In January we began with messages on the Lord’s Prayer. Pastor Marcus Gainey preached from 1 Samuel chapter one on Hannah’s prayer. Often we get busy doing ministry, without first stopping and taking time to pray. As the year begins, I want to emphasize the importance of prayer, and how prayer relates to other aspects of our relationship with God.
The well known “Wheel Diagram” from The Navigators shows how prayer is one of four important “spokes” of the wheel, along with the Word (Bible), witnessing, and fellowship. Prayer is more than just one-quarter of the Christian life, however. All of the aspects of living as a Christian are made possible by the Holy Spirit and by prayer. Prayer is our response to God and his grace to us in Christ. Prayer is one of the two primary means by which we have fellowship with God, the Bible being the other means. In prayer and Scripture we both pour our heart out to God and also listen to Him and learn from Him.
Prayer and our Emotions
Prayer relates to everything else, because prayer is the platform to express our emotions to God and process them with His counsel.
Consider Psalm 42:3-4 ESV “My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?” These things I remember, as I pour out my soul, how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.” David is upset because he is discouraged and he feels distant from God. Going to God with our authentic, raw, or changing emotions is crucial to develop our relationship with God.
God can handle any emotion we have, even if we are angry at Him. At an awards ceremony in my daughter’s elementary school, every child in her 3rd grade class got some kind of award for attendance, reading, math, and other subjects, EXCEPT FOR ONE BOY. I was so upset, I was shouting at God on the way home in my car, “Lord, WHY do people have to be singled out in that way!” Going to God is the best way to handle all our emotions, otherwise, our unresolved, negative emotions come out sinfully in other settings.
Prayer and our Thoughts
In Prayer, God often reveals our motives and inner thoughts.
It always helps me when I go into a new meeting and the person leading the meeting says, “Tell me what you hope to gain out of today’s meeting.” Personally it sets me at ease, but it also gives me the freedom to say, “This is why I am here today.” In a church setting, the freedom to share our inner thoughts or desires with others takes time to develop. We can go through the mechanics of church fellowship, group Bible study, and worship, without revealing to others what might be unspoken desires and expectations. It always helps me when I go into a new meeting and the person leading the meeting says, “Tell me what you hope to gain out of today’s meeting.” Personally it sets me at ease, but it also gives me the freedom to say, “This is why I am here today.”
But with God, He already knows our every thought! Prayer to our Heavenly Father is THE PLACE where we can be completely open and confess our desires, longings, hopes, and dreams. It is also the time when God will show us how our motives are sinful, where our thinking is not based on truth, and where we lack a desire for the right things. Psalm 139:23–24 reads, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” Prayer is crucial, because through that time, God addresses our thoughts and motives towards all our responsibilities of daily life.
Prayer and our Will
Prayer is the “locker room” where God forms our priorities and our wills.
In the Lord’s Prayer, we say “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” To use a simile, time in prayer is like the pre-game or halftime locker room speech from our divine coach. Our Heavenly Father reminds us why we are in the game, and he tells us what we need to lay aside as well as what we need to focus on going forward. In prayer we acknowledge God’s kingdom priorities and also yield our priorities so that we are following His agenda.
When someone prays about serving God and signs up to serve in the nursery or children’s class, it is not only because “the church needs someone,” or “the ministry leader asked me to do it,” or “I have a sense of duty.” It is because they have aligned their priority with God’s priority: “One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.” (Psalm 145:4) This resolve of one’s will is a healthy “fear of the LORD.” It is through prayer that God grants us the Holy Spirit power and determination to put Him first.
In prayer we declare His value as infinitely more than anything this world could provide, and we say “Yes” to whatever He might ask of us. Why do so many churches and ministries lack Holy Spirit power? It is because they have not wrestled with God in prayer to commit their wills to Him.
Prayer is not just one component of living as a Christian, it is the essential means of spending time with our Savior.