Praying Well

WHEN: August 17th 2009
AUTHOR: bk
CATEGORY: Blog
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When I was young, my family used to begin every meal by saying the 'come Lord Jesus' prayer: “Come Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let these gifts to us be blessed. Amen.” But I misheard it when I was learning it, so I said it this way: “Come Lord Jesus, spear our guests...” Instead of inviting Jesus to our mealtime, I was asking Him to lance anyone who came to the door. Clearly, I've always had a problem praying well.

Is anyone good at praying? Most people will say that they wished they prayed more. But I wonder if there's a deeper, more troublesome thought that people don't express as often: does it really matter? Does prayer really make a difference? It seems like the Bible is littered with promises about how God will answer our prayer in our time of need. Among the most common are Jesus' words, “If you ask the Father for anything in my name, He will give it to you” (John 16:23). But how many things have we prayed for in the name of Jesus and received nothing? Is the Bible wrong on this point?

Let's look a bit closer at what Jesus means before we jump to that conclusion. What does it really mean to “pray in Jesus' name”? We say it all the time when we conclude our prayers. Maybe it means our prayers go through some sort of timewarp, and we're praying to Jesus when he walked this earth 2000 years ago. Or maybe it means we're praying to some sort of cosmic Jesus who floats around in heaven like the Holy Spirit with a beard. But what does the Bible say?

The apostle Paul wrote a letter to a church in Corinth, and just said outright: “You are Christ's body” (1 Corinthians 12:27). This isn't a metaphor. As the church, we are, actually, the body of Christ. Weird, huh? Our actions in this life really are the actions of Christ.

Ok now back to prayer. When we pray “through Jesus' name”, we aren't shooting our prayer up into heaven like an arrow so that it hits Jesus and then returns back to us with an answer attached. We are Jesus' body, here and now. So what does that mean? It means that when we pray through Jesus' name, we become part of the answer. We pray through the Body of Christ here on earth, not over it. Our prayers are linked to our concrete actions—our whole lives, in fact. We don't just pray the correct formula and wait for something to happen. Prayer isn't a rain dance. Our actions affect our prayers.

Do we want to pray well? Then we must live well. Praying through Jesus' name isn't a formula for getting what we want. It's a reminder that we are supposed to live good lives for God. That's why James can write in his letter, “The fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” (James 5:16). Prayer isn't about the words. It's about our willingness to live like Jesus, before and after we pray.