Expectation and Unbelief

Speaking of the Holy Spirit, Horatius Bonar said, "We have not honored the Spirit of God. It may be in words (only) that we have recognized his agency, but we have not kept this continually before our eyes..." He is saying that we have only paid lip service to the Holy Spirit's work. This is also true, but my thought today as I write is not about the working of the Spirit, but about prayer.

We had a speaker last night at our annual Valentine's Banquet that our church gathers to share, and he made a comment that he did not know what to make of a Christian who prays, but does not expect to be actually heard and answered. Lip service to the God of Heaven and Earth when Christ died to split the veil and give us access, baffled him. I was convicted by the Spirit immediately.

There are many reasons that our prayers are not heard or answered. We could have a besetting sin in our lives that breaks us from close fellowship with God and keeps us from prayer. We could be praying for the wrong things, praying "amiss" as James calls it, seeking only selfish things to heap upon ourselves. We may not being fervent or persistent enough. We simply might not be asking, as Jesus told us that we do not have, because we do not ask. Peter says that if husbands do not live with their wives with understanding and honoring her will not have their prayer heard. However, maybe the greatest hindrance to prayer being effective is our unbelief.

We know that unbelief caused Jesus to do no miracles in Nazareth. We know that it caused Jesus to be astonished at some Galilean cities when they saw miracles and explained them away. It constantly brought judgment throughout the Old Testament who did exactly what God told them not to do, or did not do what he told them to do. In the case of the Pharisees, it caused most to be lost forever, even though they were the most religious people in Israel.

Think about it. They knew that they were commanded to pray; so they did. They knew that they should want to pray; so they prayed. They knew that they were supposed to live holy lives of moral purity and ceremonial obedience to be heard in prayer; so they worked hard. Yet, they did not believe that Jesus was the Christ. They did not believe that God could raise up children to Abraham from stones or make them cry out in praise if he desired. They did not believe that Jesus was a prophet because he healed on the Sabbath. One moment after death, how many wished that they had cried out with the epileptic boy's  father, "help my unbelief."

We know we are supposed to pray; so we pray as many minutes as we can for as many things as we can think of. We try to be unselfish by praying all too generically that God would bless this or that. We go through the motions, but do we truly believe that God hears, and God will answer? Do we truly believe that God can and will move in a situation? Are we fervent and persistent only when there is a very desperate situation that directly affects us or a close friend? Do we believe when we pray, or just going through the motions to make ourselves feel better, as though God was pleased that we gave lip service to intimate communion with him?

Maybe we should all (myself being the chief of offence) pray the prayer of the father, "help my unbelief," and repent from our lack of faith, trusting in the gospel and the transformed life it brings to aid us in pursuit.