A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON PRAYER -- Devotional for May 19, from "Good Seeds"

Call to Me, and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know. (Jeremiah 33:3)

This verse makes the best case of any in the Bible for understanding prayer as a two-way conversation. We may agree in principle, but practically speaking, our own voice is the only one we normally hear when we’re praying, so for most of us prayer is a soliloquy, not a dialogue. But this verse makes a far greater emphasis on what God says than on what we say. Our only job is to call to Him. When I invited a man in my church to join our “Band of Brothers” prayer time in my office prior to the church service he said he’d come if he didn’t have to pray out loud. “That’s hard for me,” he said. And it’s true, we all struggle with “having the floor” when all ears are on us. We want to be able to just talk to God, but with everyone else listening in, we’re afraid of the opinions of those human eavesdroppers. One solution would be to pray silently, even while together. But corporate prayer really does have the wonderful advantage of encouraging others in their faith in our prayer-hearing and prayer-answering God. I wish I had thought of this verse to share with my friend: “Just call on God – it doesn’t matter what you say. You open up the conversation, and if you’ll let Him, He’ll take it from there!” I wish I would have said that. But from now on I will, and I hope to practice what I preach and stop thinking so much about the words of my mouth, and concentrate more on the answer of God’s heart. If this verse is true, then we are in for some truly amazing things when we go to God in prayer. He’s not just going to answer back with words – indeed, we should not expect to hear audible words at all. If we creatures know that “actions speak louder than words,” wouldn’t the Creator put that maxim into practice at every opportunity? Maybe we all would pray more if we would think less about what words we might have to say to fill up the quota and meet the minimum daily requirements of what we think would be a decent prayer – and instead just finish our part posthaste in order to get started on God’s guided field trip where He will show us “great and mighty things which we do not now know.” Some people think of prayer as telling God what you know, when really just the opposite is true: it is listening and watching as God tells and shows us what we don’t know, but desperately need to learn. We think of prayer as worship time, and study as learning time. I’m thinking now that prayer is the best of both worlds: the time when I tell God my hurts and needs, but also the time He tells me -- and shows me -- just how He’s got it all in control!