Thoughts from Sunset

August 29, 2006

"The Heart of Prayer"
Inspired by Monty Pettyjohn
August 29, 2006 SIBI Chapel

"In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will."
Romans 8:26-27 (NIV)

With all the spiritual self-help books and new-age teachings about prayer available today, you've probably heard some interesting opinions and approaches to prayer. If you haven't figured it out already, prayer is not about saying or doing the right things as if to unlock the magic combination before God will hear you. Chances are you've heard one of these types of prayers before. It seems many people get stuck in a rut with their prayers in public, but that might have something to do with misunderstandings about the real heart of prayer. Matthew 21:21 tells us that nothing is impossible if we only have faith in our prayer. James 1:5 also confirms this by telling us to ask God for what we need in faith and without doubt.

If you've ever tried this before, you probably noticed you don't get everything you want when you pray. Matthew 19:26 assures us that nothing is impossible with God, but that doesn't mean we'll get everything we want. When we approach prayer as simply asking and expecting, we're really missing the big picture. Even if we have a great deal of faith when doing this, something is missing. What we fail to recognize much of the time is that God's Will for us is the perfect plan for our life! Most of the time, we don't really know what we need or what is good for us. We may pray for something and expect something that we don't need at all. So, when we pray we must remember to recognize God's Will for us. If we truly knew what was right for our life in every situation then we would be perfect and there would have been no need for Christ to lay His life down for us on the cross. As we know, that is simply not the case; we need God's perfect plan, and we need to allow Him to guide us.