Verse Text: I cried out to him for help and praised him with my tongue. If I had harbored sin in my heart, the sovereign Master would not have listened. However, God heard, he listened to my prayer.
If someone were to ask you "Do you pray as much as you should?" what would your answer be? Most of us would probably get that sinking, guilty feeling because we know we are not spending enough time in prayer. What would happen if we stopped looking at prayer as this "never-quite-reached Christian duty" and saw it for what God truly intends it to be? A relationship. Prayer is not something that allows us to get what we want. It is something that God uses to give us what He wants! Bingham Hunter says, "(God) actually enjoys having us speak to Him. Developing a relationship with us is His goal, and answers to prayer are a means He uses to foster self-disclosure, growth and understanding of both Him and ourselves." (Hunter, The God Who Hears, p. 79) It amazes me to think that a mighty and powerful God who lacks nothing, and who needs nothing, desires a relationship with someone as seemingly insignificant as me! And this relationship comes through prayer - not merely through an event – but through the life of a worshipper.
Hunter explains it this way: "God does not respond to our prayers. God responds to us: to our whole life. What we say to Him cannot be separated from what we think, feel, will and do. Prayer is communication from whole persons to the Wholeness, which is the living God. Prayer is misunderstood until we see it this way." (Hunter, p. 13) He doesn’t respond to what we say, but what we ARE, and who we are. This is how it is possible to "pray without ceasing" as Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 – it was never Paul’s intention that we spend every moment of every day on our knees – his admonition was a practical statement calling us to live a LIFE of prayer. The key to living a life of prayer is obedience – offering our bodies as living sacrifices to God as our spiritual act of worship (Romans 12:1-2). Disobedience disrupts this conversation with God because a holy God cannot look upon sin. According to Psalm 66:18, God does not listen to our prayers when we are harboring sin in our life. Why? Because he is listening to our life, not just the words that come out of our mouth.
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Of course, we need to spend time on our knees – we are commanded to do so in Scripture. But there is so much more to experience when we see prayer as a lifestyle - a relationship. This can be difficult to grasp unless we look at some practical ways to make it a reality. Here are just a few suggestions on how we can live a life of prayer:-Talk to God all throughout the day. He is a personal God – we can have conversations with Him just as we would with our closest friend.
-Spend time in the Word – we can turn what we read into prayer
-Serve someone – it’s about our actions as much as our words
-Keep short accounts with God through regular repentance
-Take a prayer walk
-Engage with God on every decision, no matter how small it may seem. Ultimately, a lifestyle of prayer is reflected in a life of dependence. When we are prayerless, we walk independently of the Holy Spirit’s leading and risk operating outside of His will. By placing ourselves in a posture of humble dependence on Him through a lifestyle of prayer, He is able to work in and through us for the advancement of His kingdom and His glory. Dependence and prayer cannot exist apart from one another. It is evident all throughout Scripture that God doesn’t use independent people – He uses only those who depend not on their flesh, which brings weakness, but on the Spirit, which brings strength. He uses people of prayer. I am convinced that our lives of worship will begin to look dramatically different as we filter every word, thought and action through this paradigm and live out a life of prayer – a life of dependence - every moment of every day. The real question to ask then is not "How much am I praying?" but instead, "How am I living?" What a challenge!
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