DON'T TIPTOE THROUGH THE PRAYER GARDEN

John 14:12-14

We give lip service to the sovereignty of God when we call Him omnipotent and then proceed to pray meekly and humbly “Thy will be done”. It can be a sin to pray for His will to be done if it is merely a cop-out for our lack of faith. We are to approach His throne boldly and with confidence but when we always include in our prayers “Thy will be done” as a disclaimer, we are woefully short on faith. We are to pray as if we actually expect God to answer our prayers. Naturally, when He answers our prayers, we should praise and thank Him but we should not be surprised.

God is absolutely all powerful. There is nothing He cannot do. Whether we actually believe this will be manifested more in our prayers than in our proclamations. God created all things. He is the God of nature. That means that since He made nature, He controls nature. What we see as the natural order of things means nothing to God because He is capable of the supernatural just as easily as He is the natural. The natural way of doing things can be considered as the default setting. The supernatural way of doing things is how we program the power of God into our lives by prayer. We often fail to access God’s supernatural power simply because we don’t ask. We assume that the default setting, the natural order of things is what will occur whether we pray or not. Therefore we don’t feel a lot of need to petition God to rearrange the natural order. We have a “Que sera, sera” (What will be will be) philosophy.

Has the God of the Old and New Testament days lost the power to interrupt the laws of nature and perform what we consider miracles? I don’t think so!! Has His people lost the power of confident praying to be able to ask Him to change His mind and to do something He had not planned to do or to do it differently? Houston, we have a problem!! This is exactly why we see so few answers to prayers. We tiptoe quietly and meekly through the prayer garden lest we disturb God. There’s nothing wrong with praying quietly and meekly with soft voices but perhaps those soft voices affect our boldness. If we pray aloud perhaps with loud voices, we will be more confident and bold in our praying. If we are talking to another person or to more than one person, we sometimes raise our voices when we feel strongly about something. Why do we need to be so quiet when we talk to God?

I’m not advocating continuous loud praying. That could become more of a show than anything else but if we afraid to pray aloud or loudly because we don’t want others to think we are a fanatic may mean that we are concerned more about how we impress other people than how we impress God. Why are we afraid to speak up and speak out in our prayers?

Dr. Charles Spurgeon was approached by a young minister one time who asked “Dr Spurgeon, every time you preach, someone gets saved. I am not having much response to my preaching. Do you have any suggestions?” Dr. Spurgeon replied, “Young man, do you expect someone to be saved every time you preach?” The young pastor said, “No sir, I don’t”. Dr Spurgeon replied, “Then there’s your problem”. We have a similar problem in our prayer life. We don’t expect God to answer all of our prayers but being the good Christians that we are, we dutifully pray. Dutiful praying is no more than a ritual. If we really expect God to answer all of our prayers, we must pray with confidence and actually expect God to rearrange the natural order of things just because we ask Him to do so.

God, as I come before you right now, I confess that I have been very meek and mild in my prayer life. Teach me how to be bold and aggressive in my praying. Forgive me for my lack of faith in Your ability and willingness to answer my prayers. I want to be able to claim Your promises that are so plentiful in Your Word and yet I walk so quietly in the prayer garden that you might not even know that I am there. Show me how to make my presence known toYou so that You will hear me and answer my prayers. Don’t let me be afraid to ask You to change Your mind. Your Word says that if I ask ANYTHING in Your name that You will answer it. I claim that promise!! Thank You!!! Amen. Now try praying this prayer aloud or even loudly.