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Real Prayer is Communion with God so that there will be Common Thoughts between His Mind and Ours - Part 2

Tip! Note how frequently prayer is brought to are attention in the Holy Bible’s New Testament: “Continuing instant in prayer”; “Pray without ceasing”; “Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving”; “Be ye sober and watch unto prayer”; Christ’s clear call was “watch and pray.” What are all these and others, if it is not the will of God that men should pray?

Does anyone object that it is our privilege to do more than unfold our need before God? Are we reminded that God has, as it were, given us a blank check and invited us to fill it in? Is it said that the promises of God are all-inclusive, and that we may ask God for what we will? Then if this is so, we must call attention to the fact that it is necessary to compare Scripture with Scripture if we are to learn the full mind of God on any subject, and that when this is done we will discover God has qualified the promises given to praying souls by saying "If ye ask anything according to His will He heareth us" (1 John 5:14).

Real prayer is communion with God so that there will be common thoughts between His mind and ours. What is needed is for Him to fill our hearts with His thoughts and then His desires will become our desires flowing back to Him. Here then is the meeting-place between God's Sovereignty and Christian prayer: If we ask anything according to His will He hears us and if we do not so ask He does not hear us; as the Apostle James says, "Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts" or desires (James 4:3).

But didn't the Lord Jesus tell His disciples, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name, He will give it you" (John 16:23)? He did; but this promise does not give praying souls carte blanche. These words of our Lord are in perfect accord with those of the Apostle John: "If ye ask anything according to His will He heareth us." How is it we are to ask "in the name of Christ"? Surely it is very much more than just a prayer formula, the measly closing of our prayers with the words "in the name of Christ." To apply to God for anything in the name of Christ, it must be in keeping with what Christ is! To ask God in the name of Christ is as though Christ Himself were the person praying. We can only ask God for what Christ would ask. To ask in the name of Christ is therefore to set aside our own wills, accepting God's!

Tip! In (Phil. 4:6) we have these words about prayer: “Be careful for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.

I need to amplify our definition of prayer now. What is prayer? Prayer is not so much an act as it is an attitude-an attitude of dependency, dependency upon God. Prayer is a confession of our weakness, yes, of our complete helplessness. Prayer is the acknowledgment of our need and the spreading of it before God. I do not say that this is all there is in prayer, because it is not: but it is the essential, the primary element in prayer. I freely admit that I am quite unable to give a complete definition of prayer within the bounds of a brief sentence, or in any number of words. Prayer is both an attitude and an act, a human act, and yet there is the Divine element in it too, and it is this that makes an exhaustive analysis impossible as well as a poor attempt. But admitting this, I do insist again that prayer is fundamentally an attitude of dependency upon God. Therefore, prayer is the very opposite of dictating to God. Because prayer is an attitude of dependency, the one who really prays is submissive, submissive to the Divine will of God; and submission to the Divine will means that we are content for the Lord to supply our need according to the dictates of His own Sovereign pleasure. And hence it is that we say every prayer that is offered to God in this spirit is sure of meeting with an answer or response from Him.

Tip! The whole lesson culminates in asking for the Holy Spirit as the great objective point of all praying.

Here then is the reply to our opening question, and the scriptural solution to the seeming difficulty. Prayer is not the requesting of God to alter His purpose or for Him to form a new one. Prayer is the taking of an attitude of dependency upon God, the spreading of our need before Him, the asking for those things which are in accordance with His will, and therefore there is nothing whatever inconsistent between Divine Sovereignty and Christian prayer.

In closing I would give you a word of caution to safeguard you, the reader, against drawing a false conclusion from what has been said. I have not tried to show the whole teaching of Scripture on this subject of prayer, nor have we even attempted to discuss in general the complete problem of prayer; instead, I have confined ourselves, more or less, to a consideration of the relationship between God's Sovereignty and Christian prayer. What I have written is intended chiefly as a protest against much of the modern teaching, which so stresses the human element in prayer that the Divine side is almost entirely lost sight of.

In Jeremiah 10:23 we are told "It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps" (cf. Prov. 16:9); and yet in many of our prayers we push to be so bold to direct the Lord as to His way, and as to what He ought to do: even implying that if only he had the direction of the affairs of the world and of the church he would soon have things very different from what they are now. This cannot be denied: anyone with any spiritual discernment at all could not fail to detect this spirit in many of our modern prayer-meetings where the human (old nature) holds the commanding influence. How slow we all are to learn the lesson that the proud creature needs to be brought down to his knees and humbled into the dust. And this is where the very act of prayer is intended to put us. But people (in their usual wickedness) turn the footstool into a throne from whence they would direct the Almighty as to what He ought to do! Giving the onlooker the impression that if God had half the compassion that those who pray (?) have, all would quickly be right! Such is the arrogance of the old nature even in a child of God.

Tip! The gift of the Holy Spirit is one of the benefits flowing to us from the glorious presence of Christ at the right hand of God, and this gift of the Holy Spirit, together with all the other gifts of the enthroned Christ, are secured to us by prayer, as the condition.

Our main purpose in this article has been to emphasize the need for submitting, in prayer, our wills to God's. But it must also be added that prayer is much more than a religious exercise, and far more than a mechanical performance. Prayer is, indeed, a Divinely appointed means whereby we may obtain from God the things we ask, providing we ask for those things which are in accord with His will. This will have been in vain unless what has been written will lead both writer and reader to cry with a deeper earnestness than ever before, "Lord, teach us to pray" (Luke 11:1).

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