14. More Attitude Than Action
14
MORE ATTITUDE THAN ACTION
In Genesis 17, God fulfills the promise He had given to Abraham in prayer. This is a powerful lesson revealing the absolute necessity of waiting for the Lord to act rather than relying on our own ingenuity.
God had promised Abraham and Sarah a child. But as the years went by, nothing happened. As the years of childbearing passed, they began to wonder how God could ever fulfill His promise. They reasoned and agonized for months, I’m sure, and finally decided that they had to give God a helping hand.
As a result of their own carnal reasonings, they did what a lot of us do today when we have a faith crisis—they came up with their own plan. It was to employ Sarah’s servant girl Hagar as a surrogate mother. The child Abraham fathered by her was named Ishmael.
We don’t like to admit it, but today this same kind of thing still happens—even in our church business meetings and missions work. In our fund-raising appeals, from the pulpit and in our communications, we are constantly being brainwashed that God is depending on our efforts. If we let Him down, goes this kind of reasoning, His purpose will not be fulfilled.
We can’t wait for God, so we do things our way. And then like Abraham, we seek God’s blessings on our efforts.
After Ishmael was born, Abraham knew something was wrong so he sought God’s approval and blessing. The God of mercy did answer Abraham’s pleadings and blessed Ishmael in some ways—but He would not give Ishmael the promise. What’s more, to this day, there is war between the children of Ishmael and the children of Isaac. So it is with all the problems of our flesh; how often they create more problems than the one we intended them to cure.
You see, God has never changed His plan. His work will always be carried out in the Spirit or it is not His work at all. “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6).
Ishmael had been born to Abraham when he was 86 years old. In Genesis 17:1 we find that Abraham is now 99 years old and obviously impotent. Now the chosen time has come for God to act. There was nothing left in Abraham—absolutely nothing—that could help him or Sarah to have a son. The Bible says she was 90, well past her childbearing years as well.
Isaac was to be born miraculously so all could see that this new race was a people of grace, created by the grace and mercy of God.
Then, in Genesis 17:11, God introduces a powerful symbol of Abraham’s vulnerability. He instructs him to be circumcised. Later, Paul explains in Philippians 3:3 that we are the true circumcision because we have no confidence in the flesh.
The cutting off of the flesh was a dramatic demonstration to Abraham and his descendants that the people of God were to have no confidence in their own ability.
As God’s people for this present age, we must also forsake our Ishmaels and be circumcised in our hearts. Only as we learn to depend on God will we father no more Ishmaels of our own. How dare we run to the world for its expertise as if God were helpless to do His work? I am convinced that we have been deceived by the powers of darkness. For too many years, we’ve been transferring our faith from God to the methods of modern business, management, marketing and science.
No wonder we’re not praying today. No wonder we’re not spending nights in prayer waiting for God to show us His plan. No wonder the authority, power and glory of God are gone from our assemblies and missions. No wonder we are victims of every new fad, philosophy and pseudo-theology that comes along. Our dependency on self is producing a 21st-century baby boom of Ishmaels.
Old Testament Saints Prayed Their Way to Victory
Throughout Scripture, we see that God used men and women who depended on Him. These humble people often changed the course of history, turned a generation to God and impacted their total environment. They illustrate vividly the power of a life connected to the Lord in prayer.
Moses led a people from slavery to nationhood. A renegade murderer, Moses learned the hard way to listen for the voice of God.
When he was first called, he mistakenly thought he was strong, educated and smart enough to free the Jews from slavery. But it took 40 years of waiting on God to bring him to the place where he would acknowledge there was nothing in him and his Egyptian education. He was so humbled by this point he was actually speechless.
But that is when the amazing prayer dialogue between God and Moses was able to begin. How many times in the life of Moses do we see him running to God for counsel and advice? How many times did he wait days and weeks before the Lord in prayer and fasting?
Moses was a man of intercession. He was always bringing his burden for the people of Israel before the Lord. The tragedy of our day is that so few have the burden to take on this priestly role.
God’s answers to the prayers of Moses fill five books of the Bible. The Lord showed him that He was interested in every detail in the lives of His people. In these times of prayer, Moses was taught how to lead, organize and govern a people—receiving minute instructions from God on hundreds of different subjects. And God revealed His glory and power through Moses. His God-given authority was backed with remarkable miracles.
Gideon learned to recognize the voice of God and received commands from God as he sought the Lord. Through fleeces, signs and messages from the Lord, Gideon whittled down an army of 32,000 to just 300 soldiers chosen of God. Again and again, the Lord made clear to him the reason for this strange tactic: “This I do so that they will not boast that they have done it.”
Empowered by God, this tiny force miraculously defeated an army of 135,000! God was trying to show to Gideon and the Israeli forces His power. Gideon knew his helplessness before the Lord and came again and again in prayer for guidance. In answer to those prayers, God Himself showed Gideon strategies, tactics and maneuvers that defeated a vastly superior force.
