A Prayer Problem

Prayer is talking with a person, who happens to be God.

If my definition of prayer is accurate, then most prayers are not really prayers at all.

Now I get it if, at first blush, you find my definition sounding possibly sacrilegious. It may be misunderstood that I am bringing God down to my level as a human being.

What I mean is that God has a personality and more to the point, he wants to be known for who he really is and not a nebulous concept. We are the same way. We want others to treat us, not as things or annoyances or as irrelevant, but for who we really are. That’s why our names are important. God feels the same way we do and we, in a sense, feel in a way similar to the way he does. This means we can often understand God better for who he is by seeing what it is he created in us that we really value.

For one thing, we are linked to our own names in very deep ways. With this insight, we can study the names God gives to himself and learn a great deal about his personality this way.

We also have in common with God, more than we do with other living things like plants and animals, the ability to communicate using words as mental symbols. In fact, just like God, we too create with our words. It’s just that God creates from nothing to everything, and man creates on top of God’s creation to something else or something more.

Now to the prayer problem.

Take your last prayer and imagine sitting down with someone you respect and delivering it as a list of talking points. Then imagine that once you have finished talking, you get up and walk away not giving the other person an opportunity to say what is on his mind. Do you believe your relationship will grow deeper? How can it? It’s all about you.

“But OB,” you push back fairly, “God doesn’t talk with me the way other people do – and I don’t want to play chess by moving both sides of the board pretending I am playing with a secret friend.”

A fair point. But let’s go back to the creative power of God’s words. By his words he spoke everything into being – which means it was not a random accident, but intentional and planned. In addition, God continued to speak and act through the generations with people who spoke back and behaved in ways both good and bad that we can learn a great deal from about who this God is and what he values.

So, God doesn’t directly speak to you the way your friend does. Let’s let God speak to you the way he chooses. But first, let’s ask him to do so by praying our request.

Dear Lord, as we open your Word, please speak through it, and help us manage our lives today. Amen.

Now I have selected a reading from the fifth book of the Old Testament. The passage is part of a speech by Moses to the newly formed Nation of Israel, given just before he dies and they enter the Promise Land after wandering in the desert for forty years. Because a generation died off in the wilderness (those 40 years and older, with two exceptions) it meant it was necessary to instruct this younger generation, who did not live as slaves in Egypt, even though they had heard all the stories many times their whole lives.

So read the passage and pull from it what you can clearly understand and look for attributes of God that have not changed. Live and grow by applying God’s word to your life. If parts of the passage confuse you, ask God to give you understanding. This is what an active personal Bible study and prayer life look like.

Deuteronomy 4:32-40 (English Standard Version)

32 “For ask now of the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and ask from one end of heaven to the other, whether such a great thing as this has ever happened or was ever heard of. 
33 Did any people ever hear the voice of a god speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and still live? 
34 Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, and by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great deeds of terror, all of which the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? 
35 To you it was shown, that you might know that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him. 
36 Out of heaven he let you hear his voice, that he might discipline you. And on earth he let you see his great fire, and you heard his words out of the midst of the fire. 
37 And because he loved your fathers and chose their offspring after them and brought you out of Egypt with his own presence, by his great power, 
38 driving out before you nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in, to give you their land for an inheritance, as it is this day, 
39 know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. 
40 Therefore you shall keep his statutes and his commandments, which I command you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for all time.”