Prayer

I hate it when all you can do is pray. I don’t understand prayer very well, and around here it often feels like a waste of time. I know that’s wrong, or at least wrong to say, so you don’t have to write back to me about it. Better that you should pray for me, eh?
Bart Campolo
http://thewalnuthillsfellowship.org/?page_id=16

Next time you pray or you are in a room with people praying, do yourself a favour and listen to what is being said, especially about God and then ask yourself, what we are saying, praying, what does that reveal about what we believe about God. As an example, 'God I just ask that you would touch hearts and minds here tonight'. Now what does that say about God? Does he not automatically touch hearts and minds? Does he not act unless we ask him (he is not sovereign)? He needs our wisdom as what to do? That we desire for people to know Him more than He does that is why we need to ask?

As far as I know and experience, the only reason I know God and desire for others to know Him, is because He has taken the initiative in encountering me. If anything I need His help to make me more aware of where and when He is touching hearts and minds so I can cooperate with Him.

CS Lewis in the movie Shadowlands says to a colleague who is angry with him for quitting his lecture post in remorse for his lost wife to take time to pray, accusing CS Lewis that prayer will not change her death and bring her back to life, Lewis says, 'I pray not because it changes God, but because it changes me'.

How I long for a more God-centered Theology and less a man-centered humanism.