- Mark 11:22-26
I was recently enlightened on the topic of prayer as I sat through a sermon at the Austin Stone, a worship service for all Christian faiths, earlier this summer. After the insightful experience, I changed the way in which I converse with God, and, as a result, the power of prayer and its work in my life have become more evident to me. Today, I would like to share with you some of my realizations and convey some of the information that was once given to me.
As I have pondered my prayer life, I have come to the realization that prayer is an extraordinary gift from God. We could be left in desolation, left to figure out life and interpret God's word on our own, but the Lord allows us to actually speak with Him and He responds to our prayers, helping to illuminate the path that He has laid out for us in what sometimes seems like total darkness, total confusion. Think about that for a minute: an almighty God helping and listening to his unworthy creation. If we do not utilize this gift, we are just scratching the surface of what God has in store for us.
Wholehearted prayer is to God, through Jesus, and by faith. First, I would like to focus on "to God". We may, often times, think about our problems to ourselves and consider those thoughts and self-reflections to be prayers to God, but they are not prayers at all. When we forget to pray TO GOD (a seemingly obvious detail) we are missing out on the grace of his response to us.
The second major aspect of wholehearted prayer is "through Jesus".
Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.
- John 14:12-14
Jesus tells us here that we have the same access to God that He does. Jesus tells us here that when God sees us, He views us in the same way that He sees Jesus: as a son or daughter that He loves. Jesus tells us here that if we pray through Him, He will give us what we ask for. Now, in order to pray through Jesus, we all have to define ourselves through His works rather than through our own. However, when we base our days on the works of Jesus, on religion, if we have a good day, we tend to pray less because we feel that we do not require it, and if we have a bad day, we tend to pray less because we hate ourselves for falling to sin. It is important to remember that we are loved and that we should be using the gift of prayer on both the spiritually strong and weak days.
The third and final aspect of wholehearted prayer is "in faith".
But if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God who gives all generously and ungrudgingly, and he will be given it. But he should ask in faith, not doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed about by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord, since he is a man of two minds, unstable in all his ways.
-James 1:5-8
Praying in faith is essential. God does not want to hear requests from doubting hearts, and our lack of faith can be seen in a variety of ways when we pray. Our lack of faith is seen when we pray for things that we don't want, but it can also be seen when we don't pray for things that we do want. We can place the right requests, ask God to let us do his will, but not truly desire them. When we don't pray for things that we do want or when we pray general prayers exclusively, we are worried that, if we request things too specifically, the Lord will repudiate our requests; we are worried that He will let us down. Wholehearted prayer is being candid with the Lord, putting it all out there.
James 4:2 tells us that "[we] do not have because [we] do not ask". You may have prayed wholeheartedly before and wondered where your response was. Well I think that, at this point, it is of utmost importance to address the ways in which God can respond to prayers. Everyone knows the cliché that "God works in mysterious ways", but it is true. The Lord may have granted you what you requested of him, but it may take time for you to realize it and it may be in the most unprecedented, most peculiar way. Now, I know many of these quotes seem to portray God as someone who gives us what we ask for no matter what, but I think that many of us know that God does not always have to say "yes", not even to a wholehearted prayer. How do we know this? He said "no" to Jesus when He begged for a way out of his imminent and immense suffering in the garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:35-36).
Our prayers can bring the Lord to do the impossible. Our prayers can bring change. Through wholehearted prayer, God starts to shape our hearts to want Him more than our request. He makes us want to do anything for Him.
I know this post is already getting lengthy, and you are probably bored by now, but I would like to take this time to briefly describe an instance in my own life in which I have seen the power of wholehearted prayer.
Upon returning home from the Pines Catholic Camp this year, my mother had told me that my sister was going through some hard times. I do not wish to go into the specifics at this time as I do not fully understand them myself, but part of the predicament was that she felt like nobody heard her, she felt as if she was praying to no one; she was losing faith in God. I immediately started praying for her as wholeheartedly as I knew how to, and I later asked my fellow Counselors in Training to pray for her as well. So I do not consider it a coincidence that, a day or two later, in one of the camp's biggest years ever, days before her departure would be, before the last week of the summer, my mother received an email saying that a spot had just become available for my sister to go to the Pines this year.
Our late registration had left her on the waiting list and her desire to go was at an all time low. As we heard the news at dinner that night, I was so excited for her! I simply could not contain my smiles and joy at this amazing opportunity! It was this joy that I displayed, when describing how ecstatic I was, when describing how awesome her first year of fire village was going to be, that changed her mind and actually caused her excitement to grow as well (for those of you that do not know, fire village is the group of cabins with the eldest kids and it is, in my opinion, the most spiritually powerful). The night before, she could not even sleep because of her excitement, and she returned a much brighter, happier person. I still think back in awe and amazement. This is what wholehearted prayer to God, through Jesus, and in faith can do.
God Bless,
Caleb Blackerby
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