Day 9

In case you missed it, on Sunday we discussed three critical things we must keep in proper perspective in order to really open ourselves up to a healthy, committed prayer life. I referred to the following three things as "prerequisites to prayer":

1. Better Understanding of God's Identity - God is sovereign over all creation and capable of answering our prayers.
2. Better Understanding of Our Own Identity - We must acknowledge our weakness, limitations and inadequacy in order to really appreciate the blessing we have in the opportunity to pray to God.
3. Better Understanding of God's Initiative - God is not simply a great being willing to be benevolent towards weak and needy humanity. Rather God is a loving, committed parent who has adopted us into his family as co-heirs, and who longs to give good gifts to us, his children.

Those ideas have been powerfully compelling in my life. If you missed Sunday morning and have time, I'd encourage you to go to the website and listen to these ideas worked out in a little more detail in the sermon. However, I'd like to focus our attention on that second prerequisite for just a minute today.

Many of us find it very difficult to ask for help. Ask my wife, this is a particularly pronounced struggle for me. Yet the undeniable truth is this...we ALL need help at times. In fact, most of the time we need help from others in a variety of ways, to one degree or another. Each of us knows this internally, but we seem to spend a lot of time trying to convince ourselves and each other this isn't the case. In our time and cultural, independence and self-reliance are firmly entrenched in the highest tier of personal traits, and the indoctrination process starts early. Think about it, every time a child learns to do something "on their own" we all clap and cheer and tell them how grown up they are. There isn't anything wrong with that on its own. Actually those kinds of celebrations are wonderfully appropriate. However, there is an important, yet extremely fine line between a healthy self-image and the delusional, destructive sense of self-suffiency that plagues our society. Learning to walk or hold your own fork as a child is great. Growing into an adult who refuses to ask for directions and doesn't ever read the instructions before trying to assemble (Just speaking generically here. Obviously, not referring to myself.) is not good at all.

Each of us in our own unique ways struggles with this tendency towards independence and self-reliance. So, is it any wonder so many of us struggle with prayer? When we pray, we acknowledge more than God's greatness. We also are admitting to our own inadequacy. At its core, prayer is us asking God for help, admitting our need for more power than we possess on our own. In fact, that's how prayer began in the first place. People began crying out to God when they found that life was more than they could handle on their own. It is still the same with us today. Life is bigger and tougher than anything we can deal with by ourselves. We need help. You know it. I know it. Though God most certainly knows it, maybe it's time we owned up to it in his presence and began asking him more often for the help we so often need.

O give thanks to the Lord, call on his name, make known his deeds among the peoples.  Sing to him, sing praises to him, tell of all his wonderful works. Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice. Seek the Lord and his strength, seek his presence continually.    

1 Chronicles 16:8-11

Have a great evening and a prayer-filled tomorrow. Be in prayer continually. Pray for one another.