DETESTABLE PRAYERS

Proverbs 28.9
DETESTABLE PRAYERS
"If anyone turns a deaf ear to the law, even his prayers are detestable."

THE PURPOSE OF PRAYER IS NOT TO PRAY," Jim Houston told our class on "Prayer" at Regent College, Vancouver, "but to know God." In his book on prayer, Transforming Friendship, Houston writes (page 6) about his own experience:

"After years of feeling useless and guilty, I began to realize the truth of a comment made by one of the early Fathers of the church, Clement of Alexandria. He said that 'prayer is keeping company with God.' This began to give me a new focus on prayer. I began to see prayer as more of friendship than a rigorous discipline. It started to become more of a relationship and less of a performance. "

In our increasingly pragmatic society, prayer easily becomes another device in our hands to achieve our own ends. No wonder we are so often concerned about the results of our prayer — whether or not we get what we ask for. But prayer is not a performance for a reward. It is the cultivation of a relationship.

In a relationship, we not only speak; we also listen. To listen to God is to do what He tells us. If we do not listen to Him, then we should not expect Him to hear us. If we turn a deaf ear to His law, will He not turn a deaf ear to our prayers? Let us beware lest prayers become nothing but a "dialogue of the deaf." The proverb here enunciates a most important spiritual principle. It is the primacy of obedience in our relationship with God. He is not as interested in our prayers as He is in our obedience, not as concerned with how we pray as how we live.

As A.W. Tozer puts it, "The whole life must pray." We pray, not only with our lips, or our minds, or a part of us, but with our total being. Prayer must be expressed in every area of life. Tozer further explains: "To pray effectively, it is required of us that there be no unblessed areas in our lives, no parts of the mind or soul that are not inhabited by the Spirit, no impure desires allowed to live within us, no disparity between our prayers and our conduct."

To do otherwise is to present God with a detestable thing. We ourselves know how it is when someone who is not sincere of heart speaks to us. He says words with his mouth, but we know he does not mean them with his heart. We do not take such a person seriously. Neither would God take our prayers seriously if we do not back them with our life.

Do I pray with my whole life?