Skip to main content

Does Prayer Work?


            I’ve been a Christian for almost fifty years.  I’ve done a lot of praying over those years.  I can’t tell you the number of people for whom I’ve prayed for all their cancer cells to miraculously die and for their health to be restored.  I’ve diligently prayed for certain souls to turn to God.  I’ve begged God for doors to open for a certain blessing.  If I could remember every prayer I’ve prayed and calculate the number of times I got what I asked in prayer, I would have to conclude that prayer doesn’t work.  Prayer isn’t given as a magical remedy to the part of life that I don’t accept.  God doesn’t bid us to pray so that we can order up our wishes like we choose a snack from a vending machine.  Rather prayer is about intimate connection.
            The greatest prayer that was ever prayed was from the Garden of Gethsemane.  Jesus came there to ask God, His Father, for something very specific.  He asked in great faith.  He believed that God could answer His prayer.  He certainly was intense in prayer, evidenced by the blood His body sweated.  He didn’t give up on His request, repeating it three times.  If ever there was a perfect prayer, it was this prayer.  Did it work?  Did Jesus’ humble, righteous request change the outcome of His life?
            If you look at Jesus’ prayer in the garden from the perspective of getting what He prayed for, then you would have to label His prayer a disaster.  Not only did His request get denied, ironically it was denied while He was praying.  As He knelt in prayer for the third time, He saw His captors coming to arrest Him and take Him to the cross.  He stood up to face exactly what He was asking God to take away.
            If you look at Jesus’ prayer in the garden from the perspective of getting what He prayed for, then you have to label His prayer a disaster. 
            If you understand prayer as an intimate connection from a soul on earth surrounded by spiritual darkness and the God of heaven possessed by eternal light, then you could only conclude that Jesus’ prayer worked out the disconnect between heaven and earth.  His prayer brought power, light, insight, and willingness into the dark events of the cross.  His prayer brought down from heaven the light of salvation for hopeless and lost sinners for as long as there is time in this universe.
            The prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane was an explosion of God’s righteousness, light and power into the world.  Was there ever a prayer more powerful than Jesus’ thrice repeated plea?
Mark 14:36: Abba, Father, he said, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will. Prayer that works every time is prayer that follows Jesus’ straightforward pattern. 
1.       Intimacy—Abba, Father—He prayed.  In this connotation He was acknowledging the love, care, and confidence in the One to Whom He prayed.
2.       Confidence—Everything is possible for you—He shattered any doubt that God could do what He asked.
3.       Honesty—Take this cup from me—He was brutally honest about His soul’s desire.
4.       Trust—Yet not what I will, but what you will—He knew that He could trust God’s perspective more than His own.
Did Jesus’ prayer work?  Let your own soul be the judge of that.

Copyright © 2015. Deborah R Newman teatimeforyoursoul.com  All Rights Reserved.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fifth Monday in Lent through Palm Sunday

Fifth Monday in Lent: Righteousness Needed Jesus is all about bringing us righteousness yet we are too worldly focused to think we have much of a need for righteousness. Most of us think we need healing or exciting miracles. We might try to get a little righteousness by going to church on Sunday and giving some spare change to a beggar. God sees the bigger picture and knows that there is nothing which we are more bankrupt than righteousness. He sees that we are totally incapable of getting the righteousness we need through our own actions, so He sent Jesus to give us His righteousness through His sacrificial work on the cross. Lent is a season of repentance and preparation for the Easter celebration. No matter how sacrificial your Lenten fast, it could never be enough to earn your righteousness. I have been practicing Lent for   years, and every year at the end of my fast I come face to face with how far I am from righteousness. Some of the first recorded words of Jesus in th
Post a Comment
Read more

A Pilgrimage that Started with Tears

                Who would think I would shed tears deciding to set out on a wonderful journey that I have longed to take for many years?   Before I was ready to fully accept God’s invitation for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, I had to journey to a place of agreement between what my soul wanted and what the Lord wanted for me.   For years I have been declining opportunities to travel to Israel—not because I didn’t want to go but because I wanted to go with my husband by my side.   I know that God could have arranged that for me, but instead He asked me to accept that He wanted me to be willing to go and leave everything behind.   When I was asked to make a decision about going on a Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, God gave me this verse in answer to my prayer -- Debi, observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess (Deuteronomy 11:8).   I decided through tears that I would go on
2 comments
Read more

The Missing Tribe of Dan

            The reason I love studying the Bible with a group of people is that they teach me things I don’t know.   I love it when I don’t know the answer to a question.   That is how I learn.   So when someone recounted the ugly tail of Dan’s idolatry in Judges 18 concluding with the passage in Judges 18:30-31 :   There the Danites set up for themselves the idol, and Jonathan son of Gershom, the son of Moses, and his sons were priests for the tribe of Dan until the time of the captivity of the land.   They continued to use the idol Micah had made, all the time the house of God was in Shiloh. I wanted to know if that could possibly be true that the Danites never ever worshiped God!   How could that be?             Before I had a chance to settle that question, someone in the class read the passage from Revelation 7 where the tribe of Dan was omitted.   I never considered that!   I never realized that a whole tribe of Israel was not found in the New Testament.   What could that
2 comments
Read more