DISCLAIMER: Please be forewarned. What follows is not for the weak. It probably contains some thoughts that might be better kept to oneself. What follows takes you deep inside the mind and spirit of a man that is searching... wanting to know what it is to deeply trust God. It is as if you are being allowed to see into a personal journal. The judgements made and conclusions drawn are not intended to point to anyone other than me... the author. If you decide to go ahead and read it, please take none of it personally, as it is not my intention that you should do so.
It is absurd to ask God to “Bless our day”… or to “Bless us”… or even to “Bless others”... To beseech God for blessings is illogical. Furthermore, to do so only uncovers our lack of understanding of the very nature of God, and betrays our inner lack of confidence in God’s providential care. To ask God to “bless” is to infer that he isn’t blessing us presently or won’t in the future. To ask God to bless us is to suggest that we somehow need to beg God to do something that he would otherwise be reluctant to do. It is not an expression of faith, but a tacit admission of our lack of trust.
God both desires to and has the full resources to bless us. Since we know this to be true, then if we are not blessed, or not going to be, then certainly God has a substantial reason to refrain. And it would be logical to conclude that if the reason to withhold his blessing is great enough to supersede his primary desire, then no amount of prayerful pleading should be expected to change his mind. Furthermore, this line of reasoning would lead us to conclude that we should either humbly accept the circumstances, or we should seek that God would show us how we might be reconciled to the place of his blessing. Which then would lead us to believe that God’s blessing could be obtained through good deeds, which in turn would lead us to reject the doctrine of grace.
To seek God in prayer for understanding concerning the circumstances of our life is a complete waste of time. This too is illogical and only proves our immature spirituality. The bible is very clear that, “His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts.”
Seeking God for understanding is what I like to call “The King Solomon Conundrum”. People that attempt to make sense of life / circumstances fall into the trap of “rating” events… of assigning value to the days of our lives. One day is good; another is bad. One day is happy; the next sad. This is an entirely vain and worthless effort. It is an exercise in futility. One of the wealthiest and wisest men to ever live, King Solomon, who had both the time and the unlimited resources to pursue this “meaning”, failed to discover it. In the end, his conclusion was, “To fear/revere/respect God and keep his commandments… this is the whole duty of man.”
Are you ready for another one? It is completely illogical to ask the Lord to, “Guide and direct us”. To do this is to imply that God is ignoring us; allowing us to stumble along without concern for the perils into which we might blindly fall. Worse yet, it is to suggest that God has the ability to direct our lives, presumably along a safe and enjoyable path, but is somehow self-prohibited from doing so until we ask for his divine direction. It is as if God is our “life” GPS that refuses to work until we turn him on by flipping the prayer switch.
This matter is a simple one. Either God is directing our lives, in which case we reveal our lack of confidence in this truth when we ask for his help, or we just enjoy engaging in silly, meaningless, religious behavior, or God is not directing our lives. If the latter is true, then we must admit that either God lacks the ability to direct our lives, or he is pleased to abandon us to a grand circumstantial lottery, in which some people hit the jackpot at the expense of everyone else.
So how should we pray? How about… wake up in the morning and say, “Amen”. “So be it.” “Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” I believe that we should spend zero time concerning ourselves with prayers about circumstances, and all of our prayer time in seeking agreement with God. “Lord, I am grateful. I am a benefactor of your grace. You are my provider. I accept your Lordship… this day is yours. This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it. Thanks for inviting me to the party. Thank you for letting someone like me play along. I ask for nothing save that I can be your adopted child. That is more than enough, and I humbly accept whatever this day may bring, as I fully and completely trust that it has passed through your sovereign love and grace and mercy… it has been met with your providential care… Oh, and one last word Lord. Amen!”
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