Optimistic Prayer

By Beth | September 11, 2018

Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. Colossians 4:2

A part of my testimony of coming to faith in Christ is that He convicted me of my sin in an undeniable way. And He did. He made Himself known to me through prayer.

I had heard a sermon that “everyone” was a sinner. It was insulted to be included in that “everyone.” In prayer to Him on the way out of the service, I “told” God that if that was true about me He would have to show me.

Show me is just what He did.

I had done some selfish thinking and God pointed it out. The sin did not surprise me. What surprised me was that God had clearly communicated to me. He was there. He heard my prayer. He had answered me! Me. Personally.

It scared me! I had denied Him for years and here He was making Himself known through answered prayer!

I think that God frequently communicates with us and we ignore it or squelch it and pretend it didn’t happen. For some of us, we’ve gotten so wrapped up in the business of this world that we don’t recognize His voice when He speaks. This is not an audible voice. God uses all kinds of little prompting in our hearts and minds to let us know what He thinks about what we are doing or what He wants us to do.

He often uses times of prayer, and His answers to prayer, to do this.

In His book, The Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, Donald Whitney points out that we can approach prayer as pessimists and just pray because God commands us to (Colossians 4:2), or we can approach it as optimists who view prayer as an opportunity to receive the mercy and grace of God in our obedience. (Hebrews 4:16).

Prayer is a privilege that God has given to His people. Jesus prayed and He did only those things His Father had given Him to do. Being conformed to His image must include prayer.

Just as Jesus’ prayers demonstrated His dependence on the Father so our prayers prove our dependence on Him. When we go to work for the Lord without prayer we’re going in on our wisdom and strength.

Why do we do that when we know that God’s wisdom and strength are so much greater than our own?

Often this dependence on prayer has not been modeled for us in our families or churches. We need to look at God’s Word and recognize the emphasis that God places on prayer. The word “pray” (all forms of it) and “ask” are used almost 400 times in the Bible.

Biblical prayer promises God’s mercies, grace, help when we’re weak, saving from sickness, forgiveness, overcoming anxiety, rejoicing and patience (and that is only eight out of almost 400 verses)!

God expects us to pray because we need it – not because He needs us to. He does not obligate us to pray. He invites us to pray.

Will we do it pessimistically, in blind obedience or optimistically, trusting God to respond with His mercy and grace (Hebrews 4:16)