How Does (or how should) Prayer Work

Lately, I’ve been going through a lot of painful things in my life. Of course, everybody goes through difficult trials and tribulations (John 16:33), and I know I’m not alone when it comes to suffering. Somehow, we usually get through these things, one way or another. Many people pray to God (or something else) to help them get through the difficult times. I’m one who prays to God, but I think I often approach prayer in the wrong way. I discovered this one day when I was watching a livestream service given by one of my favorite bible teachers, Pastor Gary Hamrick of Cornerstone Chapel in Leesburg, Virginia.

Before I get into the meat of what he said that shook me, I’ll describe a bit how I normally pray when things are not going well for me. I will usually ask God to change a circumstance, heal a sickness, mend a behavior, change another person, change me, help me deal with a problem or maybe even remove it altogether, and so on…and so forth. I pray for this thing every day and, while I don’t expect to get immediate results, it goes without saying that I desire my prayer to be answered. I don’t think this is necessarily the wrong approach; in fact, the Bible says that persistent prayer is important. Jesus even gives us a nice parable in Luke 18:1-8 to demonstrate this principle (read this passage at your convenience).

So, back to the livestream sermon I heard the other day. I learned something about God’s Will from listening to this message. Assuredly, I understand that God has a purpose for every situation (a good verse for that one is Ecclesiastes 3:1). The problem is that I tend to assume what I pray for IS exactly God’s purpose. If I don’t eventually get what I’m praying for, I become a little irritated and yet I continue praying for precisely the same thing. I think what I’m missing, however, is God’s perspective. When I pray, I sort of try to bend God’s Will to my will when perhaps I should really be aligning my will to His. Prayer, since it actually connects me to God, should help me do this.

Pastor Hamrick, who I mentioned earlier, stated that E. Stanley Jones (a mid-20th century missionary and Methodist preacher) once said “If I throw out a boathook from the boat and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore? Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God.”

So, although I continue to pray for the thing I want, the thing I want is not quite the same as when I began. In fact, the thing I want is more akin to the thing God wants for me. This evokes one more scripture, Romans 12:2 which states:

“And be not conformed to this world: but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what Is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”