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Dear Friends:

As crisis after crisis seems to arise in our world and as many of the things we counted on to be secure seem to be wavering, I am thinking, once again, about the absolute necessity of prayer. Prayer is our link to the very cornerstone of our lives. It is the connection to the foundation that cannot be shaken no matter how violent the earthquake gets around us. Because I really believe that and I think you do, too, I thought it might be helpful to explore together how the practice of prayer expresses our total dependence on God. And that dependence is exactly what He wants from us.

Our problem.

We pray to a God we do not see. We read His Word. We see His fingerprints throughout our created world. And we sometimes sense that He is speaking to us in our thoughts. But we cannot look at His face. So, our practice can easily become that of meeting with Him in the morning, reading the Bible, and presenting our prayers. Then, leaving God at our meeting place, we move on with our days behaving as if we are independent agents, making our own decisions, thinking our own thoughts, and relating to others in ways that seem reasonable to us. We turn to Him again if we are in crisis as we reach out for His intervention in our desperate situation. But, we don’t tend to pray in the ordinariness of our days.

God’s perspective

God love us. He wants to hear from us not only when we are in need, but also when we are simply moving through the routines of our hours. His goal is our total dependence on Him. He doesn’t want us, even unconsciously, to leave Him behind at the place of our morning prayers. He doesn’t ever want us to think that we can just pick up where He left off. He does not “leave off”. He is eternal, always present, and everlastingly wanting to be our fortress and our provider – the one on whom we utterly depend. As John Piper puts it, “God delights in being trusted and enjoyed.”

Why does He want that? Not because He has control issues and wants us under His thumb. But because He created us to function at our best when we are operating in relationship with Him. And because without Him, we will do nothing of significance. Without Him, we can influence no one for eternity. Without Him, we will wander intellectually, we will be drawn into sin, and we will become emotional wrecks. We need Him. Because of that need, which God knows better than we do, He invites us, draws us, and urges us to develop total dependence on Him.

Jesus’ example

How can we possibly learn to do that? The nature of the three-year old is still in us. You know what I mean, the inner urge to say, “I can do it myself!” God-dependence is not easy because our natural bent is toward independence. So to help us understand how we can trade in our independence for God-dependence, Jesus, in His humanity, has given us a model. He lived on this earth partly to show how a human being can perfectly depend on the Father in Heaven who is more real than we can imagine, but who is invisible to the human eye. How did Jesus live a life of dependence on God?

Though Jesus was God in the flesh, He had set aside His divine powers to share in the limitations of humanity for His years on earth. I believe that means that He had to access God the Father just as we do – through prayer. There are many recorded instances of Jesus’ praying in the Bible account of His life. Often we are just told that He went off to a mountain to pray or that He prayed all night or, in the Garden of Gethsemane just before His arrest, we are told that He prayed earnestly, that He prayed in anguish.

At other times, we are told exactly the words Jesus used when He prayed. John devotes an entire chapter in his Gospel to Jesus’ prayers for Himself, for His disciples, and for all who would eventually believe that He is who He claimed to be – the very Son of God.

Then, there are the succinct prayers that Jesus sometimes prayed in the working of a miracle. He prayed two short sentences before He raised Lazarus from the dead. Just think of the power in those words. Prayers don’t need to be long and theological in order to be effective. They just need to connect to God. They need to show our dependence on Him in every circumstance of our lives.

Here is how the writer of Hebrews describes Jesus’ prayer life.

“During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. . .” (Hebrews 5:7-9)

Jesus was God. Why didn’t He just do what He wanted to do? Why didn’t He just rely on His own judgment and His own power? Because He was showing us what a perfectly dependent human life would look like. He is our model, the One we are to become like.

The secret of dependence.

So, how do we live in that dependent state as Jesus did? Through prayer. Prayer is our access to God and to His resources just as it was for Jesus.

Do we need direction? Ask Him.
Do we need strength? He is our source.
Do we need money? He is our provider.
Do we need wisdom? We are told simply to ask and He will give it generously.

He does not withhold these things to punish us or to make us squirm. He sometimes withholds them, though, until we ask. Why? Because He loves us. He wants us to lean on Him and, thus, to learn that we can trust Him. When we ask, we learn to trust and, then, over time we find that we are becoming more and more dependent on Him. That is what He wants.

So, we pray about everything. There is no need too small

Hanging on

Prayer is our connection to the Father. It is like a rope that serves both as our guide and our security. As long as we are hanging onto the connecting rope of prayer, we are safe, we are accomplishing what His perfect will is for us, and we are living an adventure.

The best way I can find to describe it relates to the mountain climber’s relationship to rappelling, a system of descending a slope while being tied to and controlled by ropes. They tell me it is safe, but apparently it takes great deal of trust in the ropes in order to make a successful descent. Here are the words of one adventurer who tried waterfall rappelling for the first time: “The trickiest part of the whole experience was standing backwards at the edge of the waterfall, attached to the rope, and then simultaneously squatting and taking a step backwards over the edge and down the face of the 90 meter waterfalls . . . very scary for me!”

She then goes on to talk about her total dependence on the rope: “Your feet must be wide apart and your knees are to be straight, making you as far from the rock wall as possible, trusting the rope to hold you as you adjust it, a few inches at a time, moving you down a few feet at a time, all the while the waterfall is throwing itself down on you, drenching you completely in cool, refreshing water!” (Sonya Vartanian. www.travelblog.org).

That’s what our dependence on God is like: Hanging onto the rope for guidance, stability, and security, but working our part as we adjust and move in the direction of the goal. God is with us at every moment showering us with blessing and refreshing waters. Prayer is that rope. Letting go of the connection to God is dangerous. Hanging on is exhilarating adventure. Which do you choose?

Have a wonderfully dependent Thanksgiving season!

Bev
http://www.beverlyvankampen.com