Prayer: Just shooting in the dark?

Just think for a moment of all the praying that goes on across our planet.

Millions worldwide do it habitually or devotedly, every day. There are prayers at set times each day: Anglicans have their “Daily Office” and Roman Catholics the “Liturgy of the Hours”. Muslims and Jewish men pray specified numbers of times daily. Beads are counted, candles lit, texts chanted, mantras intoned, prayer wheels spun, requests scribbled—on flags left in the breeze, or on notes pinned up in cathedrals. People cross themselves, cross their fingers, touch wood… Or they might ask us, “You pray, don’t you? Any chance of putting in a good word for me?”

And in the secret recesses of people’s hearts, countless desperate pleas are made over and over:
“Please God, don’t let it happen…”
“Please God, if you do this, I’ll never do that again…”
In moments of terror, even atheists may cry out to the God they don’t believe in.

We’re humans, so we pray—but often as though we’re shooting in the dark

Praying seems to be a universal instinct, but thinking about prayer seems mostly to generate a great number of questions, and a greater confusion of attempts at answers. Here’s a selection:

Who do we think we’re praying to? What sort of God? An unpredictable and terrifying tyrant? Distant and uninterested? Well-meaning but ineffectual? An impersonal but manipulatable force? Or just a myth—something to give coherence to our experience of life?

What do we think prayer can do? Are we impressing a deity and persuading him onto our side? Is it like pestering a parent, or twisting someone round your little finger? Or is prayer for our benefit instead—to bring a sense of peace and wellbeing, or help us project positivity, or give us space to reflect, and reset ourselves?

Why do we think we might be heard? Because we’re good enough, or we deserve it enough, or we’ve suffered enough, or we’re praying hard enough? Because we’ve learned the right technique to channel the force that is “God”?

What does it mean to be heard when we pray? What does an answer to prayer look like? Do we get what we want? If we don’t, what does that mean? That prayer doesn’t work? That we prayed incorrectly? That we’re rejects?

Our attempts at answering these questions shape our prayers—to be tentative or long-winded, formulaic or idiosyncratic, banal or highbrow. They shape how we view prayer—that it’s a cast-iron formula for success (you’ve just got to know how to do it right); or it’s a mystery into which only so-called religious “experts” have any insight. Some who conclude that it’s probably all a delusion might keep praying anyway (just to be on the safe side).

Real prayer: wonderfully unique

By contrast, the Christian message has a distinctive—in fact, unique—understanding of prayer. Wonderfully, the Bible shows us what real prayer is. Put simply, it is…

1. talking…
2. to the real, living God…
3. in a way by which we know he will hear and answer.

Real prayer is talking to the real, living God in a way by which we know he will hear and answer.

That’s not true of most of what is claimed to be prayer in our world. Some prayer isn’t talking to anyone. Some is not talking to the real God. And some God won’t respond to. Only in the Bible do we discover the true identity of the One we need to pray to, and what can make us sure of God’s hearing. Only through Jesus Christ can we “connect” with God.

When we understand who we’re praying to—our perfect heavenly Father… through our sacrifice for sin, Jesus Christ… with the help of the Holy Spirit—we can talk to God with humble confidence, assured that he will hear and answer us, despite our sin, failures, weakness, feelings, or situation.

As Christians, we may have forgotten, or may never have discovered in the first place, the Bible’s unparalleled teaching on prayer. This is what we need to absorb and live by—for our own strengthening and perseverance in faith in Christ, and to witness to all those who can’t help but pray and yet, left to themselves, only end up “shooting in the dark”.

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