And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him. ~Hebrews 11.6
You have to exercise faith to really, truly pray. That’s one of the things that makes it so difficult and daunting. We are creatures of our senses. We see, hear, smell, touch, and feel with our senses. Praying is an assault on our physical senses by which we live and in which we so trust. It is an insult to our self-vaunting physical human ‘intelligence,’ ‘reasoning,’ ‘ability,’ and ‘effort.’
Praying is an exercise of believing and trusting in the physically invisible and untouchable God, “…who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see” (1 Timothy 6.16).
Our praying evidences, expresses, and exercises our faith in God:
- that He exists
- that He is real
- that He is really listening and hearing you
- that He cares enough to receive and respect your prayer to Him
- that He would, in reality, know you are praying to Him and would actually respond to your request,
- and most indicting of all – that He can really do any more about what you’re praying for than you can do for yourself.
If we get to the root and bottom-line of our lack of real, sincere praying, we will find that it is our unbelief – unbelief that God is any more real than we are or that He can actually do any more about our desperate needs than we can do for ourselves.
Our human senses berate us, mock us, and scream at us: “What are you doing? Who do you think you’re talking to? And if He is really there, do you think He has attention, time, and concern to listen to you? If you are so needy and you want this so much, then quit wasting your time and get up and do something about it!”
We can say what ‘we please’ [see Hebrews 11.6 again] about believing and having faith in God and His Word He has given us to pray by; but our prayerlessness is a veritable testimony to our practical skepticism, agnosticism, and a-theism. We really don’t believe that ‘He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him.’
The Voice of our Intercessor and Mediator on the other hand commands us to ‘have faith in God’ and pray:
“And Jesus answered them, ‘Have faith in God. Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, “Be taken up and thrown into the sea,” and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.’” ~Mark 11.22-24
“I write these things to you who believe in the Name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. And this is the confidence that we have toward Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of Him.” ~1 John 5.13-15
~Dave Parks 