Prayer is Dependence

It’s a New Year and maybe you, like many others, are considering New Years Resolutions. Of course, we know how fickle such things are – we often resolve to change, adapt or improve in some way or another, but a few months (or weeks) down the line nothing has changed. Sometimes this is because what we’ve decided is a momentary fad or an unrealisable change. But often it is simply because what we’ve chosen to change is not that important right now.

And our prayer lives can be the same. We know we don’t pray as we ought to. We would love to give more time to prayer, and know it is important. And yet it never seems to happen. And so we just give up trying and put up with lives which are filled with other things, with prayer on the edge of it all. Its not that we don’t believe that prayer is important, but in the outworking of our lives we’ve not realised how desperately we need to be men and women of prayer. And when we see prayer meetings sparsely attended we are further discouraged from gathering to pray.

Romans 11:36 reminds us that all things are from Him, through Him and to Him and for His glory. Jesus told us clearly that “without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

We see this taught so often by Jesus to His disciples. In the storm, when Jesus was asleep in the boat, the disciples tried to sort things out for themselves. When they [finally] went to Him and woke Him, He rebuked them as ‘you of little faith’. It was a double rebuke – primarily for not trusting that they were safe in His hands because He was with them, but also because they had looked to themselves when they had already seen His power as creator God at work. They hadn’t learnt dependence. Again, when the disciples sought to cast out an evil spirit but were unable in Mark 9:14-29, they approach Jesus and ask why they couldn’t do so when they had done so before. Jesus’ answer is revealing: “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer” (v29). The context shows that the disciples had become confident in their ability, and while Jesus was on the Mount of Transfiguration they had thought they could do it without Him. Jesus had emphasised (v23) “All things are possible for the one who believes” – and who is that ‘one who believes’ perfectly? … Jesus himself is the only One who believes perfectly, and we must look to Him in trust.

Prayer is the act that unequivocally demonstrates our absolute dependence upon God. Therefore a vital prayer life is dependant upon our realisation of our own poverty and inability. Jesus said “blessed are the poor in spirit” – Why was this important? Firstly, we need to understand our own inability in order to rely on Him alone for salvation. But this then must continue in our walk with the Lord as His disciples – it is only when we realise our own inability that we will come constantly to Him in prayer. We don’t need New Years resolutions to start to pray continually – we need to be poor in spirit.

Prayer is the act that unequivocally demonstrates our absolute dependence upon God. Therefore a vital prayer life is dependant upon our realisation of our own poverty and inability.

David, in Psalm 131, considers the many great problems that faced him. As he looks at all he needs to do, he says this: “My heart is not proud, my eyes are not haughty. I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me”. He realises that life is too big for him, as a mere man, to manage or control. He makes the decision to not think proudly any more, but to be “poor in spirit”, realising that everything is too big for him. He goes on in this wonderful Psalm to give himself to dependence on God, resting in God’s love for him. This is where we too need to be at the start of this New Year if we are truly to be a people of prayer.