Prayer, the Great Adventure

Introduction

The Adventure Awaits

In his classic work With Christ in the School of Prayer, Andrew Murray pointedly writes, “Moses gave neither command nor regulation with regard to prayer: even the prophets say little directly of the duty of prayer. It is Christ who teaches to pray.”

Jesus is our tutor and example in all things, and nowhere is that more clear than in our prayer lives. It is no exaggeration to say that prayer undergirded and preceded and empowered everything that our Lord did while He walked on this earth. He frequently spoke about prayer and even more frequently taught by example. It is a telling fact that “Jesus never taught His disciples how to preach, only how to pray. He did not speak much of what was needed to preach well, but much of praying well. To know how to speak to God is more important than knowing how to speak to man. Not power with men, but power with God is the first thing. Jesus loves to teach us how to pray.”

How glad I am that He is still in the business of teaching His children how to pray! Although I have prayed since childhood, my praying habits have changed a great deal in the past few years. There is something different and new about my praying these days—and it is not hard at all to identify the reason for the change. A couple of years ago I was diagnosed with cancer and very quickly prayer took on new meaning for me. I discovered a dimension to prayer that I had never known before. Jesus enrolled me in His intensive course on prayer and I became an eager learner.

And what lesson struck home with most force? I discovered something that had been true all along, even though I had not thought much about it. I discovered I was helpless without God! That was the beginning of the adventure for me.

I learned how to pray out of desperation. For most of us, this is how the adventure usually begins. When we finally get serious about prayer, the trigger is usually desperation, not duty. Andrew Bonar wrote in 1853, “God likes to see His people shut up to this. That there is no hope but in prayer. Herein lies the Church’s power against the world.”

At least initially, serious prayer is almost always driven by necessity. We don’t pray because we ought, we pray because we are without any other recourse. I think God likes to see His people coming to Him in desperation and casting themselves upon His mercy! Jim Cymbala said something in his new book Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, that I can identify with: “Prayer cannot truly be taught by principles and seminars and symposiums. It has to be born out of a whole environment of felt need. If I say, ‘I ought to pray,’ I will soon run out of motivation and quit; the flesh is too strong. I have to be driven to pray.” Jack Taylor agrees with this conviction. He writes, “Our infirmities are the trumpets which call us to prayer. No miracle was performed in the Bible that did not begin in a problem.… The greater the problem, the greater the solution."

Could it be that one reason we have great problems is that God wants to show us great solutions? He longs to show us the riches of His grace and the poverty of our own resources. Prayer is uniquely designed to demonstrate both truths.

Yet at the same time, we must remember that prayer is not a natural activity. It has been well said that prayer is stupid when viewed in the purely human realm. I remember the day I realized why it was so hard for me to pray. I wrote this down in my Bible:

“Prayer is my Declaration of Dependence.” As one author has written:  Prayer is the essential activity of waiting for God: acknowledging our helplessness and his power, calling upon him for help, seeking his counsel. So it is evident why prayer is so often commanded by God, since his purpose in the world is to be exalted for his mercy. Prayer is the antidote for the disease of self-confidence.

For a go-getter, type A, driven person (like me), prayer is the most difficult thing of all because it flies in the face of our frantic efforts to prove that we are self-sufficient, independent, and strong. We somehow forget that “the difference between Uncle Sam and Jesus Christ is that Uncle Sam won’t enlist you in his service unless you are healthy, and Jesus won’t enlist you unless you are sick. ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners’ (Mark 2:17). Christianity is fundamentally convalescence (‘Pray without ceasing’ = Keep buzzing the nurse).”

My bout with cancer taught me a lot about “buzzing the nurse”! The fears and desperation which forced me to my knees taught me to cry out to God as never before. And do you know what? He heard! He answered! He delivered me from all my fears! And He desires to do the same for you.