The Power of Prayer: The Transformative Impact of Prayer on our Lives
I overheard a quip about the cross many years ago: "It's easy to draw. It's hard to forget.” That’s so true. The image is just a vertical and horizontal line, but oh, the meaning and emotion that it evokes. This Roman instrument of execution has become the worldwide symbol of Christianity and an instant reminder of Jesus's life and death.
The cross has been used to illustrate several different Christian and Biblical ideas. This is because the cross's design is simplistic and a perfect symbolic model of God’s relationship with man through Jesus. One beam points up toward God. Another beam touches the soil of the earth. And two other beams stretch out left and right. The implied metaphor is that man reaches up for God while God reaches down for man. And from that vertical relationship, man reaches out horizontally to others. The picture of Christ on the cross completes the illustration. There is only one mediator between God and man that connects the two and then enables man to reach out to others.
The cross is also an appropriate illustration of prayer. Prayer is vertical in that God communicates with man, and man communicates with God. Prayer also has a horizontal element because the believer intercedes for others. Prayer that reaches up to God is called praise and thanksgiving. Prayer that affects our hearts is called reflection, confession, and repentance. Also, prayer that intercedes for others is called supplication and intercession.
Christians know that we are supposed to pray. But I am not sure we completely understand why we should pray. I am sometimes left with the belief that the average Christian thinks about prayer the way they think about mowing the grass, washing the dishes, or paying the bills. It is something that is on our to-do list.
I can assure you that prayer is much more than a simple task that Christians "ought "to do. Prayer can transform our lives, the lives of others, and the circumstances of our world. Here’s why.
Vertical Prayer that Reaches Up to God
Have you ever wondered why the Bible places so much emphasis on praising and thanking God? C.S. Lewis wrote a book called Reflections on the Psalms in which he pondered why so much of the book of Psalms is dedicated to instructions to praise and thank God. He observed: "We despise the man who demands continued assurance of his virtue, intelligence, or delightfulness.”
Lewis was, in essence, pondering whether God has an ego problem. Is God so egotistical that He demands His creation constantly and repeatedly tell Him how great and wonderful He is? Such a trait in humans is called arrogance, and we resist it.
However, as Lewis reflected on God’s command to declare His praise consistently and daily, he stumbled upon an insight. He noted that whenever we find something amazing or admirable, we need to tell others how wonderful and admirable it is and how they ought to admire it. Lewis writes, "The delight is incomplete until it is expressed.” He discovered that being amazed by God and awestruck by who God is can only be completely experienced when we verbally declare our amazement.
I’m pointing out that being truly amazed by God naturally results in praise, worship, and thankfulness. If our admiration does not result in praise, then we cannot claim that we are amazed by Him. Praise is the result of being in awe of God. Vertical prayer is the mode of that expression.
Aside from the fact that praise naturally flows out of our admiration, we should ask ourselves this question: Why do good things happening to us not provoke the same degree of praise and thanksgiving to God as bad things happening to us provoke pleading for His help? Far from praise being a stroke to God's ego, the lack of praise indicates our own. A lack of praise indicates entitlement.
This would imply that prayer helps me stay grounded, humble, and grateful. Now, let me be careful here. We should not praise God because of how it affects us—would that even be an accurate definition of “praise"? But the vertical aspect of prayer certainly transforms my own character.
Prayer helps keep me God-centered and reminds me that God is worthy of my admiration and praise. It is not enough to say of my blessings, “How good of God to give this to me.” Instead, I need to declare, “God is good. And His goodness is reflected in that He gave this to me.” The first perspective is dangerously focused on the benefits to me. The second is focused on God's worthiness.
Vertical Prayer that Reaches Down to Man
Prayer keeps my priorities in order.
St. Augustine once wrote, "Such is each one as is his love.” In modern English, we simply say, "I am what I love.” Augustine taught that everybody is seeking happiness and that they attach themselves to things they believe will make them happy. But because of our fallen nature, that attachment is experienced as love. And when a human experiences love, it inevitably leads to a re-ordering of one's life around what one loves. When love is misplaced, the result is a disordered life.
Timothy Keller’s book Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God lays out a practical application of Augustine’s principle: “If a man loves making money more than doing justice, he will exploit his workers and employees. If he loves his career more than his children, his family relationships will break down . . . If you love anything at all in this world more than God, you will crush that object under the weight of your expectations, and it will eventually break your heart.”
