Prayer is Engaging
As we talk about prayer this week, perhaps you are asking: what exactly is prayer? One answer is that prayer is engaging with God. It’s communicating with God to nurture a relationship with Him.
Have you have watched the Tom Hanks movie “A Man Called Otto”? One of the storylines in that movie is about an elderly couple, one who has early Parkinsons and the other who is in a wheelchair and basically unresponsive. A real estate company wants to buy their house so they can make some money on it, but the couple refuses, until their son who lives overseas and hasn’t seen or spoken to them in 10 years gets in touch with his parents and convinces them to give him power of attorney, and then he sells the house from under them.
When the real estate guys come to cart them out of the house, a few other people have rallied and are standing with this old couple who say ‘we aren’t moving, we never gave permission for this house of ours to be sold’. The real estate guy says “who will look after you when your health deteriorates? Your son’s overseas! You’ve got to get to a retirement home!” And one of the younger men there stands up and says “I’ll take care of them. These two are like family to me, I’ll take care of them as long as they need.”
More Than a Prayer List
Which one was a real son to this couple? The one who didn’t interact with them, but tried to use them to get some money? Or the one who spent time with them and nurtured a relationship with them? Obvious isn’t it.
It’s the same with God, in a sense. There are those who have the name of ‘Christian’ but they never interact with this God of theirs, unless it’s to manipulate Him into giving them something. And some people think of prayer that way. Like God’s the old man with all the money, so we push his buttons here and there to try and get what we want.
But then there are those who engage with God. Who spend time with God. Who have a relationship with Him. That is what a Christian is. That is what prayer is.
In fact EM Bounds, whom I quoted yesterday, also said this: “the person who does not pray cannot possibly be called a Christian. By no possible pretext can he or she claim any right to the term or its implied significance. If one does not pray, he or she is a sinner, pure and simple, for prayer is the only way in which the soul of people can enter into fellowship and communion with the source of all Christ-like spirit and energy.”
God created us with a need for Him and it’s only when that need for Him is being fulfilled through a relationship with Him that we find peace.
A Close Relationship
I don’t know about you friends, but I don’t want to be one of those Christians who just “plays church”. Who comes and does all the churchy things, but never really prays and never really nurtures a relationship with God. I want to be one whose life matches the person I seem to be at church.
And this means prayer, prayer, prayer. This means being in such a close relationship with God that a day without prayer would be unthinkable!
Communicate with Him, in prayer, would you? It’s the only way to truly engage with the God who loves you.
