by prayer and petition

October 23, 2003

since i last spoke with amanda on sunday, i've been thinking a lot about philippians 4:6, "do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God."

we talked briefly about prayer and why we need to petition before God our requests. it may seem strange to pray about a particular item on a day-to-day basis, since God already knows what's on our hearts and does not need us to pray about things in order for Him to move (He is in no way bound by anything we say or do, since He is God). so i'd like to attempt to offer some potential explanations to why paul wrote what he did. mind you, i must say that i am not limiting prayer to simply requests, as prayer is communion with God. but for the sake of this entry, that will be how i refer to prayer as; supplication.

1) praying on a regular basis for a specific items reminds us that we have prayed about it
we are forgetful people. it's natural to not remember everything that happens in our lives. new information comes in, old information goes out. it's the way things are. can you honestly remember the exact words you spoke to a friend a week ago? highly unlikely. the same happens when we pray about something. if we call out to God in a brief, fleeting moment, there is no way we will remember it. to remedy this, by praying regularly, we will remember our requests (the reason why this is, is because we transfer the information to our long term memory from our short term memory. long term memory is permanent storage.)

2) praying on a regular basis puts our faith, trust and dependency in God
by constantly saturating a specific item in prayer, we naturally place our faith and trust in God. we are saying to God that we believe He is exceedingly capable of providing everything that we need, and that we will depend on Him and not on ourselves. it moves us from a me-oriented perspective to a He-oriented perspective.

3) praying on a regular basis reminds us that God is alive and active
when God responds to our request, and we don't remember it, we will most likely attribute the circumstance to something other than God. we then take the glory away from God and place it onto something else. we may even forget that God is active in our lives. when we see that God has responded to our request, we marvel, we stand in awe of Him. we praise Him for answering us. we praise Him for being alive and active in our lives. we praise Him for His provisions.

4) praying on a regular basis teaches us about the nature of God
if God does not answer us immediately, we learn that God acts in His timing and in His ways. in a growing "fast-food" society, we what things when we want it and how we want it. and what we do not realize is that the things we want and desire may indeed be more harmful to us than good. God, being the Creator of the Universe is omniscient and knows what is best for us. He knows the best timing and the best ways for us. so by having to petition about something, we learn this truth. we learn that God does not operate on our 'level'. that His ways our higher than ours.

perhaps the reason why paul told us to pray and petition for things was for the benefit of our own faith!

Posted by Leo Chan at October 23, 2003 2:18 PM