Discipline of Prayer

Articles

Larry Walker
02/16/16 - Prayer

The Discipline of Prayer in 2009

Though we desire to be more like Jesus, we are often so beset by cares and struggles and lusts of the world, that we don’t know where/how to begin. Our lives may be a series of fits and starts, delays and detours. Sometimes it may even seem like “two steps forward, three steps back”. We may have well-intentioned plans [like New Year’s Resolutions?] to study the Bible more, to be more faithful at public assemblies, to get more involved in “church work”, to be better spouses, to control our anger better, clean up our language, etc. But too often these get derailed as we fall into the daily routine, the pressures of work, the pull of material things around us.

What is the problem? Is our faith too weak, our strength too small, our love for the Lord too shallow? Well, all of these are true, but there may be something else, something that feeds all of these.

A man came to Jesus on one occasion, and told him of his son, who was possessed by a demon, and of the inability of Jesus’ disciples to cast it out [Mt 17; Mk 9; Lk 9]. Jesus reprimanded his disciples for their lack of faith, then he healed the boy on the spot. The disciples later asked him, “Why could we not cast it out?” Jesus’ reply may seem strange to us: “This kind only comes out by prayer” [in Mt, prayer and fasting]. It seems the disciples thought they should always be able to just breeze through the wondrous works by snapping their fingers. But Jesus said there are some challenges that demand devoted communion with the Father; otherwise, they would get nowhere.

There is here a great lesson for us. Sometimes when we are jumping and starting, then stopping, resolving and climbing, then sliding back, it is because we are trying to climb the steep side of the mountain with our own gear and our own goodness. We need to chuck it all, and turn and follow the trail that our Savior has cut for us. He lived in constant communion with his Father, sure of his abiding presence. Prayer to his Father always dominated every phase of his life, whether giving a brief word of thanks or petitioning in public settings, or going alone into the mountain to pray all night. He prayed to the Father about his work, his mission, and he prayed on behalf of his “little ones” who faced sore trials.

We have developed in the last 300 years, in the “age of science and reason”, a view of the universe as a great machine, with God put on the shelf as a detached observer, separated from his creation, which runs according to natural laws. In the age of the Bible, this was not so. The faithful Jew saw his Father as present and active in his creation, sustaining it and upholding it. Jesus himself was especially attuned to the working of his Father in the world, from providing sunshine, rain, and daily bread, to keeping watch over and protecting his children, to his providence for new spiritual growth.

Should we not be more like our Lord in this? Can’t we learn to pray more like he did? To devote some time alone in fervent prayer to our Father? To learn to constantly, throughout our day, commune with our Lord Jesus in moments of thanksgiving and petition? To know He is here, alive with us and in us, by his Holy Spirit? If we did, some of the “demons” that beset us might turn tail and run! - Larry Walker, December 2008