... in my name

Hey, it's 2007 already ... and a great day to talk about prayer.

It's funny how it never occured to me to learn very much about plumbing or household wiring until just a few months ago. Not until I finally got tired of standing in 3" of water inside a flooded boat, scratching my noggin and wondering where it all came from.

Just like it never occured to me to do much with 110-volt electricity beyond installing a dimmer or changing a lightbulb ... until I found out what marine electricians charge by the hour.

So long as everything worked the way I wanted there was no realization that I needed to know how to do those things.

It could be that owning two 35+ year-old boats has made me understand the importance of prayer more recently, but it's more likely there've been other, more compelling and urgent events when I needed assistance that made me realize prayer is the only choice.

Prayer works.

I was often disappointed as a prayerful little kid because I hardly ever got what I was praying for. No matter how hard I prayed. I thought God was so busy taking care of the adults and their prayers that he didn't have much time left over to spend with kids.

Like us kids were all away at vacation Bible school, and God would get around to us when he could.

Then I heard about this verse:

"You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it." (KJV)

Thinking college had made me smarter, I changed my prayer strategy and expected better results right away. I started tacking on "In Jesus' name I pray" at the end of each request ... "In Jesus' name may I please get a passing grade? Please, in his name?"

But not even that worked out like I planned, and I spent lots of time in summer school wondering why prayers go unanswered.

So what's the problem? Are verses like John 14:13-14, John 15:16 and John 16:23 nothing more than religious shell-games to keep our attention focused on the playing board?

Once we get past thinking of prayer as if it was coins we must drop into God's heavenly vending machine before we can start punching (mashing) our selection, we've got to accept that just like our telephone conversations with folks here on earth, prayer gets dull pretty quickly when only one person is doing all the talking.

And the person who'd been doing all the talking was me.

Hey, but my life situation was reaching critical mass and I wasn't in the mood to listen or be humble- I wanted to call in my order, wait by front door and see my solution guarantee-delivered in 30 minutes or less.


The Prayerful Physics of Conversation and Communication
1. Talking is not communication
2. There is no such thing as a one-way conversation
3. Communication is impossible if both parties are talking at the same time
4. Unlike talk, Communication cannot travel in two directions at the same time

In other words it took me a long time to realize I'd been using prayer to help God know exactly what I wanted and when I wanted it, instead of shutting up and listening to find out exactly what God wants and whether what I want glorifies him.

If you're a believer, communicating with the creator in order to find out what God wants might oughtta stay at the very top of your daily To-Do list, just a guess. The things God wants are bigger and more far-reaching than anything we could imagine for ourselves.

I was looking at my head in the mirror this morning and realized my brain could drop inside a quart-sized oil can without touching either side. My thinking-motor's not very big on the outside ... and when it comes to managing my life, much less controlling the universe, there's not much more than a few bubbles on the inside.

It's so scarey I don't want to dwell on how feeble my ability to contol the events around me actually is. That's why I'm glad prayer's there instead.

No wonder if God gets bored by our puny, selfish little prayers. And no wonder that we so often get frustrated and feel we're ignored, wondering why God doesn't do exactly what we want, until we become convinced there's no one listening on the other end.

The same way God might get frustrated and feel he's being ignored when we don't do exactly what he wants ... but then surely he already knows whether anyone's listening on this end.