If we were honest about the prayers we tend to pray most often, they are prayers that attempt to get out God to alter our temporal circumstances. There are very few of that type of prayer recorded in the scriptures. Prayers in the Bible are primarily focused on the greatness and glory of our God, on His eternal purposes in people and in the world, and how we can be captured by the life of our God lived in us.

There is little resemblance to such biblical praying in most of the prayers offered in the institutional church culture today. As noted in the previous post on prayer, our prayers are far too often selfish and temporal in focus. The prayers in scripture, from those in the Psalms and prophetic books to those of Christ and the apostles recorded int he New Testament, are distinctly God-focused and eternal in scope and content.

The source of this discrepancy is our preoccupation with our temporal existences and priorities. One’s praying reflect one’s heart’s priorities. Our prayers too often indicate that we are busy with finding our own lives and fulfilling our own priorities to the exclusion of the life of our God in us and His priorities in the world. This despite the fact that the only recorded statement Jesus made four separate times in the Gospel records was this: “He who find his own life will lose it, but he who loses his life for my sake will find it.“

An honest look at most of our prayers should terrify us, for our true priorities are primarily about finding our own lives as we envision them. The condemnation of Jesus on such priorities in unequivocal. Yet if you pick up most books on the topic of “How to Pray So God Will Answer,” they continue to feed these priorities. They offer formulas, scripts, specific requests, and prayer patterns to use to move God toward our benefit. Such formulaic praying misses the core purpose of prayer, which as stated in the previous post is focused not on us or what we want but on our God and His life lived in us.

Perhaps the reason may people are wearied by praying and bewildered by an apparent lack of direct answers to specific prayers is that our motives are out of step with those laid out in the scriptures. James spoke to this problem very pointedly: “What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is the source not your pleasures that wage war in your body’s parts? You lust and do not have, so you commit murder. And you are envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask.  You ask and do not receive, because you ask with the wrong motives, so that you may spend what you request on your pleasures” (emphasis mine). Our selfish motives, the seeking of our own living in our praying, is that to which James is speaking here. We need to pay attention.

 How important is this matter? It goes beyond “getting answers to our prayers,” as it is so often framed. Read more of James on this: “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” His warning is clear – our prayers may reveal that we are not really friends of our God, but functionally His enemies. Ouch.

This is not simply a matter of a change of prayer wordings. It is a matter of a change of heart. As stated earlier, our prayers reflect our heart’s priorities. It is to the heart priorities we must go in repentance and for restoration to the life and purposes of our God in us. For more information that heart change, and for books that can help you work with your God on such a heart change, go back to the posts on this blog from early April onward. (That seemingly shameless plug reflects content I have been focusing on of late.)

If you want to pray more along the lines of the models for prayer we have in scripture, I will post several examples over the next few post. Below is the first, and one of my favorites. As you read it and pray it for yourself and others, let the purposes of our God begin to dawn on you. They are enormous, eternal, and entirely focused on His life and will in you.

Ephesians 1:17-19  “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of our God’s calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.”

Image via author, Mutt Lake along the Beartooth High Lakes Route, Wyoming-Montana border.