A Worthy Prayer

 November 26, 2022

The more I learn about prayer, the more I realize how weak and misdirected many of my prayers have been. From the beginning, I was taught that God speaks to us in the Bible and we speak to God in prayer. What I was not taught was that talking to God is much more than listing our requests. When prayer is limited to asking for favors, it ceases being a personal relationship; it morphs into a business arrangement which ends up keeping God at arm’s length. Even worse, when prayer is limited to requests, we tend to pray only for temporal matters. Whenever we ask for prayer requests, inevitably, the responses lean heavily on such things as people’s health, and only lightly touch on matters of eternal importance. 

I’ve been studying the prayers of some of the Biblical personages, and find in them a corrective balance that is changing the way I pray for the better. Take for example, Paul’s prayer for the Roman Christians found in the first chapter of his letter by that name, verses 9-13.

“For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of His Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers, making request if, by some means, now at last I may find a way in the will of God to come to you. For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, so that you may be established— that is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me. Now I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that I often planned to come to you (but was hindered until now), that I might have some fruit among you also, just as among the other Gentiles.” —Romans 1:9-13 

This prayer is like most of ours in that it is light on thanksgiving (although in the previous verse he gives thanks for them), and heavy on the requests. But notice the flavor of his requests. There are four of them, and not a single one mentions their health, or asks for relief from persecution or troubles of any kind. The four requests are seen in the little word “that,” and are as follows:

1. that he might find a way to come to them,
2. that he may impart a spiritual gift to them that would establish them in their faith,
3. that he himself would be encouraged by their mutual faith, and
4. that he might have some fruit among them.

What a worthy pattern for our own prayers! I wonder how much it would change my own outlook on life if I prayed this prayer on a regular basis. Would I be more intentional in my witness, more determined to share my faith, more attentive to the opportunities God gives me to lift the name of Christ? Would such a prayer cause me to dive more into the Word of God, to consider more deeply the significance of the resurrection of Jesus which Paul mentions earlier in the chapter? Paul’s sole concern was for the spiritual well-being of these believers he had not yet met, but whose faith had stirred his own heart. His whole reason for living was to tell as many people as possible about the Savior who had rescued him from his murderous and prideful ways, melting his hard heart, and forgiving his sins. His own encounter with Jesus Christ was so transformative that his prayer was solely to be able to share the Good News with others. That’s the kind of relationship with Christ I want to have, because it’s the only source for the kind of prayer I want to pray.