WHAT exactly should we pray about?

DAILY BYTE

So we have dealt with the question ‘why’ and the question ‘who’. The last question that we will use to interpret this week’s text is WHAT. And perhaps this is the crux of all our conversation, the biggest of all our questions. WHAT exactly should we pray about?

Well, the simple answer is everything.

Absolutely everything.

We need to be REAL when we pray. The book of Psalms, for example, is filled with prayers that overflow with anger, disappointment, disillusionment, and even with shallow requests. Because prayer is about two hearts meeting, then bring everything that is on your heart to God, bring your anger, disappointment, lack of faith, fears, weaknesses, and yes, even bring your shallow requests.

But bring all these things knowing that the very purpose of prayer is to transform us and teach our hearts what they are really made for. Jesus talks about praying for our needs, like daily bread, but remember that all these prayers come after praying first that God’s will is done above our own. That part of the prayer sets the context for everything else that we pray about afterwards!

We will find that our prayers are changed from being us-centred to being God-centred, and in so doing we are changed from being us-centred to being God-centred. Now of course, when our prayers become God-centred, they still will involve ourselves but will just do so in an entirely different manner. We will have been taught what it is we truly want and need.
The movie, ‘Bruce Almighty,’ tells the story of a man (played by Jim Carrey), who’s life goes terribly wrong. He ends up ranting and railing at God, telling God that he could do a much better job of ‘being God’ if given the chance.

Well, it so happens (only in Hollywood), that God does give Bruce the opportunity to use his God-like powers to try and do better. At first Bruce uses those powers for purely altruistic reasons, but over the course of the movie he changes and begins to try to use his powers for good. When he does so however, Bruce is utterly overwhelmed by the extent of people’s prayers and needs, and so fires off one simple answer to all – yes!

This horribly backfires because some prayers are in direct conflict with needs expressed in other prayers. 5 people pray for one job, and they all receive the answer ‘yes’ but there is still only one job! Pandemonium results and Bruce’s self-righteous vision of utopia crumbles sending him in abject despair to confess his failures to God.

‘There were so many,’ Bruce says, ‘I just gave them all what they wanted.’
God, with a knowing smile, responds, ‘Yeah. But since when does anyone have a clue about what they want.’

Prayer, the act of prayer and engaging in prayer, is a way of teaching us WHAT we really want and WHAT we really need.

Bring everything that is on your heart to God, but do so in a manner that recognises everything will be set in its proper place by God’s Kingdom and God’s ways. This will radically change our hearts and redirect our prayers.

So perhaps there really are only two types of people in this world – those that can pray, and those that really struggle with prayer. And maybe they’re actually the same kind of person. But for all those who really find prayer to be a problem, please know that there is no great secret to prayer, a secret that is available only to the hyper-spiritual among us. No, prayer is just two hearts meeting, ours and God’s.

Prayer is us finding our heart’s true home in the heart of God, and prayer is the key that opens those hearts to one another.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Father, hallowed be your name,
may your kingdom come,
give us each day the kind of bread we need,
and forgive us our sins, for we also forgive all who do us wrong,
and do not bring us to the test.