Wednesday, November 28, 2007
re: what to pray for
generally, i agree with the previous comment about what to pray for. believers are way too preoccupied with remedies for physical ailments. what about this question: is the bible account of prayers prescriptive or descriptive? exegetically speaking, all we may be able to say with authority about the bible record on prayer is 'this is what they appeared to do'. then, we might could make some preliminary and tentative judgements on what we ought to do, based on that record. but, the bottom line for me is this: regardless of what i include in my prayers, how do i explain the lack of response from God?
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5 comments:
Thank you for asking the question about "prescriptive or descriptive." I've been out of the CofC culture so long that I don't even ask the prescriptive question.
In my mind, the passages I cited are simply descriptive. My little study was purely an attempt to catch a glimpse of first century prayer behavior. Yet, a few of the passages have a prescriptive thrust, such as Phil 4:6.
But, back to your original question: How do we explain the lack of response from God?
Here's my (current) conclusion: We pray for the wrong stuff.
I even think that God deliberately doesn't grant many prayer requests because he is trying to force us to grow up and see things from his perspective.
Where did we go wrong? Well, it's only natural (and childish and immature) to want to avoid pain and suffering. Besides that, I think that current American evangelical Christianity is infected with the strange idea that the "Pro-Life" agenda is somehow as important as believing in the Jesus and the resurrection.
Stay with me on this.
When we equate pro-life with core Christian beliefs, we have essentially elevated concern for the flesh above concern for the spirit. It's no wonder that our churches almost militantly pray for relief from fleshly pain.
Whatever happened to ...
"What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes." (Jas. 4:14)
"Do not be anxious about your life." (Matt. 6:25)
"Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." (Matt. 10:39)
"I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God." (Acts 20:24)
My point: Our misplaced worship of "life" has spawned a misplaced prayer concern for fleshly concerns ... "heal this," "protect us from that," etc.
So, God deliberately denies such prayer concerns. God lives by Beeson's Second Law: "Knowledge doesn't teach. Pain teaches." And he is hoping that, through the pain of life's normal bumps and bruises, we'll quit focusing on the things of the flesh and raise our aspirations to things of the spirit.
That's one of my (tentative) ways of explaining the lack of response from God.
Important Note: I make no claim to infallibility. And I may draft some of these thoughts too emphatically, as if there's no other way of thinking. But I urge you to disagree and challenge any and all my thoughts. This is a work in progress.
'we pray for the wrong stuff': again, i agree with your basic premise. but, for me, praying for the wrong stuff is one of those pat answers one gets at church that doesn't work. in the bible, i do not read of limitations on prayer topics. and it does not seem appropriate to assume that the praying person has to 'get it right' in order for prayers to be heard and answered. there is more than one topic here that will merit separate posts in the future.
"God deliberately denies such prayer concerns": how does a person know they have been deliberately denied?
You ask, "How do we know that God deliberately denies ...?"
Heck, I'm only guessin'. This entire effort is completely a giant guess.
The original question is, "How do we explain the lack of a response from God?"
Any answer to that question is a guess, isn't it? I'm not convinced that the biblical material provides a definitive answer.
We haven't discussed some specific life situations that have brought us to this endeavor. Let me offer a few ...
1. A couple of years ago, a great friend of mine, Dr. Dana Stonesifer, got cancer at age 53. Five months later, he was dead.
Dana was one of the finest Christians I've ever known. All through his illness, he had great faith that God would heal him. I'm sure that thousands of prayers for Dana's healing were uttered.
On the first day when he was sent to the emergency room and X-rays revealed a mass, we were the first to gather around his bed and pray for his healing.
Nothing.
2. My mom got lung cancer, discovered in Dec. 1994. After lots of prayers and a zillion treatments, she died on Sept. 17, 1995.
Both these experiences are common to lots of people. They happen every day. And lots of people pray. But most of the time, nothing happens.
Here's one lesson I've learned from this. We tend to think that it's a test of faith to believe that God will answer our prayers and heal our loved one.
I NOW tend to think that the real test of faith is: after the apparent "lack of response from God," will we continue to believe in God?
That's the real test of faith.
What do you think?
yet again, another thread worthy of a separate post. will get to that later. in the mean time, i want to comment on that test of faith thing. there was a brief time, maybe a week or two, where i gave up on praying, at least privately. it was a very dark spiritual time for me. not sure why exactly, but i came to the conclusion that not praying was worse than not knowing how it worked. so i came back to prayer, accepting the mysterious side of it. i now live with the unexplained part, but i am not resigned to that being the only way to see it.
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