Tuesday, January 19, 2016

WHY DON'T SOME CHRISTIANS PRAY?

I speak not from criticism of a few; but rather, first, from experience of me.  For years as the one person in the church who should have been praying, I was not.  I did not. And I can't explain the precise whys or why-nots; but a slight glimpse into this oddity might open some of us to begin to pray more fervently.

Oddity?  Yes, this is so very strange among us.  We want others to be believers; yet, there are standard matters of which we seem, by our own inaction, to disregard ourselves...specifically today...prayer.  For believers in God to spend little (maybe none) time in prayer might be a testimony to our authentic disbelief.

I'm not sure this is a national thing; but I'm raising the question as to whether we Christians are still quite hung up on the visible.  The reason this is significant is that faith functions from the invisible base.  We are to walk by faith; not by sight.  Faith is the conviction of things not seen.

Prayer may have been aborted because we would rather be from Missouri where seeing is believing.  Prayer is avoided because man wants results and when we don't get immediate gratification for our efforts; we abandon such as a waste of time.  Think about it.  If one doesn't believe that prayer matters, then all such time is merely a wasted consumption of minutes as well as oxygen.

Yet, a bigger question is, "Why do Christians pray?"

We believe that what isn't yet can become...Romans 4:17.  We are certain that an invisible God runs this show.  But all that we have to verify this is....that we believe it. Of course, this leaves one quite vulnerable.

We pray because we are sure that there is a relationship with this invisible God of ours.  We note throughout our days huge clues as to His activity, to His life on earth in the form of Jesus, and His productivity via the Holy Spirit.

To pray expecting and believing does not mean we send orders to Heaven and delivery will be quicker than UPS.  To pray doesn't mean that we smoke out a signal and God's angels come a-running.

To pray means to believe even when others don't.  It means to endure, when so many quit.  It calls the heart to never give up; even if interference or stress or even death steps into the middle of our party.

Prayer is not a demanding note to God that we want and we expect to get.  However, it does seem to play a major role in our walk when we shift from believing that time spent in prayer is not about submitting our wish list; but is more about our submission to His wish list.

Why don't some Christians pray?  We may have become too enamored with getting what we want and when we don't see it happen on our timetable, we assume that it is the idea that prayer is flawed; never ourselves.



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