Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto thee. (Matthew 6:33)
In my last
post, I drew from this well-known verse from the Sermon on the Mount saying
that we must seek God above all else. My devotional reading by A. W. Tozer this
morning has this cautionary note: “Whoever seeks other objects and not God is
on his own; he may obtain those objects if he is able, but he will never have
God…. The first and greatest commandment is to love God with every power of our
entire being. Where love like that exists, there can be no place for a second
object.” (
I might have titled this piece “Be Careful How You Preach.”
There is a strain of evangelical Christianity sometimes called the prosperity
gospel. These people preach that if you have enough faith or the right kind of
faith you can receive all the things you pray for. I see a couple things wrong
with this. First, it puts too much emphasis on material things. The kingdom of
heaven is not about getting material possessions; it is about getting God (Luke
12:15). Second, this attitude focusses so much on faith that it becomes a
matter of having faith in “faith.” Biblical faith always has an object: God
Himself not what He can provide.
I have always thought this attitude is a bit presumptuous,
treating God like a celestial vending machine. As Tozer says, “[God] will not
aid men in their selfish striving after personal gain. He will not help men to
attain ends which, when attained, usurp the place He by every right should hold
in their interest and affection.” The message of Matthew 6:33 is that the
material things we might pray for, at least the necessities, are the promised
result of seeking God first. The true prosperity as taught in the gospel is
that we are freed from our sins (like materialism) and adopted by God.
I titled this peace as I did because it occurred to me when
I read Tozer that the error of the prosperity gospel can slip into my prayers
if I am not careful. Many years ago, Jesus’ statement in Mark
11:24 was brought to my attention. In the King James it says, “What things
soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and
ye shall have them..” At the time, this was presented to me in the
context of the prosperity gospel. It sounds pretty simple: pray for something
and you will receive it as long as you believe. I struggled with that for years,
especially when my prayers did not yield the desired result.
At some point in my study, I discovered that the KJV doesn’t
properly translate the verb “receive.” A more accurate reading is, “Whatever
you pray and ask for, believe that you have received it, and it
will be done for you.” In the Greek text, the verb “receive”
is in the aorist tense which should be translated as an action completed in the
past. In other words, you must be so confident in your request that it is a
done deal in your mind. I am reminded of Jesus telling His disciples that, “Whatever
you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.” A more accurate translation is,
“Whatever you have bound (aorist tense) on earth will have been bound (perfect
passive tense) in heaven.” This means the action of the disciple has already
been accomplished in heaven. The disciple is simply bringing God’s will in
heaven to earth. That sounds familiar: “May
your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
That attitude implies an intimate knowledge of God’s will. I
can always pray with confidence when I know I am asking God to accomplish His
will on earth. I am reminded of what Graham Cooke said in Crafted Prayer; we
often pray right out of the gate for something without first seeking to know
God’s will in the situation. My wife, Karen, and I had a harsh lesson on this
recently. She was struck suddenly with intense pain from sciatica. Naturally,
we began to pray for relief; it didn’t come until the Spirit reminded me of this
verse in Hebrews: “Now all discipline seems for the moment not to be joyful
but painful, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness for those
who are trained by it.”
I asked Karen what righteous fruit God might be wanting to
grow in us. After prayerful consideration she realized that she was not fully
trusting God to handle our present situation. She confessed her failure, leaned
completely on God, and the pain relented. We also learned about a treatment for
sciatica from our daughter, and Karen had her doctor prescribe it for her. We
are thanking God for both the natural and supernatural healing He has brought.
I wonder if we had thought about the principle from Hebrews earlier if Karen
would not have had to suffer for twenty-one days.
I believe the key to effective prayer is very subtle. It is
no surprise that our perfect example is found in Jesus’ prayer in the garden
the night before He was to face incredible pain and disgrace: “Not
my will but yours be done,” He said to His Father. He had prayed
previously that the Father might find an alternative to His suffering, but
He ultimately left the situation in God’s hands. We also have Job’s
response to the test he endured: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in
him.” It is not wrong to pray for things; Jesus gives us license to pray for
anything “in [His] name.” That is the same as saying “in the Father’s will.”
The key is whether our prayer is for the thing or the Father’s will regarding
the thing.
Prayers of solicitation and intercession are a wonderful
privilege we have as followers of Jesus. While I believe God hears all our
prayers, He is not obligated to answer any that fall outside of His sovereign
will. If we are uncertain about God’s will in a situation, we have the blessed
promise Paul
records in Romans: “The Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example,
we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us
with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.” I believe this is part of
what it means to “pray in the Spirit.” We may come to a point where all we can
say echoes
Ezekiel: “O Lord God, Thou knowest.” This is not an abandonment of our
privilege to pray; it is the surrender of our will to God’s will in prayer.
Truthfully, there is no more careful, effective way to pray.
Related Posts: The Problem of Unanswered Prayer; In Jesus’ Name; A Prayer Primer
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