Prayer

I was listening to a radio show a couple of days ago where the host was interviewing some people from the “freedom from religion foundation”. I addressed the fallacy of one of this group’s leaders a few years ago in my Easter post http://askaboutgod-jamesklein.blogspot.com/2007/04/can-biblical-easter-accounts-be.html, explaining how he abandoned his faith because he couldn’t solve a scripture continuity problem I found very simple to solve. It is sad how blind a person becomes when they choose to leave faith behind, kind of like many people in America today.

During the radio show the host played a song recorded by this atheist group that had no creative content and instead repeated the same words over and over, “there’s nothing as useless as prayer”. My immediate reaction was that of course their prayer was useless, because you have to have faith for prayer to be effective, and that faith has to be directed towards the only God who is Faithful because He’s the only God who is real.

Jamed 5:15-16 - And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. (NIV)

The actions of the “freedom from religion foundation” are very telling. Jesus taught that we would be able to recognize the nature of a person by their fruit (Matthew 7:15-20). If a person simply doesn’t believe in something they do not become offended by the beliefs of others.

The fact that these people so adamantly oppose Christian faith shows that they are afraid of it. When you tell them “Merry Christmas” they want to shut you up because it makes them feel guilty, because they know in their heart that God is real even though they deny it with their mouth. They want to make other people believe that prayer is useless because hearing prayer confronts them with their own rejection of God, and when God answers prayer it makes them out to be liars and fools (Psalms 14:1).

Unfortunately too many Christians think that prayer is like a magic spell or incantation, that it only works if you do it often enough and say it just right (See Matthew 6:7-8). There is nothing mystical about prayer, it is just a conversation. When you pray like Jesus taught it connects you with the Heart of the Father. Instead of begging uselessly to some god you hope is going to answer but that never does, the prayer of a Christian is intimate communion with a Father who cares about us very much, and who will give anything for us.

If you do not feel the overwhelming love of the Father when you pray, you aren’t doing it right, and you need to slow down and talk to Him like He is a real person that you love and who also loves you, your Father. If on the other hand you do feel the love of the Father when you pray, like every Christian should, then you already know that your prayer is not useless.

Father in heaven,
Your name is holy.
Let Your kingdom come,
and Your will be done,
on earth,
in us,
and in everything we bring before you,
as it is in heaven.
Thank you for providing for us today,
everything that we need to live.
Forgive all of our sins against You,
just as we forgive everyone who sins against us.
Guide each of us away from the path of temptation,
and deliver us from the evil one.
For the kingdom is Your kingdom,
not our kingdom,
and the power always comes from You,
not us,
and all of the glory always belongs to You,
never to us,
at all times.
Amen.

Merry Christmas!


James :)