That I May Know Him

The Joy of Prayer
Given the importance of prayer and the fact that so many Christians struggle with it, or at any rate, never come to a place of really enjoying prayer, let’s ask ourselves why. Let me make here what I consider to be a very important statement, namely that we will never effectively take on the burden of prayer until we’ve learned the joy of prayer. I believe that this is where we need to start, on the basis that God intends us to enjoy praying. And that enjoyment starts with intimacy.
I wonder if the way we instruct new converts doesn’t tend to hinder their approach to prayer. For example we tell them about the four essentials of Christian living; read your bible, pray, join a church, witness to others. Now these are very important things to do, but is there maybe a touch of legalism suggested in the way we approach it? You must do this or that. But do we teach our new converts how develop intimacy with the Lord? If we don’t then prayer will develop into the drudgery of ploughing through shopping lists.
I think that, if we lose sight of this aspect of prayer, then we’re always going to struggle with the burden of prayer. God’s greatest desire as far as we are concerned is that we have fellowship with him. Of course he wants to meet our needs in answer to prayer, but it’s just the pleasure of communion with us which is most important to him. What parent would be pleased if their child only spoke to them when it wanted something? Cupboard love we call that? So how do you think God feels if the only time we ever talk to him it’s to ask for something?

Two people can say the same thing, and with one it will be like dynamite, whereas with the other it will be more like a damp squib. That’s because with one it’s the distillation of the inner, hidden life, and with the other one it’s merely copying someone else. Or, as I heard someone put it recently when talking about the same principle in a different application, “What you have is only the karaoke version.” What is vitally important is our ‘secret history with God’, that eight ninths of the iceberg that’s never seen, that hidden part of us that determines what kind of people we really are.

Something had happened to Paul on that road to Damascus - and it wasn’t conversion to a religion, or the Scriptures, or a system of belief. He encountered Jesus in such a way that he could never rest until he had as much of him as it was possible to have on this earth. And through all his hard work & trials he never lost sight of this one undergirding, compelling, all-encompassing ambition - to know Jesus. When I read accounts of what great men and women have done for God I’m as much interested in what God had done in them in secret as he has done through them in public. You see, what we do, if it’s going to be effective, is merely a fIowing out of that hidden, secret life which has taken many years of costly experience to bring to maturity. Merely saying the words or copying the actions doesn’t have the same effect. That’s why two people can say the same thing, and with one it will be like dynamite, whereas with the other it will be more like a damp squib. That’s because with one it’s the distillation of the inner, hidden life, and with the other one it’s merely copying someone else. Or, as I heard someone put it recently when talking about the same principle in a different application, “What you have is only the karaoke version.” What is vitally important is our ‘secret history with God’, that eight ninths of the iceberg that’s never seen, that hidden part of us that determines what kind of people we really are.