Robotic Prayers
“Robotic”… That’s how Joni described many of our prayers. Automatic responses, pre-programmed by our church culture & tradition.
”Dear Lord Jesus, Thank you for this food. Bless this food to our bodies & us to Thy service. Amen”
“God is great. God is good. Now we thank Him for our food.”
“Thank you for this day. Forgive us of our many sins. Help all those who are sick.”
“Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”
Automatic, robotic prayers have come into existence partly from well-intentioned teachers, who have written prescribed prayers as a way of teaching young children how to pray. In previous times, the Catholic church wrote prescribed prayers for all ages, and this practice has overflowed to mainline protestant denominations. As adults in evangelical churches, often our robotic prayers flow out of our laziness. Prayer is work, and at times of prayer we are more conscious of time constraints and low energy than we are of the spiritual benefit of serious prayer.
You will not find robotic prayers in the life of the Apostle Paul. Jason has begun a new series on Wednesday nights: the Prayers of the Apostle Paul. His goal is to help us to see what a powerful prayer looks like, so that we can move away from robotic prayers into powerful prayers that move the Hand of God for the Work of God.
Last night, we looked at Paul’s prayer in II Thessalonians chapter 1. And I’d like to briefly summarize the components of this prayer.
1. Paul gave thanks to God for signs of His grace in the lives of others, shown by their increasing faith. Not only did they believe for salvation, but they continued to believe for living. A growing confidence in the promises of God was demonstrated in their life choices & responses. This generated thanks by Paul to God Himself, because Paul recognized that in the end, any spiritual fruit is the work of God, not man. Are you watching your brothers & sisters on the Hill for evidence of increasing faith? Do you see more complete obedience? Is courage growing? Is sensitivity to sin becoming more acute? Have you thanked the Lord recently for His work of grace in producing this expanded courage to obey & trust?
2. Paul gave thanks to God for signs of His grace in the lives of others, shown by their increasing love. The two “high rules” of the one who follows Christ are Love God and Love Others. It is because of His grace in our lives that love is flowing from us to God and others. There is no other source of Love, apart from the Author of Love. In whom are you noticing a growing love? Do you see increasing tenderness, more reaching out, greater acts of service in someone? Have you paused to thank the Lord for His grace in their lives that has produced this love?
3. Paul gave thanks to God for the perseverance of the believers, even when their faith came under trial. The Church has an Enemy. Increasing faith & love in the Body wakes up that Enemy; he targets the Family for destruction. Only God can give strength to perserve under difficulty. Paul was careful to thank Him for His grace towards the Body in making them strong in their faith during times of difficulty. He recognized that God has done a work that is beyond what a pastor or community can do. And He was careful to acknowledge the grace of God & express thanks for it.
So in this prayer of Paul’s, he starts with thanksgiving….for the most important thing there is…the grace of God in our lives! This grace is MUCH more important than health, than financial blessing, than comfort. This grace is a blessing of the Lord that lasts for eternity! And it is worthy of our thanks. In fact, Paul actually says “I am bound, obligated, absolutely must (!) thank You for this grace.” Although 20 centuries have passed since Paul prayed for the Thessalonian church, this obligation has not deminished. Today, we have the same obligation of thanksgiving…because the same Lord is showering us with the same Grace that He did centuries ago.
Jason challenged us to look for His grace in the lives of others on the Hill. We must be sharing with each other what He is doing, and we must be thanking HIm for what He is doing. Start with those closest to you, in your family, in your close circle, where you can readily see His grace….and then expand to those in the “extended” Family, who give testimony on Sunday or Wednesday.
Let’s join together in a great ‘hymn’ of thanksgiving to the One who delights to demonstrate His grace in our midst!
4. Paul verbalized his confidence in God’s ultimate plan of deliverance and vindication; he openly affirmed the character of God. When we pray, it is good to verbalize our confidence in the character & plan of God. He reveals much of His plan in the Scriptures. No, He doesn’t tell us all the details of His personal plan for us, but He gives enough information to show His character. And enough to give us cause to put our trust in Him.
