Saturday, October 19, 2013

Will Bender and the Prayers

Prayer has a designed tendency to merge our will to that of our perfect and all-knowing God.  Because the act of praying helps to keep us in a spirit of consolidation with God, our earthly worries (those that are not of God) begin to overtake us when we drift away from him - when we are less intentional about our prayer life.

Communion with God is seemingly a simple matter of pushing the world aside and dedicating our attention onto the Creator of our universe.  Especially when we are weighed down by troubles or misfortune, our prayers often begin with a purging of all our concerns followed by our requests for God to fix all that ails us.  Both long-time followers of Christ and those that have been newly found have a tendency to pray in this manner.  We do this all the while knowing that God is omniscient - or all knowing; he already knows all that troubles us.


If we are patient enough, we may enter a more solemn time of communion with God during our prayer.  Perhaps we start thanking God for the many blessings he has already bestowed upon us or praising him for who he is (wouldn't it be nice if we always started with this one?).  Maybe we enter into a state of confession and repentance.  At times, we merely listen...sitting quietly while contemplating the presence of the Holy One - listening.  As we continue in earnest loving prayer, our will begins to bend toward him.

Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-46) in a fashion that may seem somewhat familiar to us.  The Father had revealed what laid ahead in Jesus' crucifixion.  He showed him that, in those moments of agony and death, Jesus would be made into sin and would bear the weight of the entire world.  Jesus would experience separation from his Father.  The mere thought of this happening troubled Jesus to the point of death. At first, he asked to be spared of the torment that he was facing.  After reaching out for his disciples three consecutive times, he still returned to pray.  Each time he prayed, his prayer turn to the will of the Father.

Jesus ended his prayer by expressing his sole desire: that the Father's will be done.  He desired this regardless of the torment that was about to occur.  Jesus' complete unity with the Father is seen in this prayer.  The Father and Son were united in their will to see that Jesus' crucifixion (and resurrection) would be carried out as was destined from the beginning of time.  As in Jesus' prayer, the Father wants our will to be adjoined to his.

I used to envision God looking at his watch while waiting for me to finish my list of complaints, worries, and requests.  Now I understand that my prayers turn when I remember the pattern of Jesus' prayer in the garden.  Our prayer continues in this same manner if we enter the exchange with a patient, listening, and faith-filled heart.  A heart that is willing to receive its direction from a faithful Holy Spirit.  The bible says that God wants us to come to him with our concerns and so we should.  We also understand that this is just the beginning to a completely fulfilled unity that exists in a heart that is willing to bend.