The Purpose of Prayer

            The purpose of prayer?  For most people, prayer is the asking God for what they want.  While we should bring our needs before God, there is more to prayer than submitting our Christmas list to God.     

            At the end of Matthew 9, Jesus points out to the disciples that the fields are white unto harvest.  The disciples are commanded to pray that God would provide workers for that harvest.

            The next story (Matthew 10:1ff) has Jesus bringing the disciples back together and sending them out in teams of two to proclaim the Gospel and minister to the needs of others.  The disciples become the answer to the prayer for laborers.

            As Rees Howell observed, “One can never be a true intercessor until he is first willing to be part of the answer to his own prayers.”

            How often we pray that God will do something and yet never ask how we can be the channel through which the answer comes.  We pray for the salvation of others while never sharing our faith.  We pray for the hungry without sharing bread.  We pray for missionaries without going out ourselves.

            We should not be surprised if one day we ask for the Lord to do something only to hear Him say, “Go, do it.”  Prayer is not to be just on our knees but also on our feet as we move forward to carry out the prayer.  The purpose of prayer is not receiving.  The purpose of prayer is to receive our marching orders from the Supreme Commander.

The Cry of Wisdom

Proverbs 1:20-33 paints a picture of wisdom as a woman crying aloud in the streets.  She seeks and calls out to all.  She is not elitist or exclusive; her offer is available to all.

Yet, despite her accessibility, she is rejected.  Those who reject do so to their own destruction.  Wisdom can only laugh at their foolishness and the pain it brings to them—she did all she could do—it did not have to be this way.

Had they responded, she would have filled them with her thoughts, her wisdom.  Instead, they focused on their lives of simplistic foolishness and mockery.  As fools, they mocked at wisdom.

When their destruction comes, they cry out for wisdom but it is too late; the damage is done.  Their choices now bear fruit that they must eat.  Their foolishness has been self-destructive.

In contrast, those who hear the call of wisdom and listens to her teachings will be at peace and in safety.  What is the wisdom that they accept?  The fear of the Lord; respect for His teachings and His path.

Wisdom still cries aloud in the street calling out to all who will listen.  Each person faces the age-old choice: the path of wisdom or the path of foolishness, the path of life or the path of death, the fear of the Lord or destruction.

Which will we choose?

Wasting Resources

Lewis Mumford wrote that modern man has operated under the delusion that humanity could use science and invention to “fabricate an artificial world infinitely more wonderful than that nature has provided.” (Mumford. The Pentagon of Power. p. 11).  Mumford believed that this delusion contributed to man’s attitude of waste and misuse of natural resources.

If Mumford was correct, the implications are even more serious for the Christian.  For the Christian, it would not be a waste rooted in the belief we can create a better world than nature created, but a waste rooted in the belief that man can create a world better than God created.  The Greeks would have called this hubris.

Waste and misuse are not only poor stewardship; they are symptomatic of “anthro-deification”—the worship of man as God.

American: Christian Nation?

America the Christian Nation—a claim often made and often debated.  Whether it should be or not is a subject for another day.  What being a “Christian nation” means is also for another day.  Today, I want to look at the findings of a recent Parade Magazine poll on American religious beliefs and practices.  It is my opinion that the findings of that poll put to the thesis that Americans are a religious people and because of the culture influence of Christianity in America, American religion is expressed in what are, broadly speaking, Christian language and concepts.  However, that does not mean that the majority of Americans are practicing Christianity.

Consider the positive statistics: 69% claimed to believe in God.  77% claim to pray outside of religious services.  51% say they pray daily.  This would suggest that the majority of Americans are religious.  However, when you consider that only 15% of those who pray are motivated by a belief that God expects it while 67% are motivated by prayer bringing comfort and hope, you have to ask whether God is the focus of the praying or whether self-interests are the objectives?  Certainly, those of us who pray receive a great deal of comfort and hope from prayer.  Likewise, one should not pray out of a legalistic obligation to commune with God.  Yet, my observation is that much of what goes on in American religion, including the church, is centered on the self rather than on the God we serve.  Much of what I hear from many preachers is self-help with references to God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Bible salted in periodically.  Remove the religious references and it is really just another version of any motivational speaker.

When asked about participation in organized religion, 70% said they did not participate at all or participated only sporadically.  50% rarely or never attend religious services.  30% claim to attend services once a week.  Christine Wicker, the author of the article presenting the poll findings, points out that academic researchers who do actual head counts believe only about one-half of those who make such a claim are attending weekly.  If so, only about 15% of Americans attend religious services weekly.  As I reflect on this, it is my speculation that given some adjustment for regular attendees who are out each Sunday due to illness, work, travel, etc., it might well be that on a given Sunday morning, only 10-12% of Americans are in church.  Some parts of the country will have higher or lower averages due to regional cultural patterns I suspect.

I know that some argue that organized religion and true faith are not the same thing.  Indeed, I agree with that.  However, when it comes to quantifying religious practice, organized religion is much easier to measure that faith.  Yet, from the Christian standpoint, the biblical imperative is to “not forsake the assembling of yourselves together.”  Therefore, when some 85% of Americans are doing just that, the only two conclusions I can see is that either 1) the majority of Americans are not practicing Christianity and/or 2) a good number of Christians are openly disobeying a directive of scripture.  Regardless of one’s definition of a “Christian nation,” it is hard for me to apply that designation to a country where eight out of every ten are routinely not in church for worship. Add to this observation that 27% of Americans do not practice a religion at all, 5% say they are atheists and 7% claim agnosticism. 

The real crux of the matter might be revealed in two other statistics from the poll.  59% of Americans say all religions are valid.  Only 24% say religion is the most important thing in their lives.  This clearly indicates that America, for all the claims by some that it is a “Christian nation,” is a nation of people who do not accept the claim of Jesus to the “…the way, the truth, and the light—no one comes to the Father except through me.”  In addition, the demands of total obedience to the Kingdom of God with Christ as Lord of our lives are not part of the America equation.

In light of this, perhaps we need to stop claiming America is a “Christian nation” and to begin seeing America for what it really is: a mission field.

The findings of this poll were published in the Christine Wicker article “How Spiritual Are We?”  Parade October 4, 2009, pp. 4-5.  It is available online at http://www.parade.com/news/2009/10/04-how-spiritual-are-we.html