Just as we delight to hear other’s express confidence & trust in us, so the Lord delights to hear our expressions of confidence & trust in Him. Read the Psalms. Most of them were written by King David…and they are a wealth of prayerful expression of confidence in the Lord’s plan and character.
5. Paul asked the Lord to make the believers in Thessalonica ‘walk worthy of His calling’. This is an old-fashioned way of saying “live in a way that brings honor to the One who has called us to Himself & has given us His message & His ministry.” He dared to ask this of the Father because of His confidence in the character & plan of the Father. This request grows out of the confidence he’s already expressed. “Wherefore….” says “because of this….” Because of the character & plan of God, we can ask for His further grace in our lives.
I hear that every morning Wal-Mart employees gather together before the store opens, and they do a chant/sing-song about the glory of Wal-Mart. Human Resource directors around the country recognize that employees do better work if they have a sense of pride in their company. Paul is asking the Lord to give us a sense of pride in our Heavenly Company….a consciousness of the wonder of our placement in the Body…an internal motivation to live up to the honor of having been chosen to His ambassadors to the world. Such an awareness, which generates living on a ‘higher plain’, is a gift from the Father. Only He can open eyes to see the inestimable value of His calling. Only He can generate a desire to live up to that calling. So it is appropriate that Paul ask the Father for this gift.
As you & I pray for our Family on the Hill, or for our blood family, or for our neighbors….are we asking the Father to impress upon them an awareness of His calling upon them and to motivate them to live on the higher plain called ‘walking worthy’? Let’s move beyond praying for gall bladders & ingrown toenails! Yes, God is interested in the smallest detail of our lives. But let’s pray for the things that matter for eternity! Paul did.
6. Paul asked the Lord to make the believers in Thessalonica fulfill His pleasure in goodness. One translation (NASB), puts it this way: “powerfully bring to fulfillment every good purpose and every effort of faith.” Another translation (Net Bible) says: “fulfill by his power your every desire for goodness and every work of faith.”
The idea, as I see it, is that Paul is not only praying that the believers would want to ‘walk worthy’, becoming aware & dedicated to their appointment as His Ambassadors, but also that this awareness & dedication would come to full fruition so that every good thing in their hearts, every desire to expand in courageous faith, would be actually produced by the Lord.
This reminds me of the verse in James 1:17: “Every good & perfect gift comes from the Father.” Actually, on examination of the text, James is saying “The desire to give and also the act of giving is a work of the Father.” He divides the giving into the desire/motivation/dedication and the fulfillment of that desire.
In the same way, the Apostle Paul divides future growth into the desire to ‘walk worthy’ and fulfillment of that desire…..both of which are a gift from the Father. So Paul asks for both.
And why does he ask? Verse 12 tells us….so that the Lord Jesus Christ is glorified in us. He doesn’t ask this for our own comfort, for our glorification, for some gain that we get….he returned to the previous sections of his prayer…the plan, purpose, glory of the Lord Jesus. In other words, all requests of Paul are consumed in his desire that we live for Christ!!!
Jesus said “If you ask anything in my Name, I will give it to you.” Is Paul’s purpose for asking this of the Father according to the ‘name’ (character, purpose, desire) of the Lord Jesus? Yes! And so Paul could ask in confidence, knowing that it was in unity with the Lord’s heart for His people.
So this week, try to model Paul’s prayer in your own life. Look for the spiritual work God is doing in the Family and in the World. Thank Him for His work of grace in the lives of others & yourself. Be specific with examples of increasing faith, increasing love and steady endurance. Affirm His character & His plan; be specific, based upon the Word of God. And be bold to ask Him for His continuing work of grace in making us desire to ‘walk worthy’ and then act on that desire.
May God lift our eyes to see the real world of prayer, and depart from the powerlessness of robotic exercises.