If you’ve attended a prayer meeting or a small group gathering, you will notice that most of the prayers we toss around are all about ourselves. Standard prayer concerns include family health, job, finances, safety and blessings for everyone we love. At night before we go to sleep, we say the same prayers with so little variation.

I have a question for you: doesn’t this bother you a bit?

If you really think it over, prayer now becomes like filling out an acquisition form in the office, something that goes along the lines of:

Dear Mr. Stockman, aka, God;

Request for immediate pullout of the following items:

1. health
2. safety
3. money

Thank you very much, love yah, mwaahh!

PS. Please send some to my family, relatives and to the love of my life.

Josh

While reading my devotional today, I realized a few things. One is the feeling of gloom that was slowly replaced by hope and faith as Jesus walked along with them. There are times in our lives when we feel so alone and there’s no one to turn to. In those times, Jesus comes along and walks with us, whether we realize it or not. It is such a comfort that God is never too busy to be on our side when we need Him. He even stays close even if it takes us a while to recognize Him.

The second thing I noticed is how despair and disappointment blind us. These people have been with Jesus for quite some time already. They’ve heard Him preach for probably a hundred times. How can they not recognize His voice? How can they not know? Why did it take them almost a day to finally realize it was Jesus they were talking to?

Part of the answer is that they were not expecting Him to come back alive. They heard Him say He was coming back but they didn’t realize He meant in three days’ time! The reason why we don’t see God move in our times of troubles is because we don’t expect Him to. We pretend to pray and give everything to God but the truth is we simply mouth the words while we allows ourselves to be sucked up in all our needless worrying.

When I was in Western Samar a few years back, a student was asked by the pastor to do the closing prayer of the youth service. This guy was a new believer and had no idea on how to pray in public. As the whole congregation stood for the prayer, the guy came up the stage, closed his eyes, clasped his hands to a tight fist and said, “My God!”

Everybody thought he was going to have this fiery Pentecostal prayer that included a lot of shouting and loud Amens but a few minutes have passed and he hasn’t said any other word. He just stood there, sweating, rooted on the spot, totally embarrassed and speechless.

There are times when we pretend to listen to people when they talk but in reality, we are just waiting for our turn to speak. This proved to be embarrassing for the guy in the story. With just a few words, he showed the whole wide world his ignorance of spiritual matters and his preoccupation with money.

Also, notice the tone of accusation in his voice. He asked Jesus to “order” his brother to do the right thing, IN PUBLIC! It is one thing to ask God to right the wrongs in our families in the privacy of our prayer closet but to broadcast them publicly is just plain wrong. Even if his brother was really on the wrong, he didn’t deserve this kind of humiliation.

Have you ever tried listening to a person while he prays for you? Didn’t you ever wonder why that person would have the audacity to ask God for things in your behalf?