I love the factual side of Christianity and how we can study theology. The hard facts give me confidence. I’m into objective truth and apologetics. I know what I believe and why I believe it. But as much as I love processing data about God, He is not a field of science. Treating God like an electromagnetic force denies Him His most important characteristic – His personality. God has a mind. He thinks, He feels, He knows. Knowledge of something is fine, but knowledge is not knowing, especially when it comes to personalities. You can’t use a scientific approach to knowing a person. It’s all about communication. And communication with God is all about prayer.
I’ve always thought prayer was important, but I can’t say it’s always been meaningful. To be honest, it’s been downright difficult and something I have often avoided. Prayer has been like some sort of Christian chore, dutiful but not delightful. So what’s the problem here? Why don’t I like communicating with God? His fault? Or mine? Maybe it is prayer itself that is the problem.
Prayer is the medium that carries our thoughts, feelings and requests to God. But like a phone line, if it breaks up or doesn’t work properly, even though we may love God and want to communicate, we won’t be able to talk. Faith is what makes prayer work. Communication between us and God, and also between each other, all depends on faith.
Imagine I come to your place to hear your testimony. As you start to share I face the wall, shut my eyes and put my fingers in my ears. Even though you still believe in my existence, you would stop talking immediately. Let’s repeat the scenario. But this time I sit down, face you and look into your eyes.
Can you see the difference faith makes? Your faith in my existence never wavered. But only in the second scenario did you have faith to believe I was hearing what you were saying. Have you ever been in a conversation and half way through you lose faith that the other person is actually listening? It immediately affects what you say or whether you continue to say anything at all. Faith is what enables us to speak. Until we have enough faith to believe the other person is listening there’s no point in talking.
The breakdown in prayer is not over God’s existence. It’s simply this: we don’t really believe He hears every word we say. We say we do, but our reluctance to talk and the things we say indicate otherwise. Speech flows freely when we know we are being heard in real time. Prayer is dead without faith. Prayer will only come alive when we realise, by faith, that Jesus is actually with us, facing us, listening to our every word. Our prayers don’t have to reach heaven, only our lips!
I have seen this simple truth change people’s prayer lives (mine included). People who claimed they couldn’t pray found meaningful words flowing freely from their heart when they started to believe, by faith, God was really hearing them. If you can talk (or think) you can pray.
When someone prays with child-like faith, knowing that the God of the universe is listening, he or she is personally connecting with Jesus. No wonder the Bible exhorts us to ‘pray without ceasing’ (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Knowledge, apologetics, theology and the like are all very important but they cannot replace faith-filled personal prayer. Prayer is the means for us to move past knowledge of God to knowing God. Prayer is the Christian’s life-blood.
The correct concept is to think of prayer as the breath in our lungs and the blood from our hearts. Our blood flows and our breathing continues ‘without ceasing’; we are not even conscious of it, but it never stops. — Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, (May 26)
Because prayer is so important it’s no surprise all hell is against it. My prayer life is the major area under constant attack. It’s the biggest battle of my life. Prayer is totally repulsive to Satan. The demons are well aware of the truth in James 5:16, ‘The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working’. Shutting down effective prayer is the primary goal of the kingdom of darkness.
In the Christian life prayer truly is ‘the breath in our lungs’. Its importance cannot be overstated. But before we rush in, let us take a minute and check that we actually believe God is listening. Once our faith has made the connection we can speak confidently, knowing that our Saviour hears every word. Praying in faith, ‘without ceasing’, will change our lives, our homes, our communities… maybe even the world.
(All Bible quotes from the ESV)