WORDS FROM W.W. June 28, 2012
This week Colorado has been on fire!
About a dozen fires in different parts of the state. For me, it became too real when my wife, youngest daughter, and I stood on a hillside a couple of blocks from our house and watched the fires that were raging on the other side of the city, less then ten miles away.
One naysayer used the fires to proclaim that God was raining down fire on godlessness. It seems that blanket statements like that are often uttered with conviction…and little forethought. If God was raining fire down on us, why just the west side of the city? Does that mean that there is a higher level of spirituality on the east side?
We frown on such prophetic indictments, because they seem to be voiced as if they are the very words of God.
And yet, most of us…all of us…at one time or another have scratched our heads over why God didn’t move like a mighty wind in answering our prayers.
The struggle of prayer, as well as the adventure of prayer, is trying to get in rhythm with the movement of God, instead of determining how God should move. Fires ravaging homes drive us to our knees in prayerfully moving God to action. Many times his answer is right in step with our request; or perhaps our request is right in step with what he is about.
Our motives for praying often overshadow our belief in what God is capable of doing. It’s hard to trust God enough to not give him advice. It’s difficult to not light the runway of where we want him to land.
Some might ask the question, therefore, “Why even pray?” The answer is tucked inside the question, but worded a little differently.
Why DO you pray? Is it to avoid problems and crises? Is it to seek what God would have you be about? Is it to instruct the Instructor?
Recently I passed a church that had a sign out front promoting a new series that was beginning. The sign said “How to pray and get results!” It sounded like a class on how to get rich quick. Think about it! The word “pray” could have been replaced by a number of other words and still had the same objective.
Switch it with “invest”. Put in “sell on eBay”. Or “how to parent your kids and get results.”
Regardless of what you insert for “pray” it still falls into the line of trying to get something that I don’t have, or be somebody that I’m not.
When we approach prayer like that God becomes like a customer to impress so we can finish a sell. Perhaps that’s where a lot of us are in our relationship with him, trying to finish a sell.
Words from WW Blog 