taken from Prayer: How Praying Together Shapes the Church by John Onwuchekwa, ©2018. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.
