prayer Archives - Page 3 of 8

In my own prayer life, I find it helpful to pray the prayers of Scripture. I sometimes pray the prayer of Daniel in in Daniel 9. Or the prayer of Jesus in Matthew 6. Or any of the numerous prayers of Paul found throughout his letters, such as the one at the end of Ephesians 3. I especially find it helpful to pray the Psalms. There is a Psalm for every emotion.

If you do something like this, the one prayer in the Bible I encourage to never pray is the prayer of Jonah in Jonah 2. It may be the worst prayer in the Bible.

That is what we are going to begin seeing today as we look at Jonah 2:1.

The Text of Jonah 2:1

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the fish’s belly.

In this discussion of Jonah 2:1 we look at:

Why Jonah’s prayer is not a model prayer
How to know that Jonah’s prayer is self-righteous and self-centered

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How does God talk to you?

By Jeremy Myers

21 Comments

This is a guest post by Mike Edwards.

Mike asks questions in hopes one may reconsider any beliefs about God that may discourage one from pursuing God and spirituality. Mike blogs at: What God May Really Be Like – Misbeliefs About God. Visit his website to learn more about him and his books.

Note from Jeremy Myers: I am publishing several guest posts this summer as I take some time off to rest. I am also preparing for something HUGE this fall. Stay tuned! If you would like to write a Guest Post for RedeemingGod, begin by reading the Guest Blogger Guidelines.

It can be very confusing how one is supposed to relate to an invisible God.

Frustrations can lead to simply giving up having a meaningful relationship with one’s Creator. I understand that some people claim that God speaks to them directly, but this is not the experience of the majority of those who seek a relationship with God. Many may prefer that God would speak more directly but this doesn’t always leads to the results we may think.

The Bible suggests that God spoke directly with the first couple in the garden, but this experience seemed to wane as history progressed. And while Moses says he spoke to God face to face (Exod 33:11, when God sets out to communicate to the Israelites, He did so through the mediation of Moses, and by inscribing the commandments on stone with the finger of God (Exod 31:18). We don’t know exactly what types of communication these were but most would agree that God was no longer communicating in the same way He communicated with Adam and Eve.

Since God doesn’t speak audibly or write in stones to us, how can we know that we hear the voice of God?

Many of us talk out loud to God or we pray silently and then thoughts come into mind. Are such thoughts from the mind of God?

Well, there is some bad news and some good news.

We can’t know for certain that our thoughts are inspired by God, but the good news is God’s love is supportive not controlling. God gives us freedom to make decisions in an open future. Any number of decisions can be made in our situation. God does not predetermine our future. This indicates that while we want to hear more directly from God, God indicates His responsiveness to us by not predetermining everything we think, say, and do. He responds to us as we respond to Him. This means that while we may not be able to hear the voice of God, we can see His response to us through how life unfolds as we pray and communicate with Him.

God always listens

One benefit to God’s approach to us is that He always listens. Most of us want a good listener in a relationship. Very few of us want to be told what to do, or we would always take the advice of others rather than frequently having a comeback as to why one’s suggestion won’t work. Opinions are not always helpful or welcomed. Besides, one’s interference can prevent growth and self-satisfaction resulting from making independent choices. We want to be heard by another soul to talk out situations and share burdens that are heavy to carry alone.

If can be comforting to know God is always available to listen. We may be embarrassed to share our latest relapse with a friend. God doesn’t heap more guilt on us. God has endless mercy and forgiveness so we don’t give up no matter how demoralized we may feel. God is always available in times of loneliness. Friends can’t always be available in the middle of the night. We may feel that we are overburdening our friends by constantly going to them. God’s shoulders surely are much bigger.

But, I want to hear what God thinks!

We all want to know what God thinks. But the truth is that we already mostly know what God thinks. If you think about it, we already know most of what God thinks about most issues. Therefore, talking with God is mostly for emotional support.

And as for the issues where we want God’s input on our life decisions, God withholds His input because He wants us to make our own decisions.

It is helpful to think about moral versus immoral actions. When it comes to most moral issues, God has already pretty clearly told us in Scripture what the best course of action is.

But many decisions aren’t moral – what job to take, whether to move to a different city, etc. God doesn’t predetermine our future so we have to wonder the “right” decision. God doesn’t know if your partner is suddenly not going to honor their commitment when challenges arise. Wise decisions are simply taking into account past experiences, current circumstances, future aspirations, and going for it. God’s love is both freeing and uncontrolling. He doesn’t tell us what to do in such cases, because in some sense, He is just as excited as we are to find out what we will do and what will come of it.

