Pastor’s Corner: “Parachute Prayers”
Luke 11:1 (NIV) “Lord, teach us to pray.”
I was recently was reading online about the difference between round and rectangular parachutes. There are advantages and disadvantages to both, but the main thing about a parachute is that, for everyone but smokejumpers and skydivers, a parachute is an emergency piece of equipment. It’s there, but you hope you never have to use it. Often our prayer life can morph into a parachute mode: There for emergencies only. Does your prayer life consist of mainly parachute prayers?
I love this quote from the late missionary Hudson Taylor: “Do not have your concert first and tune your instruments afterward. Begin the day with God.” How do we tune ourselves up before launching into our day? Begin our day with God in Prayer. As Christians we often overlook one of the most important yet simple and edifying practices of our walk with Jesus. Why is this? Prayer is often viewed as an obligation or burden rather than the privilege and gift that it truly is. The enemy is constantly attacking our prayer life with distractions, discouragement and doubt to keep us form a life lived in prayer because he knows how powerful it can be. James 5:16 (NIV) – 16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person (not a perfect person, bur one who is in Christ’s righteousness – a believer) is powerful and effective.
We can join the disciples’ request: “Teach us to pray.” There are an abundance of books and articles written on prayer, but let’s focus on what Jesus said and did as it relates to prayer.
PRAYER IS A RELATIONSHIP, NOT A RELIGIOUS. Note Jesus’ words “pray to your Father.” The word in “Father” in of itself conveys a personal and intimate relationship. Relationships involve regular communication, involving both speaking and listening: “A man prayed and at first thought that prayer was talking. But he became more and more quiet until in the end he realized prayer is listening.” (Søren Kierkegaard).
Jesus set the example: Mark 1:35 – “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.” You’ll find Jesus often going off by Himself to a mountaintop or a remote place to spend time with the Father. Prayer isn’t something we can leave by the wayside, as though ignoring speaking with God were an option. In the same way if we constantly ignored our spouse, the relationship would suffer. In the same way prayerlessness comes at a cost to our relationship with God. Additionally prayer is constant. You don’t contact those you love only when you need something. You want to spend every minute you can with them. So it is with God. Prayer is our line of communication, time carved out of a busy schedule to talk and listen, to get to know our Father and His Son better.
Over the past few weeks, a recurring theme has come up in my life: the need for prayer, both the strengthening my personal prayers and the necessity of praying with others. It’s no secret that prayer is, at times a struggle. Building and rebuilding healthy rhythms takes time, and our natural (human) impatience makes waiting for answers difficult. Sometimes it seems easier to run under our own power than to do the thing we are called to do: pray. So what do we do when we feel stuck or lack motivation?
1. Confess and Repent of our prayerlessness. Not to put too fine a point on it, but prayerlessness is a sin. We are commanded to pray always. Prayer isn’t simply about getting something from God, but about developing intimacy. Humble yourself before Him.
2. Recognize and thank God for how He has always been at work answering our prayers. Sometimes our problem with prayerlessness comes from a failure to see how God has been at work throughout our lives. We have many needs, and some of them we’ve even prayed about. And God unfailingly supplies what we need for the circumstances we find ourselves in (even if we don’t always like what that entails). So take a moment and consider how God has been at work and THANK HIM.
3. Respond to every prompt to pray. We get these every day. Rather than dismiss it which is easy to do in our busy and distracting days, stop and lean into it. Respond to it and pray. It doesn’t have to be anything profound, it just needs to be. Respond… and then respond again. Then respond again.
Remember, prayer is not a parachute to be used only in times of emergency. “Prayer should be the key of the day and the lock of the night.”
In His Grace,
Pastor Hamilton