“You’ve
got to pray just to make it today” were the words of a song made popular
a couple of decades ago by rapper MC Hammer.
Prayer has been part of every
religion and every culture since the dawn of man.
Christianity is no exception.
Prayer has been part of what it means to be a Christian since the Day of Pentecost.
“And they continued steadfastly in the
Apostles doctrine, fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayers.” Acts
2:47
Prayer is written in the code of our DNA.
Humans pray.
We
always have and we always will.
The atheist long for a day when all religion is
put away and all praying will be silenced.
That day will never come.
As long as
there has been man walking on the earth, and tests in school, there has been prayer.
Before we knew
the One True Living God, we fashioned gods with our own hands, bowed to them
and prayed to them.
So if prayer is in our DNA, in every religion and part of
the founding of Christianity why don’t Christians pray?
Now, it is true that there
are those among us who are prayer warriors.
But as a whole, most Christians
spend very little time in prayer.
Why is that?
Is it because we don’t understand prayer?
Nope. We all
know what prayer is.
Is it because we don’t believe in its power?
We can’t be a
believer for very long and not see some significant answer to prayer in a
powerful way. So I do not believe we don’t pray because we don’t see the
results of prayer.
So what is it?
Why don’t we pray more?
One word; GUILT.
It was sin that made prayer necessary to begin with.
Adam
didn't need to pray; he spoke with God face to face daily. (How cool would that
be?)
But after the fall man was separated from God so prayer became the only
means of communication between Creator and created.
Christianity, then, was
founded on and spread across the globe with the message that Jesus saves us
from our sin.
Jesus came to forever deal with sin and bring us back safely to
God.
We preach against sin, tell how sin sends us to hell,
We tell how God hates sin, and how sin caused Jesus to go the cross.
So what does
the Enemy do?
He reminds us of our sin and makes us feel unworthy to approach
God.
And to be honest, we don’t do much to assuage all the sin talk.
In fact,
we sometimes double down.
I often hear people complain that today’s preachers
don’t preach against sin enough.
Is it any wonder than that people feel guilty and
unworthy to pray?
We all look in the mirror and what we see looking back at us
is the refection of a sinner.
So how can we realize that we are sinners in need of
saving and yet find a Holy,Sinless God approachable and wanting us to pray
often?
Prayer is a gift.
We make the mistake of thinking we have to earn the right
to pray. “If I’m good enough and say all
the right words and have all the right attitudes, God might listen to me when I pray.”
But we cannot earn the right to pray any more than we can earn salvation.
We
are given the gift of prayer not because of what we do but because of who we
are in.
We are born in Adam but we
are reborn in Christ.
Jesus gives us the standing we need to pray anytime,
anywhere, in any situation.
Prayer is a matter of standing and not a matter of
kneeling.
We have been given the gift of prayer not because we do right but
because Jesus has forever made us right and as such we have the Father’s ear
anytime we want it.
