A few months ago, my sister-in-law and I were discussing the implications of healing blessings and what it means when the blessing is not answered as pronounced. We have been struggling with the health of one of our family members for the last few years. The last 9-months have been especially grueling. So the discussion was not some esoteric theological pondering but a deep desire to understanding how prayer works so that we can be satisfied with the path we are on.

I like having answers when people ask me questions. I didn’t know what to say to her when she started asking questions around prayer. My best thought was to answer something like the question above, “I think there is a proper way to ask God. Are the eternal laws picky enough (or is God picky enough) to not answer on a technicality?” I wonder if there are things around prayers that we think are silly requirements that are vitally important for God to intervene.

But what is prayer at its simplest?

I have often asked classes this question, “What is necessary to call a prayer a prayer?” Jacob 4:14 provides one of the most concise answers to this question that I have found in scripture. It says, “God hath taken away his plainness from them, and delivered unto them many things which they cannot understand because they desired it. And because they desired it God hath done it”

I think that we have a lot of procedures for specific prayers in our Christian faiths. Healing blessings include some ritual that helps us center our faith, but it is hard for me to believe that a desired prayer to God would be negated because we didn’t put the oil in quite the right spot or the words at the beginning part of the prayer were incorrectly ordered. However, the desire or faith of those in the blessing prayer does seem to be a key ingredient.

How does God’s will play into our desired prayers?

In previous posts, I have pondered if we can change God’s mind.¹ When I ask this question in person, I have seen some consternation in people’s faces. I think we hear in the question the idea that God’s eternal and perfect will could somehow be moved into a lesser choice by our imperfect will. I am not sure that is the idea that I want to put forth. However, Jacob 4:14 seems to imply this concept. In addition, Jacob 4:14 has an additional implied principle. It is saying that God’s will in our lives is constrained by our agency. That he has a loving desire to collaborate with us in our journey but that our choice to exclude Him does not let Him into a collaboration. God’s will is stopped by our desired choice not to involve Him. Once we enter into a relationship with Him, then He can influence our lives.

But what kind of desires should we have?

In James 4:2-3 we read;

yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.

God will not respond affirmatively to our desires if they are lustful desires. Ellen T. Charry wrote an excellent editorial on The End of Satisfaction that helped me understand the desires we should have. When we pray thinking of possessions we could have instead of the relationships, then our prayers become lustful. Ellen shared that ‘focusing on how we will get what we want next undermines interest in what is nearby;" we only see “the present as an instrument for getting” things in the future. When we lust, “we are not motivated to care for and attend to” the relationships that are “in front of us,” as we are thinking about future possession.

What I have recognized is that even virtuous things like salvation and obtaining the attributes of God in our lives can be classified as lusts if they are possessional more than relational. Lusts take over our prayers when we twist relationships into possessions that we think we can control and loose the power of relational agency between two beings. He understands this and will never treat us as possessions that are controllable - only as loving partners that are persuadable.

Should our desires be deferential?

We often hear Luke 22:42 as the crowning scripture of deference in prayer when it says “nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” In any loving relationship, we should always seek to find communion in the joining of wills for joint goals. However, I think we forget that many verses tell us to push faithful desires. We are implored not to hesitate and to focus our faith. We have to " ask in faith, nothing wavering"² with “heed and diligence “³. Or that we should continually petition Him to the point of wearying Him.⁴ We have been invited to give the Lord all we have in our faithfull petitions. Maybe agency requires that we weary him to make sure our desires are sound and true. I don’t think we should feel bad for importuning Him.

What is the relationship part of prayer?

I recently finished, “The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence” by John Sanders he ends his book with a section on the risk model of prayer. He has some very eloquent statements in four short pages about how God relates to us in prayer.⁵

God desires a deep personal relationship with us, and this requires genuine dialogue rather than monologue. The fellowship of love God wants entails a give-and-take relationship wherein God gives and receives from us. -Pg. 273-

God wants [future determining dialogue] not because we have anything stupendous about which to advise him but simply because God decides to make our concerns his concerns. -Pg. 273-

God makes himself open to us, and in some respects, the future is open because God elects not to decide everything apart from our input. -Pg. 273-

God has open routes into the future, and he desires that we participate with him in determining which ones to take. -Pg. 274-

Dialogical prayer affects both parties and changes the situation, making it different from what it was prior to the prayer. -Pg. 274-

Why is life so painful if prayer is about loving relationships?

I believe that prayer is not a physical science that can be defined in a five-step process. It is firmly in the social science. Relationships are complicated - even our relationship with God. Prayer is how we learn to become one with God. We create with Him through our conversations.

There will be times where we will ask, like Joseph Smith, “God, where are thou? How long shall thy hand be stayed?”⁶ or like Janice Kapp Perry, “Are you really there?” or like NF, “Oh Lord, oh Lord, do you see us down here?”

Although our relationship is now experienced “through dark glass”⁷, we have the promise that we can come face to face with Him in a relationship of love. The truth is that he is there and that he does see us. He cries with us when we cry, and He cheers with us when we cheer.

• prayer
• principles
• openness