This past week, I began the 21 days of prayer with the Church of the Highlands. Dedicated times of prayer is nothing new to me; from Jan 2009-May 2013, I was part of the Storehouse House of Prayer in Huntsville, AL. Multiple times a week, we would gather for prayer and worship. We studied prayer inside and out with the desire to grow deeper in our relationship with God. Prayer was a lifestyle that we attempted to live out daily as we sought after the Lord, but as I’ve often experienced, sometimes something old can seem new when you’ve been away from it for awhile.
After my time with the Storehouse, prayer started to become a repetitive practice. I would pray but my prayers seemed somewhat stoic. I would tend to say the same things over and over again without much emotion. There was no deep pleading with God that I once had in my prayer life. Its like I accepted life “as is” without thinking that there could be something more. My prayer started to look like a shell of its former self. Thankfully, I feel like I’ve turned the corner and re-gained a new perspective on prayer this week.
On Monday, Pastor Chris Hodges shared from Philippians 4:6-7. Paul tells the believers in Philippi “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Thursday the speaker shared from Daniel 9:3 where Daniel says “So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes.” That word, petition, just keeps coming up. Phil 4:6-7 is my life verse, but the word has taken on a new meaning this week. In our culture, it seems unnatural to petition a king, especially if you are just the average person. Throughout history, a peasant would never be granted access to a King. Only the royal family and other leaders could enter his presence. But God is a different type of King. He is a King who has created the heavens and the Earth and everything that inhabits it. Most importantly he has created us. Genesis 1:27 says that he created us, man and woman, in his image. We see this beautiful picture of a God creating humanity and desiring to have a relationship with it. Unlike an earthly King who identifies you by your socioeconomic status, God sees you as one of his own. He sees you as a person of worth no matter what your economic status is. He created you and he loves you.
That love is demonstrated through his son Jesus and the cross. In John 15:13-15 we see this picture of God’s love for humanity when Jesus says, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” When we understand this connection that God has with humanity, the word petition starts to make sense. God knows our hearts but I truly believe he wants us to come before him and share with him. He wants us to be real because he has been real with us. When you look at what he has done for us, we see that God was passionately concerned about our eternity. Who else would send his son to come and die for us so that we would have a way back to the King? That bold passionate love has opened up a line of free communication with the King.
Jesus says in Luke 11:9 “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” We are to knock until God opens the door and answers us. He’s not going to be that annoying neighbor who ignores us even though he has the shades open and you can see him inside. God will answer us. It may not always be the answer we want or he may not answer us quickly but I believe he will answer us.
I don’t know how this season of prayer will ultimately play out for me. My hope is that I will continue to find prayer refreshing and, most importantly, life giving. When it comes to petitioning God, I’m not sure if he’ll answer my prayers the way I want them. I have a list of specifics that I’m pleading with him about right now. Selfishly, I hope he answers them the way I want. I know that he may not answer them that way, which is a hard reality to accept. Regardless, my faith tells me that His answer will be good for me no matter what the outcome will be.
reflections of a theologian 