Trying to Conjure Up Faith (Part 2)

Debunking Superstitious Beliefs About Prayer (Part 2)

When I was in Israel, I worked as a coordinator for a house of prayer in Jerusalem. We had patrons from all over the world coming to our space to worship God and pray. Our main prayer room was reserved for constant musical worship and intermittent corporate prayers (somewhat like IHOP in Kansas City). My office was connected to the main prayer room by a window. I literally sat at my desk, facing that window every day, and in the three years of working there, I observed a lot.

The content of a prayer can be very revealing. Prayer is a very personal thing. When you hear peoples' prayers again and again over time, you begin to understand what their deep concerns are, what plagues them, what they struggle with, and how they approach God... 

Often times, when we talk about prayer, we discuss it in relation to faith. You will often hear people say that we need faith to pray "effective" prayers, and they can back this concept up with a slew of scriptures. So then you get all these people trying to conjure up "faith" in order to pray. I've been there. I often would try to get in the right mode, as if its some level of willpower, or inner measure of determination. We make faith into a work, as if it's something we can accomplish in the moment, or as if it's something we can gain by being more intense in our attitude. Or when a prayer is answered, we can easily determine that it's because we had enough faith when we prayed for it. Or the opposite: when it isn't answered, we blame our own lack of faith. 

The Greek word usually translated into "faith" in the New Testament simply means trust.

You wouldn't trust someone you don't know with your deepest secrets (if you're wise). And how can you trust someone who has failed you? Would you talk to someone who doesn't listen? Can you be yourself around someone who expects perfection, or constantly judges you, or looks down on you? What about someone who is disappointed in you? Would you befriend someone you know doesn't care about you? Can you show weakness to someone who expects you to prove yourself? What about someone who has abused you? Would you feel comfortable asking for something from someone who you know is withholding and distant?

None of these things describe the God of the Bible, but it's often what people subconsciously think about Him. We often project false ideas onto God; these ideas most often come from the character of our own parents or authority figures, or simply what our churches teach us. When we think these things about God, we approach him in strange ways. We often feel the need to legitimize our behavior or formalize it in some way. And when we hear about faith and the "power of prayer," we try to conjure it up as if it's something we can do apart from relationship. Maybe we even ask other people we think are better than us to pray on our behalf. The good thing is that at least this means we start with a measure of faith: we at least know He's the person to go to when we have needs. We've at least decided to believe He's real and have accepted Him as our savior. But we often have a total misconception of his character, making it difficult to trust Him further.

God is actually good. His love is actually unconditional. He's nothing like the failed human counterparts we often project onto Him. 

When you know the true character of God, prayer is simple. You can have peace and confidence in your prayers because you know the one who's listening cares even more than you do. If you know you have a father who loves you and accepts you as you are, who doesn't judge you or need you to prove anything, you don't fear approaching him. You don't fear asking him for the things you need or want. He will do anything for you. He has true wisdom. He wants to help you thrive in life. When you know that, it's easy to show your weakness to him. When you know your father loves to laugh and has a lot of grace for you, you can actually be yourself around him. And you don't have to worry about formalities or rituals because... he loves you. And this is what people take for granted: God is a person. He might not answer your every prayer because he has his own free will and he knows what's best. He is not your prayer-answering slave. But you can be confident that your prayers are compelling to Him because He loves you. 

This is faith; trusting that God actually is who He says He is. That is our foundation.

The world cannot accept that God is a living being. We seem like crazy people, talking to this "imaginary person." Our culture constantly seeks to depersonalize Him, and that thinking continuously seeps into the collective psyche of the church. But even when we have these funny ideas about his character, or our requests are wracked with all kinds of doubt, he's is still patient and gives us grace: often he answers our prayers anyway. That's just the kind of person He is. In scripture, God calls himself the Father. He calls us sons and daughters. In the Kingdom of God under the New Covenant, we aren't just citizens or servants, we are family. The Christian life is a relationship with the living God. And God is someone we can trust.

Photo by Daniel Lincoln on Unsplash

Can We Curse People With Our Prayers? (Part 1)

Debunking Superstitious Beliefs About Prayer (Part 1) 

The other day I was having a conversation with someone about demons. The subject brought to mind something that had been bothering her for some time now. She used to ask God to give her faith, telling him, “do whatever it takes.” She also asked God to do whatever it takes to save her son’s soul. Part of her story is that her mother went through an illness and died, and later her son also died prematurely in a car accident. And it wasn’t until after these two events that she fully turned to God. So recently a friend told her that praying the words, “whatever it takes,” is actually a demonic prayer, and instead we should be praying “positive prayers.” This was a horrifying implication, and difficult to swallow. Had she actually cursed her own family by praying this? So, she asked me for my opinion as a minister.