Some relational decisions seem to have a touch of morality that we aren’t sure what God would do. God’s love is still freeing. God isn’t hiding. Should we forgive a mom and sibling for participating in favoritism? Neither admits to any favoritism but such actions are clear to most outsiders. The Bible can be used to suggest always forgive or forgiveness is only possible when one acknowledges wrongdoing. Jesus once said to rebuke others but if they repent forgive them (Luke 17:4). One may forgive to best deal with personal bitterness. Others may not forgive to avoid further bitterness since the guilty denies wrongdoing.

In relationships there isn’t always a “right” thing to do. It is more complicated for leaders of nations for they are making decisions for millions, thus governments best have checks and balances.

Still, a relationship with God isn’t about being told what to do. It is considering how a loving God may think on a matter and feeling free to make a decision based on your present circumstances. If you are insisting God guarantee a certain outcome, then you are asking God to be a controller. A loving God would speak audibly if necessary; otherwise, assume you have God’s blessings if it isn’t immoral or violating the rights of others. Don’t live in fear; live in the knowledge of God’s love. And don’t demand certainty, for this is something even God cannot guarantee in a free world.

I know some of what I have written is controversial. So what do you think? How can we hear the voice of God? How can we know what to do with certain decisions in life? How does a loving God help guide and direct us through life? Share your input and ideas in the comment section below.

How to talk to God for REAL

By Jeremy Myers

42 Comments

How do you talk to God? How should we talk to God?

I often hear Christians who have picked up a really bad habit of saying “Father God” at least once every 5 words. I am not making this up. You have probably heard something like it yourself.

Such prayers sound like this:

Father God, I thank you, Father God, for being here, Father God, and for allowing us, Father God, to study Scripture today, Father God. And Father God, may you bless our minds, Father God, with your Spirit, Father God, so that, Father God, we may become more Christlike, Father God, and in your name, Father God, bring others to you, Father God.

And on and on it goes. I have written about this before here. Such a way of praying certainly develops a good rhythm, but is that really what we are going for in our prayers? Rhythm? No. I think that when we pray, our goal should be communication with God.

So how can you do that?

Talk to God like you Talk to Others

When people say “Father God” over and over in their prayers, I imagine God does not mind as much as I do … but please, when you pray, learn to talk to God like you talk to anyone else. You do not need fancy words, fancy language, or lots of repetition.

And God definitely doesn’t need to be reminded of who we are talking to.

On a recent Facebook Post, Vicki Manera shared this image with me:

Let’s start talking to God the way we talk to anyone else. God does not need to be reminded that we are talking to Him.

In fact, you don’t even need to start your prayers with the word “Dear” and end them with the word “Amen.” Do you do this when talking to anyone else? Nope. So just talk to God like you talk to any other friend who is standing right next to you. Because that is exactly where God is.

The Lord’s Prayer for Today

Here is “The Lord’s Prayer” which follows this way of thinking about God and about prayer:

Hey Dad, I know that you want people to know who you are, and so help me learn to follow your ways here on earth just as they are followed in heaven. Help me do this by trusting you for my needs today and avoiding the way the world wants me to live. Hopefully as you teach me to live this way, others will come to know you through me. I’m serious about this, okay?

Now really, that prayer is quite generic. It doesn’t say much. But it’s a template for how our conversations with God can go. You don’t need to memorize this prayer or recite it. After all, do you memorize a conversation you want to have with your wife and recite it to her every night at dinner? I hope not…

The point is this … God is a real person who wants to have real conversations with you. So talk to Him that way!

Do you want to pray like never before?

Do you what to talk to God like you talk to a friend? Do you want to see more answers to prayer?

If you have these (and other) questions about prayer, let me send you some teaching and instruction about prayer to your email inbox. You will receive one or two per week, absolutely free. Fill out the form below to get started.

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Why God Hides from You

By Jeremy Myers

37 Comments

Have you ever wondered why God doesn’t make Himself more obvious?

Have you wondered why He doesn’t write His name in the clouds so they say, “I Am God and I Exist! Believe in Me!” or call out to us with a booming voice from heaven, or simply just show up in all His splendor and glory?

Even when He did come in the person of Jesus Christ, He came masked in human flesh, cloaking Himself in humility and frailty.

Why does God do this?

Why does God hide?

Why doesn’t God make Himself more … obvious?

I have been thinking about this off and on for … well, just about my whole life.

I remember in my teens reading Romans 1 where Paul says that God has revealed Himself in nature so that men are without excuse, and I remember thinking, “I don’t know about that … I see evidence of God in the beauty and complexity of creation, but I also see a whole lot of evil. God’s existence and management of the universe is not obvious. If God had wanted to make Himself obvious, He should have spelled out His name in the stars or something. God should show up every 50 years or so just to prove to each generation that He is still around.”

I know that many people think that this is what God IS doing through answer to prayer, and daily blessings, and so on, but in our more honest moments, I think all of us wish that God would make His existence more obvious.

