But I call to God,
and the LORD will save me.
Evening and morning and at noon
I utter my complaint and moan,
and he hears my voice. | Psalm 55:16–17
We just completed a Lenten sermon series on prayer. We have looked at the FORMS (the aspects of prayer) and the TOOLS (different ways to aid us in the act of praying). The forms themselves are regulative, or described to us in Scripture. The tools are means to help us get there – thus they differ from person to person. Sunday sermons have been primarily about forms, while our Wednesday EQUIP classes have been more focused on the tools. Some of the tools have taken us into places that are a bit less comfortable, especially for those who are cautious about falling into error (a good concern). However, prayer is not meant to be a sanitized environment, free from the messiness of our humanity. As a matter of fact, God wants us to come to Him as we are, and is not afraid of us showing our true selves to Him in the process.
I mention all of this because when we talk about ‘how we should pray,’ we need to remember what the purpose of prayer is.
Prayer is not about saying all of the right things or finding the perfect system, it is about coming to our Savior, to be refreshed and conformed.
Over the course of the last month, pastor Andrew has repeated: ‘we are not studying prayer to simply get better at prayer; we are coming to get more of God.’ To get more of God we need to be honest (THIS is a great article about why we struggle with this): honest about who we are, honest about how we feel, and honest about where we are struggling. In order to get there, we have to recognize that God desires us to come to Him in our weakness. One of the greatest hindrances to a healthy prayer life is the fear of doing it wrong. Trying to say all of the right things and to avoid error keeps us from truly engaging with God. It is important for us to understand that we can and should make mistakes as we pray and that the Bible even shows us how to do this. I want to look at a few of the ways that God teaches us to come to Him.
IGNORANCE
Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. | 1 Peter 5:6–7
At first glance this verse does not seem to give us license to put our ignorance on display before God, but it does. Much of our anxiety comes from not knowing what is to come and ultimately not trusting God with our future (though if we bring them to Him in prayer, we are pushing back against this). To cast ALL of our anxieties on Him means that we will be praying things that are theologically incorrect and possibly even blasphemous to God. We will be declaring that we don’t truly have faith that God wants what is best for us.
The Bible shows people doing this. One of the clearest places of this is in the book of Job. Out of his anguish, Job makes all sorts of statements about God that are wrong, like this one:
“I loathe my life;
I will give free utterance to my complaint;
I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.
I will say to God, Do not condemn me;
let me know why you contend against me.
Does it seem good to you to oppress,
to despise the work of your hands
and favor the designs of the wicked? | Job 10:1–3
ARGUING
Job accuses God of being an oppressor, working against His own good, and favoring the wicked. He goes on to make even more of these types of statements. God does not shy away from Job, but confronts him. He comes to Job and helps to correct him. Job’s ignorance is not rebuked, but affirmed. Once he sees the wisdom of God, he is comforted in knowing that God has the answers he does not, and he declares:
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. | Job 42:3
I have experienced the same thing. Often, when I go to God with unholy requests, they become obvious in light of His holiness. When I say things about God that are incorrect, saying them to Him reveals my ignorance – it also shows me what is right. Being wrong in God’s presence is sanctifying. He produces good from our errors.
Recognizing this opens us up to two aspects of prayer that we tend to shy away from: arguing and complaining. Both of these are easy for us with other people (many of us spend a lot of time arguing and complaining). When we approach God, we tend to feel like these must be left behind. Again, the Bible shows us Abraham arguing on behalf of the city of Sodom, Job challenges God throughout the text, but I want to look at Moses interceding for Israel in Exodus 32.
But Moses implored the LORD his God and said, “O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. | Exodus 32:11–12
God has made a declaration of what He is going to do and Moses argues with Him. He does not do it as a peer who might exercise power of persuasion. He uses God’s own character as the reason why He should relent of His anger. Moses is desperate. He recognizes the sin of the people and that they deserve to be punished, but He also knows God’s grace and uses it to call God to mercy. Moses knows that his pleading is dependent on God’s will – he even says as much later in the chapter – but he doesn’t use God’s sovereignty as a reason to withhold his struggle. He is willing to lose, but not without a fight.
COMPLAINING
The battle itself has value. Spurgeon echoes this is his sermon ‘Effective Prayer:’
The best prayers I have ever heard in our prayer meetings have been those which have been fullest of argument. Sometimes my soul has been fairly melted down where I have listened to the brethren who have come before God feeling the mercy to be really needed, and that they must have it, for they first pleaded with God to give it for this reason, and then for a second, and then for a third and then for a fourth and a fifth until they have awakened the fervency of the entire assembly. | Charles Spurgeon
Like Jacob wrestling with God, prayer is a place for us to put up a fight. Not because we think we can beat God, but because there is no other place to go to get what we need. Arguing is a means to ‘awaken a fervency’ not only in ourselves but also for Christians who have stopped going to God as the means of rescue.
I am weary with my moaning;
every night I flood my bed with tears;
I drench my couch with my weeping.
My eye wastes away because of grief;
it grows weak because of all my foes. | Psalm 6:6–7
As the verse at the top reminds us, David spent a lot of time complaining to God. In Psalm 6, he even complains about how intense his complaining has become. In complaining to God, we are given a place to let go of some of the burden. Even if we have to remain in difficulty, it reminds us that we are not alone in it. JI Packer, in his book Praying, says:
Our complaint prayers are not mere self-centered whining that life has not treated us right. Instead, our complaints are those of dependent children, running in fear and in hurt to our almighty Father, who rules all things. God, if he chooses, will relieve our pain.
And if, for nurture’s sake, he chooses not to do so, even then we are to snuggle and nestle into his arms, knowing that Father God loves us, hears our complaints and will love us now and forever.
It isn’t about the prayer or what it does, it is about the One that we pray to and what HE does. Prayer is a means for us to communion with the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, not as a distant and impersonal being, but as a loving God who cares for us. If we don’t come to Him honestly and in our weakness, then we build the distance. We stop seeing Him as intricately woven into our lives. He is there, but we don’t see it.
Stop using your prayer as a way to be right. Let God show you how gloriously wrong you are about so many things. In the process, let Him remind you that He loves you in spite of all of it. His glory is most clearly shown in the fact that he saves messed up people like you and me.