The other day, a clip from a prayer seminar by Dan Mohler was shared on my feed and it got me thinking… am I praying wrong? Do I not have enough faith? Should I demand instead of request? Am I irritating God with my prayers? Is my prayers a blunt tool? A clanging cymbal? A cracked bell?
(Please hear my heart if my voice comes out wrong…)
If the zombie apocalypse starts tomorrow, you can ask any teenager and probably in their response would contain somewhere that you need a weapon. You need to arm yourself, find a gun, and defend yourself.
But we, as gun owners, knows it is much more complex. Guns are heavy. Ammo even more so. You need the right ammo to fit the gun, you need the right holster to carry the gun, the gun needs to be clean and taken care of to function as it needs to when you need it to. Which means it needs to be loaded before you need it, not when you need it. And then we haven’t come to pointing it at a living thing and pulling the trigger with all the noise and smells overpowering your senses. Firing that gun has a result. A definite result.
Which brings me back to the video clip… Many short clips on the internet cuts a short 2 or 3 minute piece and this nugget of truth (and it is the truth!) becomes our ‘gospel’ … the way things are. But it is not… it is much, much, much bigger and more complex, but we hold on to this visually and emotionally stimulating “energy bar” of truth to get us through… when we are supposed to be eating a proper plate of grown-up food!
If you take a guy like Dan Mohler… this could very easily happen. Because the 5 minute clip is a fraction of a teaching that is probably spanning 3 or 4 days, on just that one, single topic. The whole teaching wasn’t the whole plate of food, it was a week’s worth of food… but we only took a bite.
I AM NOT SAYING THAT WE SHOULDN’T SHARE CLIPS LIKE THESE! They cause us to think, they often reveal something to us that we need to aspire to, to look deeper into, to fix or to ask forgiveness for. God can and does use anything and everything to glorify His name!
What I am realized is that when I watch short clips like these, I need to place it context. Ask the extra questions, and try and complete my understanding. Every thing Dan said was true, and correct… but not the complete story. Not because Dan didn’t share the rest, but because I just saw a short piece of his message.
(And just as a side note, we do this with bible verses as well… Jeremiah 29, anyone?)
Let me put it in a personal context:
When my friend Mike was shot recently, I wanted to eagerly send out to my intercessors to pray for Mike, to pray for his surgeon and medical team, to pray for his family. To pray against fear, to pray against hate… but I didn’t… because I was still wrestling with a concept I saw in a video clip.
It took an active decision to send it out to a few people to stand in intercession and every time I sent out the request, Dan’s words from the clip was ringing in my ears… has my prayer chain become my gossip chain?! (And these are true words, and a legitimate problem), but I realized that it is the devil twisting the truth just enough to make me ineffective.
“But you have prayed for Mike, why do you now want to pray more? Why involve yet another group? Do you really care… or do you just want the shock value? Did you pray ‘wrong’ the first time? Did you not use the right words? Did you not wave the right flags?”
but….
We have a good God, and over the last week or so, He has been directing me to great prayers, and great pray-ers and their stories. Nehemiah was short and to the point: “ok God, let’s go!” And then he did it… But Daniel took 21 days (after they tried to put a law in place to stop him from his average day-to-day prayer life!) Jesus frequently prayed until midnight, or until sunrise. The apostles gathered 120 believers in the second floor room and interceded day and night “…united in prayer, gripped with one passion…” In Daniel’s case, there was a massive spiritual battle, and like Jesus taught His disciples when they ‘failed’ at healing a boy… sometimes you need to push harder and longer. Because our battle is not against flesh and blood…
More recent history is full of the same. From the slave girl that led escaped American slaves to mexico by asking God: “left or right?” “Wait or go?” And no matter how many patrols were out, they never caught her, year after year. Short, direct and to the point. But then the other side, the Moravians started a 24-hour prayer meeting that lasted 100 years! Fanning the flame of revival ministries across the world. Actually resulting in the abolishment of slavery in the British isles. The Berlin wall fell on a multi-year prayer meeting with Rev. Christian Führer, the “pastor in the denim vest” that started with 6 people and grew to 600,000. The beatitudes “blessed is he…” and the command from our Father: “pray without ceasing” – the early American and British revivals… the father of modern missions… all started with tireless and endless prayers…
My point? For many, prayer is just a tool. But in my experience, prayer is a discussion. It is a conversation. And the flags we wave, and the music we play. The chants we chant… and the memorized prayers we pray, is there simply because we have forgotten how to speak to God, and how to listen… and so we find our way back. Is it not what Jesus did when He taught His disciples to pray? The jews knew how to pray, but not how to commune with God, so Jesus put down a path for them. Not a path to find God, but a way to get out of our own way and stand fearless in front of our loving Father… as sons and daughters, not slaves and servants…
My mother once told me many years ago she doesn’t speak well to God, so she dances her prayers. And when her body didn’t want to dance anymore, she danced in her head. Now she is a prayer warrior, and speaks to God face to face, fearless (not without doubt, sometimes, but not afraid!). An old pastor friend of mine had such a stutter that he could hardly get a complete sentence out, but he realized that he had no problem to sing to God. Today, he teaches in power, every, single, day…!
If my son wants to show me his latest creation in minecraft, or my 6yr old daughter makes me ring or a necklace or a bangle… will I not wear it instead of judging it? Man loves the worship team with professional musicians and will not understand that my two chords I can play on a guitar is also worship to God. But God takes my little creation and sticks on his heavenly refrigerator with a boss magnet for everyone to see.
Which is probably the conclusion:
It is not the quality of quantity of our prayers and sacrifices, but the intent of our heart. It is not how we ask, but that we ask. That we come sit on His lap and just talk… and that was Dan’s point.