(Of course, probably no matter what He did, we humans would still explain it away somehow… we have an amazing ability to ignore what is plainly set before us… but this is a tangent I won’t follow…. )

We all want God to just jump down out of heaven and show up in front of us, and shout, “I’m here! I know what you’re going through! I have heard your prayers! I am with you! I will help you!”

But He doesn’t.

I want God to hit me over the head with a two by four!

I remember as a pastor standing out side of my house with a man from the church who struggled with alcohol. He had just come off a drinking binge and was standing there in my yard repenting and confessing and wondering if God still loved Him and forgave Him even though he had failed God AGAIN!

I kept trying to reassure this man that God will always love him and forgive him, but he wasn’t taking my word for it, nor did he want Scripture verses. He wanted God Himself to show up. He kept saying, “You know what I need pastor? I need God to hit me over the head with a two by four. I just want God to cold-cock me. To lay me flat out on my back!”

He and I were talking next to our wood pile (we heated our home with fire wood) and there was a two by four sitting right on top … it was about four feet long … perfect for knocking someone over the head. He pointed to it and said, “See that two by four, God? Come on! Hit me over the head with it! Right now! If you exist and if you love you me, knock me out!”

God never did, of course …

But I almost reached out and picked up that two by four and hit this man over the head. I came so close. He would have gotten angry and asked why I did it, and I would have said, “God told me to.”

I didn’t do it, though.

One reason was because I was afraid I might kill him, and the other reason is because I was pretty sure he had a gun in his car. I was afraid that if I hit him over the head, he might shoot me …

The point is that I think that in our more honest moments, all of us feel like this man.

We desperately need God to show up, and He doesn’t.

God never seems to show up when we most need Him to.

At least, He doesn’t show up in any way we can discern.

We’re even willing to suffer violence at the hand of God if He would just stop hiding from us!

But instead, God always seems to be Missing in Action. Distant. Giving us the silent treatment.

It is so frustrating.

And many of us end up feeling like we have offended God. That He is angry with us and wants nothing to do with us any longer.

Why Does God Hide?

Anyway, I have recently realized why God hides … Why God does not make Himself more obvious … Why He doesn’t write His name in the clouds or knock us over the head with two by fours.

God hides Himself because God loves and respects us so much.

If God revealed Himself to all humanity in the way that we want, we would have no choice to believe in Him and follow Him.

If God showed up in all His power and glory — if we survived this appearance (which we probably wouldn’t) — we would be forced to submit to Him.

And God never forces Himself on anyone.

God does not want to force people into believing in Him.

He has no desire to make people follow Him against their will. God wants us to love Him, and He knows that love cannot be forced.

If He showed up in all His power and glory, it would akin to a man holding a gun at a woman’s head and screaming at her, “LOVE ME!” We call that rape.

And God is not like that. God does not rape.

He knows that forced love is not real love. And more than anything else, God desires real and genuine love from us.

God knows that if He were to reveal Himself to us the way most of us want, we would be forced into loving Him.

Terence Fretheim in his book, The Suffering of God, states this point brilliantly:

For God to be fully present would be coercive; faith would be turned into sight and humankind could not but believe. For God to be loved by people for God’s own sake, without being forced into it, requires a measure of human autonomy. Too direct a divine presence would annul human existence as a flame kills a butterfly. God must set people at a certain distance from God; whatever the intensification of presence, there must an element of ambiguity. God’s presence cannot be obvious.

Yes, this is why God hides. This is why He withdraws. This is why He retreats.

Because He loves us.

But even from afar, He is not silent.

Though He wants us to love Him, He first loved us, and love is not silent.

And then He woos.

He calls.

He sends “secret admirer” gifts.

He writes mysterious love notes.

He writes love songs and records them on our hearts.

Then He waits. And He hopes.

He waits for us to seek Him.

He hopes that we will search for Him.

And when we do, He begins to reveal Himself in new and exciting ways that He could not do before.

So do you want to see God? Look for Him. He is not obvious, but He is there.

And when you seek for Him, you will find Him, when you seek Him with all your heart.

God is not so hidden that He cannot be found.

What does it mean to pray in Jesus’ name?

By Jeremy Myers

35 Comments

Jesus says that whatever you ask for in his name will be given to you (John 14:13-14). But what does that mean?

In an attempt to follow Jesus’ instructions, many parents and churches teach (usually by example) that every prayer should conclude with the words “…in Jesus’ name, Amen.” But is this what Jesus meant?

