But Will It Work?
I remember when I still had hope in the word “maybe”. As a child, I would ask my parents for something I wanted, and when they answered “maybe”, I found myself getting excited at how my request could actually become reality. In defense of my bright-eyed, bushy-tailed heart – and my parents, for that matter – “maybe” sometimes actually did mean “yes”. More often than not, though, as I am sure many can relate, I realized that “maybe” was just good training in enduring that thing we call “getting let down easy”.
God has many qualities like a parent; we refer to one of the persons in the Trinity as Father for a reason. However, praying to God can feel altogether different than talking to a parent. Sometimes He seems totally disconnected from our reality. Other times we might come to believe that He has disowned us and doesn’t want anything to do with us. A prayer can seem to disappear into a black hole the instant it leaves our mouths or minds. We are taught and encouraged to pray, but undoubtedly, we have all struggled with believing it has any effect. There are many examples of how to pray and what to pray, but will prayer actually work?
Even when we feel like prayer is an attempt to beat down a castle wall with a pool noodle, God has assured us that when we pray, we are putting a very powerful thing in His very capable hands. To understand this, we can look at the three main components of an effective prayer: a God who hears our prayers, a God who answers our prayers, and a prayer that is in God’s inbox.
Neither Snow, Rain, Heat, Nor Gloom Of Night
God is omniscient – that is just to say that He knows everything from how the universe is constructed to the very depths of our hearts. When we consider the vastness of what must be contained in that knowledge, we can presume that knowing the prayers of every human heart would merely be a drop in the bucket (Psalm 139:1-4). God knows our prayers and hears our prayers, so the question becomes whether or not He is the kind of God who pays attention to them.
James, in his letter to the early church, had something to say on the topic of prayer: “Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working” (James 5:13-16).
What James listed is a rather complete treatise on what we should pray about. Both lamentation over suffering and praise for joy are encouraged in prayer. Requests for both physical needs and spiritual needs find their home in prayer. Why would James encourage believers to include such a wide variety of things in their prayers if the God who receives those prayers isn’t interested in any of them? Indeed, God is fervently interested in being involved in every aspect of our lives. We are encouraged to pray about so many things because God wants to hear from us about everything.
Answering The Mail
Receiving communication is one thing, but I know plenty of emails and text messages that I was overjoyed to have received at the time that I then promptly ignored for weeks. God might hear our prayers and even be interested in our prayers, but does He really want to answer them? On this matter, Jesus could not have been clearer. “’Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!’” (Matthew 7:7-11).
Consider the illustration Jesus provided for a moment. A father and his child are at their special fishing spot, and the child sees a blip in the water. He beckons his father to help him catch the fish that made the splash, and being delighted to give his child good things, he comes over to help. Now, the father is taller and wiser. He can see things in the water that the child cannot and even discern what those things are. If the creature is actually a fish, the father’s heart will undoubtedly overflow with eagerness to help his child make the catch. Similarly, we would not expect him to pull a viper out of the tackle box and throw it in his child’s general direction instead of helping. However, if he peers into the pond and sees that it is in fact not a fish but a dangerous snake, he will steer the child away from the catch to some other good thing. No matter how adamant the child is that what he saw was a fish, the father, wanting to “give good things to those who ask him”, won’t give the child what he is actually asking for.
We can look at unanswered prayers like God isn’t listening or like He doesn’t want to help us, but the God who sees all things and wants the best for His children knows the exact outcome of answering any prayer in any given way. We may pray for a new car or a promotion, but have we ever considered what getting such things might do to us? So many things are not evil in themselves, and some things are even good! However, when they are given into the hearts and hands of men, they can become tools for unrighteousness and iniquity. Can we understand that God is far more interested in our imperishable souls than giving us the fading, shabby glories of the present world? God has mercy on us when He doesn’t answer prayers like that and when He values us over the desires of our hearts. He is far more interested in giving us life and life abundantly (John 10:10), and for that, we can be thankful.
Not all prayers fall in this category, of course. The basic principle is that our Father wants what is absolutely best for us and is willing to give us that good if we ask it of Him. If fulfilling a request is truly good for us, we have great assurance that He will provide it.
The Underlying Melody
With that being said, we should not miss the underlying melody in these passages. James, in one respect, mentioned that the “prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working”. For some, thinking about their righteousness might bring a sense of disqualification when it comes to prayer; at the very least, it might make us feel like we need to store up the spiritual version of Bitcoin by doing righteous things in order to cash in for answered prayers. Jesus, in a similar respect, spoke of the relationship between the Father and His children. If we don’t feel a deep, intimate connection with our Father, we might feel that we are disconnected from His promises and that our prayers will only gather dust on His desk.
We cannot forget how we become righteous. “For our sake he made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). We cannot forget how we become part of the family of God. “But to all who did receive him [Jesus], who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12). God did not make flat and empty promises to us when He told us to pray. He endorsed those promises with precious ink: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). If we remember how God brought us close to Him with incomparable grace and how He sees the perfect righteousness of His Son when He looks at us, how could we be discouraged to pray?
There is another matter, too. This wonderful salvation offers us “the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5) and gives us the opportunity to “be transformed by the renewal of [our] mind[s]” (Romans 12:2). With a heart of flesh, we long for the good of the flesh which at best fades and perishes with time and at worst lacks any real good at all. With a new, redeemed heart that’s been purchased by Christ, however, we begin to long for that which is truly good. God wants us to experience the fruit of His Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). God wants us to know Him (Hosea 6:6). God wants us to have life and freedom (John 10:10, Galatians 5:1). God wants us to know the truth (John 18:37). God wants to conform us to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29). All things that are truly good we can only see because of the grace extended to us in Jesus Christ, and seeing these things, we are put in the perfect position to ask for them. “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us” (1 John 5:14).
When we realize this, the beauty of praying “in Jesus’s name” blossoms with incredible potency. How wonderful it is to see the Gospel weaving into every aspect of our faith! I have heard it said that we can never hear the Gospel too much. My question anymore is whether we can ever hear the Gospel enough!
Go Forth And Be Effective
God hears our prayers, and He answers our prayers. My mother has always taught me that, if you don’t ask, the answer is already “no”. While the aboundingly good God we worship has time and again worked for our good even when we didn’t ask for it, it remains clear that the only thing standing between us and answered prayers is offering the prayers in the first place. It is likely that we will not always get what we pray for. It is likely that our prayers will be answered in strange ways we don’t expect. One way or another, though, as we walk with imperfect faith, imperfect knowledge, and imperfect desires, our perfect God will bring about wonderful good by the prayers of His children. Be assured that your prayers are effective.