May 16, 2013
Prayer Chain
I received a generic email prayer request which began with the
qualifier, “Need to keep this Prayer
going. Send it to others and all your friends.” I think the originator may
be confusing a prayer chain request with a chain letter request. Certainly
email has enhanced the administration of church prayer chains, but I’m not so
sure it qualifies as an effective tool for keeping a prayer going. Jesus taught
the disciples to pray by giving them the Lord’s Prayer as a model and
thankfully generations of Sunday school teachers have helped us commit the
prayer to memory and perfected the right way to keep a prayer going.
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Gail;
-----What is prayer, anyway? God knows your thoughts and feelings better than do you. He knows them even before you know them. In fact, He knows every thought and feeling you will have in the rest of the life you have not yet experienced. So what need is there to pray or ask for prayer? Hasn’t He heard the request before you consciously formulated it? And hasn’t He recognized the intensity of it before you get the bright idea to start an email chain?
-----”Because He said it works,” is enough to do it. But it isn’t enough to improve my doing it, if I can. Sorry. My questions remain. I want to understand Him and His the best I can for doing better. So, I read the Bible always with an eye open for what might define prayer more.
-----From doing that, I perceive this “free will” thing is really important to God. I want to say that He must have our permission to move things proximate to us. If you can grasp the sense of that without requiring its technicality, then you will be close to understanding what I mean. He really doesn’t need our permission, but it’s more than like He wants it; a full explanation calls for a book, so, enough said. We also invite when we ask.
-----If permission is part of it, doesn’t He have it in knowing us? But ultimately, what we express verifies what we are. This is why it is important to not sin even though we are saved by grace. We express sin. We express prayer. Both come from individual realities within our sub-consciousness. God knows the pools of thoughts and feelings there mixing and mingling in ways which form possible expressions. And He knows when we desire to express one. And when we determine to express it, and plan to, and formulate the expression, and finally make it, He knows. But what has been added is our volitional choice of that particular thought or feeling to express. It becomes us more than do the unexpressed ones (yes, there are exceptions irrelevant to here.) So, in praying, we not only invite Him to take part in situations, we verify ourselves before Him by choosing our expressions as best we can, while He already knows what He’s going to do.
-----I am more exposed by my prayers than God is requested. I think that is why Jesus taught us to first address the coming of His Kingdom and the doing of His will before requesting the things we think we need. This is a humble bow and an admission that what we perceive is necessary by choosing it for a request might in ways, or in entirety, be wrong and ignorable. But since it is the best we know, we ask. Having previously requested His will be done should as much render the rest of the prayer superfluous as should have His foreknowledge of what we would pray. But He wants us to better refine what of our inner workings will become more us right there before Him.
-----So when I receive an email prayer request, I immediately acknowledge to Him that I don’t know whether it is a ploy or a prayer request, but if He knows it is a prayer request, then my love for whoever is in need wants Him to do whatever He needs to do. I’ve invited Him, requested His best, and chose a thought to be me, all in that one instant. What more can I then do but hit the delete button and move on?
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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