Elijah received supernatural strength and power. The Bible tells us that Elijah was very human, with the same passions and ego problems we have. Materially, he had nothing of this world: no home, no buildings, no publicity, no congregation, no food, no friends. So he had to depend completely and totally on God. Yet he was able to control the elements, raise the dead, call down fire from heaven and achieve great physical feats. There is power in prayer because it connects us to the source of all power.
Prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah felt the passion of God’s heart for His wayward people. Through prayerful dependence and waiting on the Lord, Isaiah and Jeremiah actually began to feel the pain of God’s broken heart over His sinful and rebellious people. Jeremiah so entered into the heart of God that he could not restrain the sobs and tears of grief. Prayer thus can become a very subjective thing as we emotionally enter into the heart and mind of Jesus. Their powerful prophecies revealed the love of God and His plan to punish and restore His fallen people. They cleansed, comforted and helped restore a people who might otherwise have given up in despair.
Nehemiah is another example. As he heard stories of the grim ruins of Jerusalem, Nehemiah did not run to fund-raising consultants for advice. He did not scheme and call for a conference of engineers and politicians. Instead, we read in the first chapter of his book that he wept and prayed for months before the Living God.
And God answered those prayers with a vision for a major public works project. A humble civil servant, Nehemiah waited on God for timing and favor to present the concept to a king who might otherwise have been hostile to the plan. In Jerusalem, he continued to commune with God through each step of the project. Through prayer, he received wisdom from above to mount a major political campaign, organize the reconstruction and deal with the enemies of God’s people.
Prayer Power in the New Testament
The New Testament Church was born in a prayer meeting at Pentecost. Jesus promised power to His Church if they would but wait on Him. Paul’s writings are filled with so many references to prayer it almost seems as if he spent his entire ministry simply praying from one city to the next!
But the awesome prayer life of the apostles and the early Church was only a pale reflection of our Lord’s devotion to prayer.
When we look at the life of our Lord Jesus, we are amazed at how important He considered prayer. He began His ministry with 40 days of fasting and prayer. At critical junctures, such as choosing the 12 disciples and before going to the cross, He spent whole nights in prayer. Jesus was forever withdrawing from the crowds to spend extended times alone with God the Father.
Yet, for Jesus, it was more than just spending time. Jesus not only made prayer a priority, but He modeled a life of constant prayer. Jesus demonstrated an attitude of prayer in His every action.
Jesus showed us that true prayer is not found in any of the formulas to which we cling. In fact, it is not necessarily even words or thoughts. Instead, prayer starts with what you are in your heart! It is more an attitude than an action.
Effective, genuine prayer is a dialogue with God. It rolls together dependence, humility, obedience, submission and worship. Finally, it waits on God to display His grace and mercy.
Such prayers as these may burst forth with a single phrase or sentence. This is why the Lord Jesus would frequently lift His eyes to the Father and utter one-sentence prayers that brought instant answers—healed bodies and stilled storms.
More than by giving us a set of phrases and words, Jesus exemplified a moment-by-moment dependence on God in His prayer life. We have not learned to pray as Jesus taught us to until we have learned to live prayerfully as He did. His prayers sprung naturally and spontaneously out of a constant awareness of the Father’s will. He enjoyed a well-practiced intimacy with the Father. He did not pray to God, but with God. Until we learn to pray with the Son in the same way He did with the Father, we have not learned the basic posture of prayer.
What Prayer Is Not
How different this kind of prayer is from the empty words, motions and fads that pass themselves off as prayer in so many of our lives today! Because the meaning of true prayer has become so distorted, it would be good for us to look here and in the next chapter at three things prayer is not:
True prayer is not magic. The sad reality is that many of our modern prayers are frequently little different from Hindu mantras.
Throughout the pagan world, some form of a shaman, or witch doctor, is always called in times of trouble. Perhaps it is for sickness, drought or famine. Or it might be a business or family problem. A fee is paid, and the priest will then utter mantras in hope that the victim’s “luck” will change. These can go on for hours as the medium seeks to contact various demon spirits. The Bible calls these the “vain repetitions” of heathen prayers.
Our prayers are too often like that—closer to witchcraft than worshipful reliance on God. Usually, we’re doing our own thing, our own way, on our own timetable. Then when we get stuck, we hold a “prayer meeting” to say some magic words over our problems. Finally, we hope that the God who designed and created the universe will intervene and bless our petty agendas.
Many times, our loving Heavenly Father does grant some of these requests, but leanness comes to our souls. We end up missing the intimacy and joy we would have experienced by waiting on Him to learn His will. And, of course, we cannot go on adding the phrase “in Jesus’ name” to our wish lists forever without inviting chastisement from the Lord.
God has promised to honor the prayers spoken in Jesus’ name only when they are just that—requests that come out of our spiritual intimacy with Christ. Such intercessions qualify to be in His name only because we are in Christ.
Sadly, by taking certain scriptures out of context, some Bible teachers have distorted the concept of prayer for many in our day. Prayer is not a “free ticket” to health, wealth and prosperity as these “witch doctors in disguise” would have us believe.