Known as Needy

Welcome to the next series, a dialogue on prayer. I'm excited to explore this weighty core activity of Christian life and see what the Bible has to say about it! We say a lot of things about prayer, but how many of them find their roots in Scripture? What IS prayer? Why do we do it? What good does it do? Let's find out what Scripture has to say!

We start with a look at how we are supposed to pray, and what that tells about what prayer is. This lessen comes from Jesus Himself, speaking to His disciples. He has just finished talking about how the Gentiles of the day went to their temples and repeated chants to their gods - an exercise that Jesus calls "meaningless" (Matthew 6:7). He then says this to His disciples:

So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. - Matthew 6:8

 Jesus here implies that the Gentiles use repetition to get their needs heard by their gods, a principle that still makes it into our psyche. We often think that we need to fervently repeat our prayers in order for them to be heard and that if we only knew the 'right way' to pray, then we would get more answers. From our limited perspective, it makes sense.

But, Jesus says, God knows your chrego (needs in Greek). He knows what is necessary for your life, and He knows how and when to best give it to you. Think about it for a moment. The Bible tells us that God made us in His image. If God made us, then wouldn't He know what I need probably even better than I do? Yes. So, if God knows my needs, then why pray?

To move forward we need to put the two halves of the statement together with some other pieces of God we understand. God knows our needs before we come to Him, so giving Him a wishlist or a desperate plea isn't the sole point of prayer, since He already knows what we're asking for. Since He knows this, we're told not to use meaningless repetition in our prayer. Connecting the dots is hard until we think back to the fact that God is a triune being, full of love and finding joy in community and relationship. God wants us to talk with Him, to share with Him our needs and come to depend on Him for those needs. God wants us to confide in Him, trust in Him, and to talk with Him. We're not supposed to use meaningless repetition because meaningless is mindless, and if prayer is about relational conversation, then anything mindless is wasted time. No wonder, when Jesus lists the greatest commandments, He tells us that we must love the Lord our God with all our minds (Matthew 22:37)! God wants us to put our intellectual and mental energy into relationship with Him - a fact that should display itself clearly in our prayer lives. It also means that we need to learn to listen as much as we speak - another trait of the best conversationalists.

May we learn to pray as God intended - seeking not a captive audience but a conversation partner. May we revel in the chance to talk with God and never take it for granted. When we die and find ourselves in heaven, may the only change to our habits be that then we see God face to face as we talk about it all. Amen.