A person who loves God will spend time in prayer. Don't misunderstand me. I realize that prayer is a discipline one must develop. But the closer one grows to God, the more one prays because one wants to spend time in God's presence. I can certainly testify to that in my own life. The more I fall in love with God, the more I can re-order my life around Who I love. Prayer, loving God, and keeping my priorities in order go hand in hand.
Re-ordering my priorities leads to reflection, confession, and repentance, which are components of my daily prayer life. This is that vertical element of the cross that reaches down into the soil of my heart and transforms my life. As God's Word and his Holy Spirit convict me of misplaced love and disordered priorities, I confess them and repent of them. That process changes my life every day.
The Bubble Blower Mower
Prayer does not only affect me. Prayer has a powerful transformative impact on the world, including the lives of people around me.
The Scripture is clear that prayer is powerful. Consider James 5:16-18 (NLT): “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. Elijah was as human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years! Then, when he prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops.”
Elijah shut up the heavens and kept it from raining for three years by praying. That is a demonstration of just how powerful prayer is. But it also raises an interesting theological question. The Bible teaches that God controls the weather. Does that mean that when Elijah prayed, he somehow overcame God's sovereign control and influenced God to do something different than He intended?
For that matter, when we pray for other people to make the right choices or to do things differently, are we somehow exerting pressure upon God, who will, in turn, exert pressure upon other people's free choices?
The horizontal element of prayer, like the middle beam of the cross, reaches out to affect the people and the world around us. But how exactly does that horizontal element of prayer work? Does prayer somehow move God? Does prayer somehow move others?
One of the most misunderstood aspects of prayer is why God included it in his plan in the first place. God does not need man to advise Him on how to run the world. God does not need man to pray for Him to accomplish anything. The Bible is clear that God knows what He's doing and, as the old-time saints said, “He is God all by Himself.” So, if God doesn't need us to pray for Him to work, why would he ask us to do so?
Prayer is not a manipulation of God. It does not exert pressure or control over God to do one thing rather than another. But prayer has been included in God's plan as the method by which He works in this world. In other words, we are not commanded to pray so that God might work; we are commanded to pray because that is the method through which God does work.
Scripture teaches us that prayer is based first and foremost upon God's will. Jesus taught us to pray, “May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10, NLT). Knowing God's will is the first step to knowing how to pray about something.
Jesus demonstrated this principle perfectly when he was in the Garden of Gethsemane. Matthew 26:39 (NLT): “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”
When we pray for others to accept Christ, it is because it is God's will for men to repent (2 Peter 3:9). When Elijah prayed that it would not rain for three years, it was because God was dealing with King Ahab and the nation of Israel about idolatry. The three-year drought led to a showdown between God and the idol Baal, who supposedly controlled the weather (1 Kings 18). The drought was in His plan. The showdown proved the Lord was God and Baal was not.
When we know what God desires to do, we can pray that He does what He already desires. Prayer does not change God's mind. When we pray, we cooperate with God as He accomplishes His plan. God works through our prayers.
This perspective changes how we pray for others and our world. It eliminates the misbelief that prayer does not work and the doubting questions of whether God will answer our prayers. Once we realize we are praying according to God's will, as His will is revealed in the Word of God, we can have confidence that He will answer our prayers.
1 John 5:14–15 (NLT): “And we are confident that he hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases him. And since we know he hears us when we make our requests, we also know that he will give us what we ask for.”
Some years ago, they created a cute toy for aspiring yardwork helpers. It was called a bubble blower mower. I remember the TV commercial. It showed a father pushing a lawn mower and mowing the grass. A little fellow about three years old walked behind him, pushing a little red and yellow plastic lawnmower that blew bubbles out of the discharge chute instead of grass clippings. And in the commercial, the little boy proudly proclaimed, "Me and Daddy are mowing the yard!”
In reality, the little bubble blower did nothing to help mow the grass. However, the toy was designed to create an emotional attachment between a parent and child. The joy of that toy was that the little boy was participating with his daddy in an important task.
Prayer is powerful, but it is not powerful in itself. It is not even powerful because of who prays. Prayer is powerful because God is already working in the world. Like the little bubble blower mower, when we pray, we are cooperating with and participating in the important work that God is already doing. Because God includes us in His plan, He moves when we pray.
So when we pray for others and for our world, the horizontal element of prayer transforms and impacts what and who we are praying for. That is why we should pray for others. God has included us in His plan to lovingly intervene in situations and in other people’s lives.
If you have not prayed today, take the time to do so right now. Reach up vertically to God with praise and thanksgiving. Let God reach into your life so that you might reflect, confess, repent, and re-order the priorities of your life. And cooperate with the move of God by praying for others and our world.
“Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven!”
