Prayer Which Moves God's Heart

Recently, my 7-year-old grandson Alonso told me that his daddy, my son, carries around a lot of money in his pocket. I asked him how much and he told me: $1,200! He turned to me, “Papa, how much do you carry in your pocket?” I said, “$20” and he replied, “That is so sad.”

Sometimes we act like we have nothing, when we are the children of God. We have a heavenly Father who loves us with an everlasting love! We mope like we’ve got nothing. (Of course, most of the time, I don’t carry any cash at all. Some of you are thinking, “I wish I had $20 in MY pocket.”) Yet, we are the beloved children of an Almighty God who is ready to hear us when we pray. Respond to us when we ask. We have the greatest wealth in the universe AND prayer connects us to the Creator of the Universe, who owns everything, and His Son who holds the universe together, is at our beck and call whenever we speak to Him.

Prayer a neglected discipline

Yet, prayer is one of the most neglected Christian disciplines. I’ve thought hard about this. Why do we not pray more? For most of us we are distracted. We are like Mary and Martha. The Son of God is teaching and her sister Martha is so busy in the kitchen and caring for their guests that she has little time to spend at the feet of Jesus. Yet, Mary is there, content to listen, to converse with Christ. Martha became upset that Mary was leaving her to do all the work and Jesus said, “Martha, you’re troubled about a great many things but there is really only one thing that is vitally important and Mary has found it.” (My paraphrase of Luke 10:41,42)

Sometimes we like we’ve got nothing when we are the children of God. We have a heavenly Father who loves us with an everlasting love! We mope like we’ve got nothing. (Of course, most of the time, I don’t carry any cash at all. Some of you are thinking, “I wish I had $20 in MY pocket.”) Yet, we are the beloved children of an Almighty God who is ready to hear us when we pray. Respond to us when we ask. We have the greatest wealth in the universe AND prayer connects us to the Creator of the Universe, who owns everything, and His Son who holds the universe together, is at our beck and call whenever we speak to Him.

Prayer a neglected discipline

Yet, prayer is one of the most neglected Christian disciplines. Why do we not pray more? For most of us we are distracted. We are like Mary and Martha. The Son of God is teaching and her sister Martha is so busy in the kitchen and caring for their guests that she has little time to spend at the feet of Jesus. Yet, Mary is there, content to listen, to converse with Christ. Martha became upset that Mary was leaving her to do all the work and Jesus said, “Martha, you’re troubled about a great many things but there is really only one thing that is vitally important and Mary has found it.” (My paraphrase of Luke 10:41,42)

Why distracted?

Why are we distracted? I have a theory about one reason we don’t pray. Deep down in the recesses of our hearts, we wonder if our prayers make any difference. Am I speaking to anybody this morning? Sometimes you feel like your prayers reach the ceiling and no further. And part of the reason is not that you don’t believe in God or that God cares, it is that God has already pretty much decided everything in advance and we don’t really need to pray. Have you ever felt that way?

Passive prayers

In fact, when we pray publicly quite often we pepper our requests with “if You will.” Nothing wrong with that, actually, but it does seem that if we are going to ask God for something we would do so with boldness, trying to be persuasive, not passive in our requests. “Dear Lord, please heal sister Smith, if it be your will.” “Dear Father, please bring our family together, heal my father, help us to grow spiritually, if it be thy will.”

“If it be thy will.” Of course, it’s God’s will that we grow spiritually and that more people come to Christ, and that our families be united and our sick be healed. But there is this sense, I’ve experienced it, that our prayers have little effect on God because God has already made up His mind about things. He knows what’s best so why am I giving Him advice, asking Him for things, when I have finite knowledge and wisdom, and God knows everything and He knows the future and exactly why am I praying anyway? :-)