I have often thought beyond what God seems to say to me via occasional revelations to what God might pray to me about my life. Prayer is not just you and me to God, but God to me and you too. We customarily pray prayers of request to God, so what if God prayed prayers of request to us — what would they contain? And wouldn’t it be important to listen?
Perhaps if we knew what God would pray, and we faced these prayerful realities, then that might influence our thoughts and behaviour, even to the extension of what we might desire.
OUR RELATIONSHIPS
Surely God desires harmony in our relationships; that we would seek to outdo one another in love. Therefore, we could only be satisfied in our relationships if those we relate with were satisfied in us. If there were even one person who would seem to have a claim against us, we would seek to address that issue with that person (Matthew 5:23-24). In knowing the nature of God, we know what God would want, so why don’t we do the will of the Lord?
OUR SIN
Surely God desires that we would wrestle with our sin, much to the point that we would repent of it, even to the extent of recovering from those sins that have entangled us over the longer period. These matters are weighty, and they are a burden we are not designed to carry, hence the discord of dissociation that occurs when we engage in things, we know to be wrong. Why do we therefore continue to entertain a fantasy life that pretends that God isn’t watching on? It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a bachelor’s degree in theology, or a masters or PhD, or even if you know very little about God; we all struggle in the area of sin. Could God be praying that we would take every thought, word and deed of sin captive? Biblically, that’s a rhetorical question!
OUR IDOLS
Surely God desires that we surrender our idols, give them up and get back on with our heavenly allegiance. This would include the idol of knowledge that puffs us up in pride, the idol of control that sees us lord it over others, the idol of power that seeks to project an image of control, the idols of greed and envy that see us covet things that aren’t ours, the idol of comfort for laziness’s sake, the idol of consumption, the idol of outrage that seems to be inculcated in all of us these days, the idols of popularity, exclusivity, partiality that actually project what is lacking in us more than how superior we think we are, etc. We all have idols, and we can only grow in God if we are honest about this fact, much to the extent of identifying every single one of them and putting them to the torch.
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These matters are matters of the heart, and we will never experience the transformation we are seeking unless we go to God, and desperately seek the only assistance that will help; a heart transformation that is ever unsatisfied unless it is satisfied in Jesus, alone.
I lived as a person trying to follow Christ and failing for nearly 13 years, never getting it. Only when my life was turned upside down, and I had nothing left, did I reach out to God in desperation; the kind of desperation God desperately desires from us. The last 17 years have been a completely different story, but I have grown lukewarm too often. It’s not like I have not struggled with sin; we all do. Unless we’re prepared to give up what we cannot keep to gain what we cannot lose, we will arrive at the end of our tenure in this life knowing we have wasted our opportunity to live. That is eternal regret nobody wants if only they look back from a post-death perspective.
I lament days where I’m not desperate enough for God. But it isn’t enough. We need more of this God; much, much more. Unless we are driven by a hunger to follow Jesus, we cannot know him. Instead of pretending we have a great relationship with Jesus we would be better to tell the truth; we cannot know him enough. We must stop boasting that we have mastered faith.
God knows that if only we put Jesus first everything else falls into line (Matthew 6:33). Unless we put Jesus first, our hearts are enmity toward God.
God’s prayer for us must be, “I want your heart, your mind, your soul, your strength. I want ALL of you.” Only when God has all of us do our lives begin.
If only we gave God our all, God would give to us what we want, because what we would want would be what God wants.
With Jesus, it doesn’t matter how much we know if we don’t know how to live.
Photo by Daniel Páscoa on Unsplash
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