PRAY & WATCH

[6-minute read]  

As Christians, we try our best to avoid doing or saying the wrong thing to others, yet we do not see Jesus obsessing over the same thing in his relationships and interactions with people. The Lord appeared to be more concerned about doing what was important to God that was in alignment with the Word. While relationship with Him was not always comfortable for others, by walking the talk, He became the Word made flesh that came to live among humanity (John 1:14).

Indeed, it is hard, if not humanly impossible, to emulate Jesus and always be God’s love wrapped in skin to others. As a community, we can be pretty oblivious to human suffering behind the pervasive expression of cordiality and cheerfulness in our culture. But is it biblical? 

How did Jesus remain so tender in His heart yet so tough on sin, so in tune with His own emotions and yet so true to God? The answer is prayer. We are not talking about praying only when there is a need, or starting a prayer chain but about Jesus’s habit of making time to be alone with God to pray. 

Pastor Marilyn Chew, a bi-vocational pastor with a full-time ministry, a full-time day job and family responsibilities, shared how she, too, regularly makes the effort to pull herself away from the demands of life and lets herself be pulled into an intimate time with God. For her, prayer often happens past midnight when it would seem more practical to go to bed than to stay up late to pray. Yet, in order to know God’s will for all the different roles in her life, she cannot not pray. 

To Pastor Marilyn, it is the same for everyone: we all need to go deeper in our prayer life. Jesus Himself has shown by example, three critical aspects of prayer.

THE HABIT OF PRAYER 

The four gospels show us that He lived His entire life as a mission from God. He often tore Himself away from crowds desiring His attention and slipped away to pray by Himself so that He could give His attention to His Heavenly Father (Luke 5:15-16). In many ways, His life was marked by who He gave His attention to rather than who He received attention from.

To be sure, the Lord’s well-being did not come from being needed by people but it grew from His need for private time with the Father. This informs us that we get a clearer sense of our God-given mission through regular one-on-one time with God, developing our receptivity to Him and our ability to wait on Him as we pray. Nothing should replace our time with God – engaging Him to show us what to do and what He is doing.

It is noteworthy that interacting with God involves a mutual ‘exchange of wishes’ between God and us. Jesus did that in His conversation with God in the garden of Gethsemane when He said, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.” (Luke 22:42). His prayers were always honest and humble without the need for superlatives and superfluousness. Indeed, time well-spent in prayer is not about outtalking God!

THE ALIGNMENT OF PRAYER

Since praying is an honest exchange of wishes with God, it naturally surfaces the difference between our thinking and God’s thinking, and between our desires and God’s desires. Acceding to the will of God - even when we do not yet understand it, even when it hurts, even when it goes against all human logic - brings an alignment of our will and our ways with God’s will and His ways. Even though we often do not know what God is doing in response to our prayers, we can, as Lysa TerKeurst argued, trust that He is a good God, that He is good at being God and that He is good to us. 

To be sure, aligning our will with God’s will involves an intense moment-by-moment surrender where we surrender to God the arguments and pretenses that we default to in order to hide our real fears and feelings.  (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Jesus, even as the Son of God, was very mindful of falling into temptation while living as a human among us. If He had not prayed so much, His decisions and choices would look very different today. It is disingenuous to say that He could do things effortlessly because He was the Son of God and could create miracles at will. But if we spend time reading the Bible, we would know this is simply not true.  

As humans, we can be fatigued by crises. We can be defeated by strong waves of emotions. We can be discouraged by ruminating in regret over what should and could be. We can give up on doing good while struggling in hurtful relationships. We can be tempted to give up when the idea of escaping from pain looks deceptively easier. We often think we are talking to God when we are actually talking to ourselves! The danger is in not knowing that we are often susceptible to being derailed and distracted.

These are all reasons to consistently spend private time alone with God in prayer.

THE STRENGTH OF PRAYER

Lastly, we can expect our time in prayer to strengthen us to do what is important to God rather than relying on knee-jerk reactions that often miss the mark. Jesus’s disciples had slackened in prayer during a time when they all felt emotionally drained (Luke 22:45). Tellingly, their spiritual slumber led them to betray Jesus and desert Him later. They fell apart when Jesus needed them most. 

Luke 21:36 also reminds believers not to get distracted in godless living but to be prayerfully vigilant in good times and hard times, so that we may find God’s strength to live right. To be sure, we gain greater strength not for quarrels or to win arguments, but to resist quarreling and seek engagement even when it is difficult. God gives us strength when we are praying watchfully and when we are watching prayerfully. As such, we are taught to “Seek the Lord and His strength; seek His face continually.” (Psalm 105:4).

Finally, the cup of blessing and cup of suffering from God serve only His purposes. Know that God is real and He will see us through to victory and fulfillment. Just watch and pray.

This is a summary and reflection based on a virtual BIR Session held on 5 August 2023.