Wrestling With Prayer
I purposely titled this post wrestling with prayer rather than wrestling in prayer, although the latter is a good thing to do as well. Even though most Christians believe in the importance of prayer, we rarely ask the hard questions about the nature of prayer.
If I asked a random group of Christians from a variety of traditions if they believe in the power of prayer, I would likely get quite a few affirmatives with a generous amount of amens.
But how does prayer work? What happens when we pray? What should we expect? Here are some important questions.
Does God take into account our prayers?
At our church, like at many churches, we ask people for prayer requests and then we pray for them. But theologically, what do we expect will happen? It comes down to this: does God do something if we pray that God would not do if we did not pray?
Some Christians believe that God has already predetermined everything that will happen, everything from that hoped for promotion at work to that tragic airplane crash. Nothing could have stopped these events, not even prayer. Prayer is for changing our hearts rather than changing God’s mind.
Other Christians are convinced that prayers move God in some way. Do you want that person healed? If enough people pray and pray hard enough, God may heal them.
Why do we share prayer requests?
I was very sick about a decade ago and there were people all over Canada and the United States that were praying for me. Did having that many prayers help? Or would one prayer by myself or a close friend be sufficient?
Does God require a certain amount of prayers to answer a prayer and will God refuse if we miss the number by a couple of dozen? Widespread prayer seems helpful in some way, but is it something that is only personal or corporate encouragement or is there something more?
What does it mean to pray in Jesus’ name?
It is very common to hear Christians end their prayers with the words: “In Jesus’ name. Amen.” Why do we do that? Well, Jesus tells us to pray according to his name. The problem is that none of the prayers in the New Testament model that.
While I do normally pray like that, I do understand that Jesus did not mean that we must tack that phrase onto our prayers for them to be heard. It is about praying in the context of our relationship with Jesus.
But in what way are our prayers in Jesus’ name, other than being prayed by a Christian? Is every prayer prayed by a Christian automatically in Jesus’ name? Or is there something more to this.
Notice that I did not offer many answers to my questions. Prayer has been an important part of my life and I have had some very dramatic experiences from prayer. But I have no idea how prayer works? I am interested in finding out more, but my prayers are not dependant on my understanding the theology behind it.
How would you answer each of these questions?
