Faith and Prayer

Faith is such an abused word. We throw that word around with seeming conviction, yet it more often than not only leads to confusion. More often than not, we confuse “faith” with a “positive attitude”. Instead of praying that God’s will be done, we muster up all the mental prowess at our disposal, and try to will our prayer requests into effect instead.

So what exactly is prayer? When we are taught to pray in faith, what does that mean? How does it actually work?

I believe that at the core of all this confusion is a fundamentally flawed assumption that to have faith means to believe God will answer according to our requests. If that were true, you’d find me fasting 40 days and 40 nights, asking God for Fiona Xie and a hundred million bucks! Of course we all know that to be a ridiculous request that God won’t answer. (sob sob…)

But the principle behind why God won’t answer such a prayer isn’t because its ridiculous. Its because its not in line with His Kingdom plan. If my marrying Fiona Xie was part of His plan to bring millions to Christ, you can bet my bottom (100 million) dollars that He would have answered my prayers before I even asked! And I firmly believe that this is the fundamental principle behind prayer. That’s why we were taught to pray “according to God’s will”, and Jesus’ prayers said “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” and “Not my will but yours be done”.

I could go on. The Bible is littered with examples of the sort of prayers we should be making, all in the same line of thought. This might sound harsh, but as with all things we slowly realize in our spiritual journey, life is really all about being God-centric instead of being self-centric. In other words, the things we should pray about if we want to pray according to God’s will, should all be about God’s Kingdom.

What about my bad day at work, my injured elbow or my poor aging grandmother in the hospital with pneumonia? Does this mean God doesn’t give a crap, and I shouldn’t bother? Of course not! The bible also says “cast all your cares upon Him because He cares for you.” We should be free to come to God with EVERYTHING that’s in our heart. (Yes, even the lustful thoughts I’m having about Fiona Xie as I type out this blog entry on prayer.)

We should and we must, go to God and be open. After all, it's a dangerous thing to think that we can hide anything from Him. If its legitimate, tell Him. If its not legitimate, confess to Him. But one of the most important exercises in our personal prayer life is to be able to go to God and expose ourselves without any reserve. Doing so doesn’t change a thing as far as God is concerned since He already knows everything, but it sure helps hone our awareness that any pretenses we have all fall away in His presence.

I should stop rambling.
Yes, we need to go to God for everything. There’s nothing wrong there. But we need to do so with the acute awareness of what requests are kingdom-centric, and what requests are self-centric. So what about faith? Does this mean therefore that we can be confident of prayers for kingdom-centric matters to be answered, even if self-centric requests might not? So we can be sure that our prayers for the mission trip ensures everything goes smoothly even if I might not get that promotion I was hoping for?

Wrong again.

We should never ever place our faith in the requests we make, nor place our faith in the belief that God will answer. I might be wrong to be so definitively exclusive here, but I firmly believe that the ONLY faith you should have when you pray, is that GOD IS A GOOD GOD. Here’s how it will look like:

I go to God everyday, praying with all sorts of prayer and petitions, reminding myself that being God-centric is a spiritual discipline. I pray for things that as a self-centric person I normally wouldn’t, and also bring before Him the things on my mind and the desires of my heart. I unload and unleash all of my cares and burdens on Him, sharing with Him like I would with a best friend. Then when its all said and done, I walk away feeling lighter. Do I still have cares and concerns? Of course! Does the tightness on my shoulders remain? Definitely! Has all my problems I prayed about been magically solved? Of course… not!! So what has changed?

I have.

I have spent time with the Almighty God, and counted it a privilege that He allows me to approach Him like this. I count it a blessing that He would care about things with practically zero cosmic consequences, but it matters to Him simply because it matters to me. And even though everything seems to have remained the same from ten minutes ago when I started praying, I have changed. I am reminded that God is a Good God. He is good regardless of whether or not He answers any of the requests I had just put before Him. He is good not because of what He will be doing for me. He is good even if NOTHING I pray for from now on gets answered.

He is good because of what He did for me in the past – He went on the cross to show how much He loves me. I need no further proof of that. And so even if He doesn’t answer my prayers, my faith isn’t shaken. I don’t need my prayers to be answered to decide if He is still a good God. I already know He is. And knowing how good He is, spurs me on towards being even more God-centric, both in my life and in my prayers.

And THAT, I believe, is what faith really should be.