The Power of Prayer

So I'm reading this book. It's called Prayer by Phillip Yancey. Awesome book, changing my life, at least I hope it will change my life beyond the last page. Obviously the book is all about prayer. It's about how to pray, why to pray, what to pray about, and a plethora of other questions surrounding prayer. Prayer has always been an elusive part of my christian walk. It seems like for most of my life, while i can be doing things right and living according to what i believe is God's plan prayer doesn't often play a significant role. Weird right, because if i was truly doing everything right prayer would be at the forefront of what was spurring me on to follow the path set before me. But for me prayer has always seemed like a glorified way of talking to myself. I was never more aware of God's invisibility than when I was in prayer. He always seemed so far away and distant and busy with you know solving the problem of hunger and disease and war, why should he care about the fight I had with my mom or my inability to pick a career? But this book is giving me a whole different perspective, it's helping me see that because God is so infinite and so great beyond what we could ever imagine, he has a the ability to meet us exactly where we're at. He is able to care and listen to everyone of our sorrows, our joys, our anxieties simply because he's omniscient. How amazing is that, because of God's seemingly elusiveness he hears every cry and sees every tear. It's not elusiveness it's greatness, it's powerfulness. It's because I can't understand God that I get frustrated with him. I want things to happen on my terms, on my timetable and when that doesn't happen I blame it on an absent God. I realize this just brings to the surface my selfishness, but it's because of that self-involvement that I need God's grace and I need his hand in my life, because I so easily give into fleshly desires and fall prey to the human condition.

Secondly, I was always of the persuasion that because God knows everything that's going to happen, then prayer inevitably does nothing to change his mind but changes the prayer. While there is merit to this belief, it's only half true. I do believe pray changes the person, it develops perseverance, discipline, a quiet spirit and a multitude of other admirable attributes, not to mention it opens the gates of communication with a loving, righteous, just God. But is it idealistic to say that prayer does more than that? If you look throughout the Bible prayer does have the ability to change things. Moses prayed for God not destroy his people even after God had promised to do so and Moses was able to change the mind of God. The people of Ninevah prayed for repentance and God granted it to them even after he vowed to destroy to it. Once again how incredible is that? We have the ability through faith and petition to change the heart and mind of God, God the creator, God the redeemer, God the ever present help in time of need, we can change that very same God. God desires so much to have a relationship with us that he allows us to communicate, even argue with him and he allows his heart to be changed because of our faith.

This leads me to our last point. Our relationship with God. It's an actual real relationship, that takes work and time and involves frustration and fighting and making up. God, though he is powerful enough to control this entire universe with a word, he chooses not to. He allows us, in all our flawed, screwed up, evil tendencies to partner with him. Yes prayer works to bring about change and justice and all that good stuff, but it in no way cancels out our responsibility to work towards those ends. God desires that we do his work to bring about his kingdom and not simply sit up in our ivory towers praying for change. He gives us the means and abilities and talents to love mercy, seek justice. God allows us to walk with him hand in hand as we fumble and attempt to see his kingdom realized on this earth.

So for the time being I will pray fervently, with faith that my prayers will be answered, and rest in his assurance if the answer is no and I will walk with God in this world as we attempt to show all people his love and mercy.