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Why would Jesus ask his Father for something he knows he wouldn’t do? But reason is only part of who we are as image bearers of God. Desire, feelings, and passion are also part of who we are. If we remember that Jesus is a person and not a robot, then it makes perfect sense.
He wants us to lose all confidence in ourselves because “apart from [Jesus] you can do nothing”; he wants us to have complete confidence in him because “whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit” (John 15:5).
All of Jesus’ teaching on prayer in the Gospels can be summarized with one word: ask. His greatest concern is that our failure or reluctance to ask keeps us distant from God.
Before you can abide, the real you has to meet the real God. Ask anything.
If you are going to take Jesus’ offer of “ask anything” seriously, what is the first thing you have to do? Any child will tell you. You have to ask, and in order to ask, you have to reflect on what you want. Now it starts getting complicated.
For example, we balk at praying, God, I want a vacation home. Would you get me one? We don’t mind acting selfishly, but talking selfishly is embarrassing.
But he wants to be part of all the decisions we make. He wants our material needs to draw us into our soul needs. This is what it means to abide—to include him in every aspect of our lives.
Which is easier, confessing impure thoughts to a mature friend or to God? The friend is tougher. That feels real. We need to ask the body of Christ, Jesus’ physical presence on earth, the same questions we ask God.
If you isolate praying from the rule of Jesus by not involving other Christians, you’ll end up doing your own will.
Possibly God did confirm it. It is also possible that you used prayer as a spiritual cover for “doing your own thing.” We can mask our desires even from ourselves.
see Elephant on the Brain
One reason we don’t ask a mature friend these questions is Western individualism.
When we need advice, we find a wise person, ask him or her a question, and listen to the answer. It seldom occurs to us to do this with God. For starters, we don’t know how God will answer. We don’t hear an audible voice, so we dismiss the possibility of God speaking into our lives.
Without realizing it, we are operating out of an Enlightenment mind-set that denies the possibility of an infinite God speaking personally into our lives.
Guidance means I’m driving the car and asking God which way to go. Wisdom is richer, more personal. I don’t just need help with my plans; I need help with my questions and even my own heart.
At the heart of this journal entry is weakness. I was not just asking God for advice—that would have left me in control. I was keenly aware that I didn’t have the resources to face the next two years of my life. I wasn’t even asking God to be my partner. I was bowing as I asked. I was abiding. Such dependence is not natural for me.
Writing those questions in my prayer notebook was a form of surrender. I was at odds with the spirit of our age and its quest for unlimited freedom and self-expression. Instead, I wanted to be in harmony with my Creator.
CHAPTER 17 WHAT WE DON’T ASK FOR “Your Kingdom Come”
Below is a partial list of kingdom prayers that we seldom ask, followed by a more in-depth discussion. Change in others (too controlling, too hopeless) Change in me (too scary) Change in things I don’t like in our culture (too impossible)
most men don’t pray thoughtfully for their wives; they just whine or withdraw. When they do pray, they often simply want their own lives to be pain free. Men will work at making money, keeping the yard neat, or helping the kids in sports, but many don’t work at or think about things that last.
The fatalism inherent in so much modern psychology immobilizes us as well. Emotional states are sacred. If I’m grumpy, I have a right to feel that way and to express my feelings. Everyone around me simply has to “get over it.” One of the worst sins, according to pop psychology, is to suppress your emotions. So to pray that I won’t be angry feels unauthentic, as if I am suppressing the real me.
Until we see how strong our own will is, we can’t understand the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer—“your will be done”
Sin is complicated. We are never a passive observer, dispensing wisdom and justice. We are part of the mess. My solution to the problem made it more complex. That’s why we can’t afford to do anything on our own.
Jesus begins the sermon by telling you he is going to go through your life and close all the doors to human power and glory.
If you do what Jesus says in chapter 5, you start to feel spiritual.
In Matthew 6, Jesus deals with wanting to look spiritual.
Then Jesus closes the door to getting your security from money.
So not only do you have to give up money, but you have to give up worrying about money (6:25-34). Two more doors close to human power and glory.
As you begin Matthew 7, you have a new view of the world. You’ve learned how to put God at the center. Everywhere you look, people are so caught up with stuff. Now Jesus taps you on the shoulder and says, “Stop judging.
Instead of using your insights into other people’s issues as a spiritual hammer, Jesus wants you to take these insights and deepen your own repentance (7:1-5).
Having closed all your doors, Jesus opens the door to prayer and tells you how he gets things done (7:7). He asks for help from his Father.
Prayer is the positive side of the surrendered will. As you stop doing your own will and wait for God, you enter into his mind. You begin to remain in him . . . to abide. This is the praying life.
Notice Sue’s underlying assumption: “It all depends on me. If I don’t show him, no one else will.” God is absent from her thinking;
Sue is in charge of her life, determined to make her kingdom pain free. Even if she prayed, prayer would just be another weapon in her arsenal of control.
Self-will and prayer are both ways of getting things done. At the center of self-will is me, carving a world in my image, but at the center of prayer is God, carving me in his Son’s image.
What would happen if Sue puts off self-will? She doesn’t know. How will God intervene in her husband’s life? What does God want to do in her life? What beams will she discover in her own eye? Forgiving her husband would mean losing control.
I often find that when God doesn’t answer a prayer, he wants to expose something in me. Our prayers don’t exist in a world of their own. We are in dialogue with a personal, divine Spirit who wants to shape us as much as he wants to hear us.
Until we become convinced we can’t change our child’s heart, we will not take prayer seriously.
She has passively accepted the world as it is. Like the ancient Greeks, she is trapped by the Fates. When we do this, life takes on a fixed, given quality. Prayer becomes pointless.
No, it was actually a powerless prayer. I prayed because I was weak. I wasn’t trying to control God. I certainly wasn’t in control of Emily. I was simply praying God’s own heart back to him. I couldn’t imagine him not answering such a prayer.
The fact that we know our king or father is flawed means we know what a good father should do. Because we are created in the image of the triune God, we have an instinctive knowledge of how a father should love. If we didn’t know what a good father was, we couldn’t critique our own.
CHAPTER 21 UNANSWERED PRAYER Understanding the Patterns of Story
It hurts to hope in the face of continued failure, so you try to stop hurting by giving up on hope.
God takes everyone he loves through a desert. It is his cure for our wandering hearts, restlessly searching for a new Eden.
The first thing that happens is we slowly give up the fight. Our wills are broken by the reality of our circumstances. The things that brought us life gradually die. Our idols die for lack of food.
The desert becomes a window to the heart of God. He finally gets your attention because he’s the only game in town. You cry out to God so long and so often that a channel begins to open up between you and God. When driving, you turn off the radio just to be with God. At night you drift in and out of prayer when you are sleeping. Without realizing it, you have learned to pray continuously. The clear, fresh water of God’s presence that you discover in the desert becomes a well inside your own heart.
The best gift of the desert is God’s presence.
CHAPTER 22 HEBREW LAMENTS Relearning Desert Praying
Laments do feel disrespectful. We feel uncomfortable praying this way to God. We read these prayers in the Psalms, but we don’t actually pray them.
Laments might seem disrespectful, but in fact they are filled with faith—a raw, pure form of faith that simply takes God at his word.
If you don’t lament over the broken things in your world, then your heart shuts down.
