I read this book called Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster. It was a good book but I wrestled with the chapter on prayer a lot. He makes some comments about how in the past he had only "marginal success" with prayer. I don't understand this at all. How can prayer be unsuccessful? We know that prayer is to change us and align our will with the Father's. How can such a prayer that is said from the heart be deemed "unsuccessful?"
He also talked about how the disciples prayed for people and didn't really ever ask "if Thy will be done," but prayed with confidence. How do we gain this confidence to pray with? I know that there are times when I don't see my prayers answered as I ask. How do I pray with confidence and still know that it might not happen?
At our pre-intern retreat, this was a topic of great discussion. Our professor enlightened us a bit and helped us along. He explained that prayer is also often about getting to know God better, in that we start seeing that He is going to answer our prayers, but that prayer might not be answered in the same way that we expect. We look for the results that we had in mind. He might do what we ask, but in a different way. So we get to know our Father better and learn how to see what He is doing amidst our prayers.
It's disheartening sometimes to think that prayer isn't changing God. It awful, I know, but it's true. I think, why should I pray if God is taking care of it anyway? God wants us to spend time with Him! God wants an opportunity to speak to us and open our hearts and ears to Him.
The struggle I have, however, lies in intercessory prayer. What's the purpose of this? How does it work? I mean, I love knowing that people are praying for me and I enjoy praying for others. In the Bible, intercessory prayer was used. It just seems like it doesn't add up to me, though, because I think about how prayer is supposed to be changing our hearts as we pray. So why pray for others? Are we praying for their hearts to be changed? They're not doing the praying though and God is going to be changing them regardless of our prayers. I don't know.
Prayer is just such a crazy concept for me to try to latch on to. I love it and at the same time, the more I get into prayer and learn from it, the more mindboggling and frustrating it can be because I don't understand how it works, how to "do it correctly" necessarily, and what the purpose is.
Those are my thoughts. I'm open to yours.
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