Myth #3: "I'm not good enough to pray to God."
Let me immediately put your mind at ease on this one. You're not good enough. Neither am I. In fact, none of us can really claim to be good enough to even converse with, let alone ask things of, a perfect God. "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" is the way one passage in the New Testament portion of the Bible puts it. [Romans 3:23]
This is precisely why the Old Testament people were so afraid to see God face-to-face and why those who did (Moses and Hagar come immediately to mind) were amazed that they remained alive afterwards. They were certain that the brightness of God's perfection would strike them dead.
So, we really aren't good enough for God, if by that you mean that your behavior doesn't measure up to God's standards. It doesn't.
Fortunately, that's not the end of the story.
It turns out that even though we disappoint God, hurt God, and anger Him sometimes, He doesn't stop loving us. And God doesn't stop wanting to hear from us either.
That should make sense, I think. When people that we care about disappoint, hurt, or anger us, most of the time, we aren't going to want to bring a complete halt to our relationships. How much more will God, Who loves infinitely more than any of us, be open to hearing from us? In fact, Jesus drew this very analogy once when telling people to pray:
Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!’ [Luke 11:11-13]
This is why the very first thing that Jesus, God in the flesh, called people to do when He began His public ministry was to repent, to turn away from sin, to repudiate it, and to instead, turn to Him for life, forgiveness, and fulfillment. According to the New Testament book of Mark, Jesus said, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." (Mark 1:15)
Repentance isn't so much an action as a change in orientation, like the maneuver undertaken by US spacecrafts when they returned from the moon. Without a deliberate re-orientation to earth orbit, the crafts would have skipped out into space, never to be seen or heard from again. All this re-orientation really accomplished, by the way, was to put the spaceship in the gravitational pull of the earth. So, it was gravity and not the astronauts' efforts that secured their re-entry. When we repent, we change our orbit. Our lives revolve around Christ and He pulls us close to Himself, so that we begin to change from the sinful people we once were into the Christlike people we'll be one day in eternity.
This change in our orbiting patterns breaks the communications blackout that may have existed between God and us. No longer are we on the dark side of the moon, so to speak, but we become linked to God again.
Can I prove this to you rationally? There are an increasing number of studies done which demonstrate that amazing things do happen when people pray. But, as is true of so many things in the Christian life, until we dare to come to Christ in repentant prayer, we will never know, believe the truth about prayer, or experience it. As one who turned from atheism and to faith in Jesus Christ though, I can tell you, that prayer--communications with God--has proven to be a conduit by which God has changed my life in hundreds of ways. I'm far from perfect and sometimes I deliberately shut off communications with God so that I can do the rotten things I want to do, but I have found God is always there, ready to restore, renew, and help me.
So tonight, before you go to bed, I dare you to do something. Tell God: "Even though I'm not even sure You're there, God, I want You to be there. I know that I can't depend on just myself or the people in my life or the things in my life. So, I repudiate my sins. I want to orbit around You. Please let me know You and show me what it means to be Your child. Help me to know what it means to believe in Jesus, the One Who shows us just how much You love us." You don't even have to say, "Amen," if you don't want to say it!
Chances are, there will be no sudden flash of lightning when you say this prayer. But I guarantee that if you mean it when you say it and if you will continue to converse with God in this way, things will change in your life, beginning your inner attitudes about life and the people you know and the circumstances you observe.
You and I aren't good enough to pray. Pray anyway. When you do, you'll be letting Jesus Christ into the core of your being. And you'll find that He's the best partner you could have in your life.
[To read more on this subject, I invite you to follow these links:
Prayer: The Essential Conversation, Part 1
Prayer: The Essential Conversation, Part 2
Prayer: The Essential Conversation, Part 3
Prayer: The Essential Conversation, Part 4
Prayer: The Essential Conversation, Part 5
Prayer: The Essential Conversation, Part 6
Prayer: The Essential Conversation, Part 7]
No comments:
Post a Comment