I have been tremendously blessed by the power of prayer recently. The Desiring God conference (www.desiringgod.org) had the theme of prayer this year and speakers such as Jerry Rankin, Francis Chan and John Piper gave great messages concerning prayer. Chan's was especially interesting because he talked a lot about how the Lord has answered many prayers in his life.
John 14 is a passage that I have been trying to memorize and verses 12-14 read as so: "Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my Name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my Name, I will do it."
Many believers love to take just verse 14 ("If you ask me anything...") and try to use God as our personal genie, when clearly, in the verses that precede it, God is saying that this is just so that "the Father may be glorified in the Son." When you pray, do you have this in mind?
Consider when you pray for others... it's not wrong to pray for someone's healing or for the Lord to provide them with a job if they're unemployed, etc. But in praying for someone, don't you want to be praying for their best?! God struck me with this thought: in my prayers for others, I should be praying for their eternal benefit, not just their temporal pleasure. If someone's sick, James 5 gives instructions on how to pray to get healthy... but why not also pray (primarily) that they may know Christ better in their suffering? Isn't this what our ultimate goal is- to worship and know Christ in every part of our lives? Or is the ultimate goal to 'live long and prosper'?
I had to question myself- when I pray for my friends and family, how am I praying? For their eternal benefit- that being that they may worship God more fully so that His glory is revealed even more through their lives? Or for their temporal pleasure- that they might be happy and far from sickness, suffering, and trials? That's not how we were taught to pray (Matthew 6):
"Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your Name.
Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever amen." (The last part is included in some manuscripts but often recited in churches today)
Be careful to distinguish that "deliver us from evil" does NOT mean "deliver us from suffering and trials". And the first line is SO important, as John Piper points out in one of his messages:
"I am urging you from the Lord’s prayer that you go to God for bread, and for healing of relationships, and for the overcoming of besetting sins, and for the doing of God’s will, and for the seeking of God’s kingdom—all of it, all the time for the sake of knowing and hallowing, reverencing, honoring, valuing, treasuring God’s name (God’s being, God himself) above all things."
So we should go to God for all of our needs "for the sake of knowing and hallowing... treasuring God's name above all things". And this is accomplished when we pray for others in a way that eternally benefits them- for the sake of the Name of Christ.
Note: please understand that I'm not trying to bash praying for another's health. I have prayed that prayer many times myself and I believe God does want us to give all of our desires, fears, concerns, worries, etc to Him (Philippians 4:6-7, 1 Peter 1:6-7). But I hope that when we pray for their health, we pray with a Christ-centered mindset, keeping in mind that our ultimate goal in life isn't to have a long, prosperous life full of temporal pleasures. That shouldn't even be our secondary or tertiary or last goal in life. We have been created to worship and exalt the Most High King and so we should pray for our friends and family, much more ourselves, in a way that seeks to accomplish this purpose.
For the sake of His Name...
Luke
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