Salt and Light: What is Prayer?

By Brent Davis, Campus Ministry Coordinator (by God’s grace) 

Knock knock 

Who’s there? 

Jesus 

Jesus Who? 

Jesus Christ 

Ohh. One second … (frantic cleaning sounds) 

Yes, the first knock-knock joke is in the Bible (sort of): 

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.” (Revelation 3: 20) 

Prayer is spending time with God. It is not dialing the great Helpdesk-in-the-Sky. Jesus is knocking. Are you ready for Him to come in? 

God is love, and He wants to spend time with you. In fact, it is the end point of the Bible: 

3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among the people, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His [a]people, and God Himself will be among them[b], 4 and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.” (Revelation 21: 3,4) 

Before that happens, sadly, God sometimes needs to correct us: 

Come, let’s worship and bow down,
Let’s kneel before the Lord our Maker.
7 For He is our God,
And we are the people of His [b]pasture and the sheep of His hand.
Today, [c]if you will hear His voice,
8 Do not harden your hearts as at [d]Meribah,
As on the day of [e]Massah in the wilderness,
9 “When your fathers put Me to the test,
They tested Me, though they had seen My work. (Psalm 95: 6-9) 

We test God though disobedience. Pastor Tom Elliff in his book A Passion for Prayer stresses the importance of obedience.  In the verse above from Revelation. It is addressed to a church that was not obedient, they needed to do His will and spend time with Him. That’s why He was knocking. 

If you want to see God blessing your life and family, you need to be praying for His will and wisdom. Expect to spend some time in prayer: this is fellowship not 911. 

If we are seeking to be obedient, time with God can bring peace and joy. In his book on prayer, Rusty Rustenbach shares what God communicated to him the first time he tried to spend time with God:  

Afterward, the team regrouped and shared how our time with God had gone. I teared up as I read some of the things God had communicated: “Rusty, I am for you . . . for you and not against you. You belong to Me. It really wasn’t you who chose to follow Me when you came to Me twenty-seven years ago in Okinawa. It was I who chose you. I chose you to belong to Me because I love you with an everlasting love. You are Mine!” This moved me profoundly as I read it aloud, maybe even more than when God had first communicated it. Though my first experience in deliberately listening to God started awkwardly, it ended up being rich, affirming, and intimate as I sensed the nearness of Jesus in an unusual and intensely personal way. (Rustenbach, 2011, p. 22) 

If you need a model for prayer, begin with the Lord’s Prayer: 

11 It happened that while [a]Jesus was praying in a certain place, when He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John also taught his disciples.” 2 And He said to them, “When you pray, say: 

‘[b]Father, [c]hallowed be Your name.
[d]Your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our [e]daily bread.
4 And forgive us our sins,
For we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And do not lead us into temptation.’” 

5 And He said to them, “[f]Suppose one of you has a friend, and goes to him at midnight and says to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, 6 because a friend of mine has come to me from a journey and I have nothing to serve him’; 7 and from inside he answers and says, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been shut and my children [g]and I are in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ 8 I tell you, even if he will not get up and give him anything just because he is his friend, yet because of his [h]shamelessness he will get up and give him as much as he needs.9  

“So I say to you, [i]ask, and it will be given to you; [j]seek, and you will find; [k]knock, and it will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, it will be opened. (Luke 11: 1-10) 

Knock knock! 

References 

Elliff, T. (2010). A passion for prayer: Experiencing deeper intimacy with God. CLC Publications. 

Rustenbach, R. (2011). A guide for listening and inner-healing prayer: Meeting God in the broken places. NavPress.