Sometimes you hear people take this idea to an extreme, and they say, “…in Jesus’ name” over and over throughout their prayer such as this:

Father, we come before you in the name of Jesus, to ask you, Father, that you bless our time together, in Jesus’ name. And we bring forward our needs to you, Father, thinking of Ruth and her ingrown toenail, that you would heal it, Father, in Jesus’ name. And we lift up to you the sick cat of Carol. You know, Father, how the cat has been throwing up all night, and how Carol loves the cat which you gave her, and so we ask that you reach down out of heaven and touch her cat in Jesus’ name, Father, and deliver her cat from this malady that is causing the cat and Carol so much problem, in Jesus’ name…

And so on. (And while you might think I am trying to be funny with requests about toenails and sick cats, if you have been in many prayer meetings, you know that these sorts of requests are not uncommon.)

Even when Christians are able to root out of their prayers all the repetitious mentioning of “Father” and “in Jesus’ name,” it is still quite common for most Christians to end their prayers with the word, “… in Jesus’ name, Amen.”

I admit I do this. It is a habit I just cannot break.

But why would I want to break it?

Doesn’t Jesus tell us to pray in His name?

Well, yes, He does. But His instruction does not mean that we liberally sprinkle our prayers with the magic words “in Jesus’ name” or that we even close out our prayers with these words.

When we do this, we are treating the words “in Jesus’ name” like they are some sort of magical incantation by which we will get whatever we ask for in prayer. But that is not at all what Jesus meant, and in fact, mindlessly repeating the words “in Jesus’ name” to get what we ask for in prayer is actually the exact opposite of what Jesus meant when He invited us to pray in His name.

What does it mean to pray “in Jesus’ name”?

To pray “in Jesus’ name” means to pray as if Jesus Himself was praying our prayers.

When an ambassador visits another country “in the name of the king” (or president) it is as if his king (or president) is speaking the words that the ambassador speaks. The leaders of these other countries are to assume that whatever the ambassador says, it is as if the king (or president) himself said them.

Obviously then, the ambassador had better be certain that what he says is exactly what the king himself would say. If an ambassador says something foolish or insulting, he could easily start a war or ruin a trade agreement or destroy a treaty. To be a good ambassador, the ambassador needs to know the mind and heart and will of his king so intimately, that the two minds are nearly one.

This is what it means to pray “in Jesus’ name.” They are not magic words to get what you want, but are a mind frame we must adopt when praying to God. We must so intimately know the mind and heart and will of Jesus in whatever situation we are praying about, that the words we speak are the same exact words Jesus would speak if He Himself were the one making the petition to God.

How to Pray in Jesus’ Name

So to expand a bit on what Jesus said in John 14:13-14, I think His words could be paraphrased this way:

But when you pray, spend time thinking about what I value, what I have instructed you, how I lived my life, the kind of example I provided, the people I hung out with, the goals I sought to achieve, the relationship I had with God. Take careful notice of what I taught and what I prayed for. Then, offer your requests to God in light of these things. And when you do, make these requests boldly, knowing that the words you speak are the same words I am speaking. And when you pray this way, know that your prayers will be answered.

If you are not completely confident that what you are praying is what Jesus Himself would pray, this is when it is best to add the little caveat to your prayers of “if it is your will.” This way, in your conversations with God, you can tell Him what is heavy on your heart and weighs on your mind, but you are telling Him that you trust Him to make the best decision since you yourself do not know what is best.

In my opinion, most of the prayers we pray will be of this second sort, where we recognize that our hearts can be deceived and our minds darkened, and so we leave judgment and decision up to God.

To “pray with faith” is not to summon up so much “confidence” that God is somehow “forced” to do what we ask. No, to pray with faith is to offer our requests to God, knowing that He loves us and will do what is best for us, even if this involves not giving us what we have asked for.

So let us stop praying with magical words by which we try to coerce God and manipulate Him to do what we want. Stop using magic words in your prayers.

Instead, let us spend time learning the heart and mind of Jesus so that our prayers can match His prayers, and then, when we pray, pray with the humility of faith, knowing that God will do what is best for us.

Do I need to say ‘Amen’ at the end of my prayers?

Do you want to pray like never before?

Do you what to talk to God like you talk to a friend? Do you want to see more answers to prayer?

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Jonah 2:1 – Jonah’s Self-Righteous Prayer

The Text of Jonah 2:1

In this discussion of Jonah 2:1 we look at:

Resources:

Downloadable Podcast Resources

Do you like learning about the Bible online?

How does God talk to you?

Since God doesn’t speak audibly or write in stones to us, how can we know that we hear the voice of God?

God always listens

But, I want to hear what God thinks!

How to talk to God for REAL

Talk to God like you Talk to Others

The Lord’s Prayer for Today

Do you want to pray like never before?

Why God Hides from You

Why does God hide?

I want God to hit me over the head with a two by four!

We desperately need God to show up, and He doesn’t.

Why Does God Hide?

What does it mean to pray in Jesus’ name?

Doesn’t Jesus tell us to pray in His name?

What does it mean to pray “in Jesus’ name”?

How to Pray in Jesus’ Name

Do you want to pray like never before?

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