Prayer and Understanding God

Our church is doing a series on questions. Easter was "Why Jesus?" This Sunday is about prayer...specifically, is there a reason God doesn't answer my prayers. Am I not good enough? Am I doing it wrong? In doing very minimal research to help our pastor, God has spoken to my heart about prayer in my life. This view on prayer is not a result of unending research, but rather personal experience and need. It's been a rather tough week as my brother struggles through a battle in his life...one that effects those that love him dearly. So, here are my thoughts:

It seems to me when I read about prayer in the Bible, specifically the New Testament, the goal of prayer is not our personal comfort and wishes. In 1 Cor. 13:9, Paul prays for the perfection of the Corinthian believers. In Phil 1:9, the prayer is for the love of the believers growth in knowledge and insight for the purpose of discernment. Phil 4:6 states that we should not be anxious, but with prayer and petition make our requests know to God. The result of this is not a perfect situation, easily handled, but God's peace. James 1:5 states that God will give wisdom to those who ask and believe. James 4:2-3 states that they do not have because they do not ask God and that when they do ask, they ask with wrong motives...motives that are selfish and concerned with their own well-being and personal pleasures. Because of this, their prayers are not answered.

I've been reading "Adventures in Missing the Point" by Tony Campolo and Brian McLaren. In McLaren's response to Campolo's chapter on Theology, he addresses the way we approach God and shares quotes from a poem by C.S. Lewis. I found the poem online and have included it below.

He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshiping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskillfully, beyond desert;
And all men are idolaters, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.

Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.

What an incredibly powerful thought! Humanity constantly struggles to understand God. We have images and frameworks, but they rest on our own personal experience, through traditions passed down to us; all of these incomlete. We see through the glass dimly.

I was listening to a CD my husband left in the car over the weekend and heard a song that caught me right where I'm at. The song is by a band called "Down Here". I can't seem to find a CD by them or a website, but the song is on the 2002 WOW CD. The words are as follows;

I knew the times would come, and now the times have landed
With sting and abrasion.
As ready as I seem to be, it's never like I planned it.

I'm wrestling my thoughts, I'm overcome
Would you give me death, I'm asking Lord.
There's nowhere I sense your presence here
So I will cry out until I go...

From protest to praise, You're always amazing me.
Your changing me slowly but surely and
You're going to see me to the end.

How long will I be forgotten by you forever
Cause you're not making sense here.
It seems like eternity has made a home between us.
I'm wrestling my thoughts I'm overcome...

What captured me in the words of this song is that sometimes life doesn't make sense. It's hard and it's painful. But the journey from protest to praise is where God wants to meet me. In my own life, my prayer is that God moves me from protest to praise.