I immediately told her, absolutely not! No! You did NOT curse your family! Hopefully that is obvious to you, reader. But it's not obvious to everyone....

These prayers she prayed were motivated by love and faith. She genuinely believed that God could supply her with more faith, and trusted that He would do right by her in doing whatever it takes to help her get there. She believed that God is actually good. She also had maternal love for her son. She wanted him to have more than just a good life, so she asked God to ensure her son’s place in heaven for eternity. If that is not a deeply faith-filled, loving and parental prayer, then I don’t know what is. 

I don't think she actually believed she had cursed her family, but there was a tiny spark of doubt growing. Her friend, unaware of her history, had inflicted some measure of fear. So let's talk about the implications of this belief. What would it take for—we’ll call her Betsy—to truly believe that she could curse her own family with her prayers to God?

First, Betsy would have to assume that some of her most fervent and constant prayers were actually ideas influenced by demons. Can you imagine the psychological state this would put her in? The horror, regret, guilt, shame, fear, and condemnation. The paranoia! This isn't the state of mind God calls us to. More importantly, it would skew her understanding of herself to think that instead of trusting God, she was actually being led by demons all this time... It's a cruel trick. I get angry just thinking about it. God does not call us to live a life in constant fear and awareness of the demonic. In fact, He loves us, and His love is so perfect, that when we accept it, it drives out all fear. He supplies us with faith and peace. He protects us from harm. The Bible describes him as a shepherd who leads us to green pastures and still waters; a God who prepares a table for us before our enemies. He fights for us, and intercedes for us. God is our shelter and shield. God is good and honorable, and knows how to give us good gifts. If we're going to call anything "demonic," it was her friend's suggestion which had the potential to rob her faith and reframe her entire history with God.

And because of her history, our Betsy would have to believe that her prayers were most definitely answered in the worst way. To be afraid of praying to wrong prayer implies God is somehow obligated to answer every word of our prayers in the most literal and extreme way without any ability to think for himself, or authority to choose otherwise. This would mean God has no free will, and is powerless to refuse our prayers. In other words, she would have to reject the idea that God is all-powerful, or that He is a person with His own free will who can think for Himself. Or she'd have to reject that he is all-knowing, and knows what we mean when we pray vague prayers. 

Third, if she didn't believe God was some sort of mindless prayer-answering machine, then she might have to believe that prayer has some sort of power in and of itself to accomplish our wishes apart from God. This is not Christian ideology. This is the same as how one might think of curses, magic, spells, or maybe “human energies.” It's a superstitious concept of prayer. When the Bible talks about "the power of prayer," it is only within the context of God's love. He loves us so much that our prayers are compelling to Him, and that's what makes them powerful.

Fourth, if not a mindless machine, then only a murdering psychopath would take Betsy's request to the extreme by killing her family members one by one until she finally turns to God. Obviously God can't be an aggressively manipulative psychopath, so it must have been Satan answering her prayers. She'd have to believe she was accidentally praying to Satan. There is nothing in scripture to suggest we should be concerned that our prayers will be picked up by Satan. By now, she's not even a Christian and her concept of God doesn't come from the Bible at all.

What’s more, Betsy’s concept of suffering would have to be completely ego-centric in order to believe that, because she asked for it, her mother’s and son’s deaths occurred—just in order to help her find faith in God. Sure, hardships can make or break us: we decide how we respond to them. But to think that God would kill someone just to get our attention would be to assume (He is a psychopath and that) we are more important than the other people in our lives. Our loved ones are just pawns or side-characters God can just throw away. Not everything is about us. and if we see it that way, we might have deeper issues...

Furthermore, she would have to have a deterministic concept of God's sovereignty: that he controls everything with no room for possibilities, chance, or freedom for us to choose. If so, she might believe her suffering was a form of discipline from God. These are two areas of debate that I won't delve too deep into here. We know from scripture that God does not cause evil. But when it does happen, He is able to make something good out of it. So if her mother and son died, could God use it for good in the form of leading her into a stronger faith? Absolutely! Without God, these trials may have produced different, perhaps darker results in her. But did God cause or allow those things to happen for the purpose of growing her faith? My answer to that is a hearty N-O. And this simply because of the moral dilemma it creates. What's more, it goes against the character of unconditional love defined for us in 1 Corinthians 13. 

So, can you curse people with your prayers to God? The answer is no. Your prayers don't have magical powers to curse people. And you don't have to worry about demons when praying to God. God is a good and all-knowing being who knows what you mean when you say it. He knows when it's not wise to answer your requests. He knows what's best for you. He works all things out for your good. So the next time you position yourself to pray, have faith; God is full of grace and mercy, and he is on your side.

Stick around for Part 2, Conjuring Up Faith.

Photo by Daniel Lincoln on Unsplash