Lots of Goofy Ideas About Prayer

The world — and even the church — has some pretty goofy ideas about prayer. For some, prayer is like magic: if your faith is strong enough, you can pray the sick back to health! You can pray the dead back to life! I’ve heard prayers — by some who claimed to be believers — that sounded more like witchcraft or New Age spirituality, where prayer is like “The Force” and the battle against the dark side. And if God is going to win, you have to support Him with your prayers! In other words, the fate of the world — and even of God — is in your hands, or in your prayers.

Blasphemous Prayer

Then there’s the blasphemous “Word of Faith” teaching on prayer, or the “Prosperity Gospel” that makes God out to be little more than your personal “Jeannie in a Bottle.” You want health, wealth, and prosperity? Just name it and claim it! God is helpless against the power of your words if you claim it in Jesus’ name. He has to give it to you! That’s a perversion of what Jesus taught His disciples to pray. It’s a perversion of what prayer looks like in the New Testament.

Why Is Real Prayer Supernatural?

Prayer in the New Testament was supernatural! I mean by that, prayer was an absolute reliance and dependence on God. These perversions of prayer are humanistic in nature — the power is inside us. Biblical prayer, instead, depends on the power of God that is outside us. We’re admitting to our weakness and to our inability to affect change. We’re trusting in a supernatural God to do what we cannot do. Biblical prayer is expressed helplessness and dependence on God’s power. Let me put it another way: whatever we don’t pray about, we’re basically telling God, “I got this,” right? “Don’t need You for this one, God.” Let me get personal. How many of you get up early enough Sunday mornings to pray that God would move powerfully in your worship service? How many of you have prayed specifically for a certain person who needs to be saved? Whatever ministry you might be part of in your church — do you pray regularly over it? For the people who are part of it? I doubt that most of you really believe you can do God’s work without His supernatural help. But if you’re not praying over it regularly, it kind of casts doubt.

What Are Your Expectations?

We need the Holy Spirit’s conviction — that if we’re not spending significant time appealing to God in passionate prayer, we shouldn’t expect Him to do any supernatural work in our midst, in our lives, or in our church. By our failure to pray, we’re telling God, “I got this. Don’t need Your help.” Listen, the Holy Spirit doesn’t need our self-centered know-how. He doesn’t need us at all. But it seems to be God’s M.O. to engage His people in deep, passionate, humble, helpless, and desperate prayer before He does His great supernatural work. He includes us, and He uses our prayer to grow in us a deeper dependence on His power rather than our own. Will you repent of your false views of prayer — or your prayerlessness? God help us!