Part II: Why Do You Pray
Certainly to acknowledge the purpose and need for prayer we are recognizing that our faith is a supernatural faith. God is an invisible reality. However, many of us at some time or another have fallen into the notion that God is a distant God; believing that he is looking down on us from heaven with scorn and condemnation, so we are afraid to pray. If you can relate to this, I implore you to watch Rob Bell’s Video: LUMP which is linked on my blog.
We must come to a place where we understand God is a personal God – that Christ is a person who is alive and with us all the time as he promised.
When we reflect on the gospels one that comes to my mind very often is the time when Jesus healed the young boy who was tormented by an unclean spirit. When the father of this young boy approaches Jesus it is clear that his faith was not very strong. On some level he understood that Christ had the capacity or ability to cure his son, but his request is worded as “if you can do anything to help him” Christ’s response to this man, could be very similar to what he says to us many times in prayer. When we pray for something, with little faith and he must be thinking “If I can? Certainly, I can.” Therefore, we must approach prayer like this father approaches Christ: “I do believe, help my unbelief.” Mark 9: 20-29
