Obstacles To A Life Of Prayer Series

So let me ask you: are you willing to think of prayer in that way? Are you willing to become a student of prayer? In our website survey a few months ago, 80% of respondents to the survey said they wanted to hear a series on prayer more than any other topic. That’s great, but what if I tell you that all you¡¦re going to learn in this series is how important it is that the series just be the beginning -- that you dedicate yourself to a lifetime of learning the lifestyle of prayer, that you become a student of prayer. That is what I want to urge us toward today -- a lifestyle of the learning of prayer that we can embrace together.

Another obstacle to learning to pray is our expectations of prayer. Friday as I was finishing up this message I got a call and was told that the mother of one of my former youth group students was diagnosed with terminal cancer that morning and has six months to live, and would I consider going up to the hospital. She’s 51 years old.

Instantly I got the feeling I always get when I am asked to intervene in one of these situations -- a feeling of complete uselessness -- the embarrassing sense that I have nothing to offer in the face of such tragedy. I have to be honest and admit to you that normally in these circumstances I might say a prayer on my way to the hospital that God would give me the words to say, but since I was right in the middle of writing a sermon on prayer, I decided to kneel at my altar in the office and devote some real attention to prayer before leaving. And as I prayed I realized that I was nervous because my expectations were wrong. I had always hoped God would show up through my words in the hospital so that I didn’t have to feel useless. I was terrified of being useless. But as I prayed I sensed God saying to me, "My friend, the only time you’re of any use to me is when you realize how useless you are. The more you can let go of yourself the more you can cling to me. And the more you cling to me, the more it will be ME you are bringing to those hurting people, and not YOU. And honestly, are YOU really what they need?"

And I understood the answer. Of course not. Of course I’m not what they need. But so many times I have prayed that prayer to God -- God, please help me not to be ineffective. Each time I pray it I think I’m praying it because God won’t be able to get through if I’m ineffective. But what if God WANTS me to be ineffective? What if it’s God’s desire that I not know what to say? What if that’s God’s way of pushing me toward silence, toward holding the hand of a dying person and offering nothing but presence?

We pray with wrong expectations anytime we think that the actual words of our prayers will somehow overrule the whole orientation of our lives toward or away from God. In other words, prayer forms us gradually, and helps us become containers who are capable of carrying the presence of God in us. Prayer is not a magical force that instantly transforms people or situations by the words of the prayer --’it is not an incantation. So when I pray and ask God to help me know the right things to say in a hospital, the far more important issue is not whether I am praying at that exact moment, but whether I am "prayed up" -- the extent to which prayer has already oriented me toward the power of God, and made me sensitive to spiritual things. Oftentimes we want to live however we want to live, then expect prayer to work like some kind of magic potion to change the consequences of our ungodly actions and decisions. Prayer does not work that way. Prayer orients us toward God. The more we pray, the more we are oriented toward God and God’s point of view.