Tag: prayer

Taking Heart, Truth & Orthodoxy

When You Don’t Know What You Need

Faith Chang

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I lay in bed too tired to think, not knowing where to start — children, church, marriage, friends, my own soul? It had been a long time since I had talked to God about it all and I was at a loss at what to ask. The words came to mind as I struggled to pray:

Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

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“And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” (Matt. 6:7-8)

Once, during a particularly long kid-induced stretch of sleep deprivation, I stood in front of a store counter and had to stop myself mid-sentence to tell the associate, “Sorry…I have no idea what I’m saying.” Even with a clear mind, I dread calling customer service most days. I dislike having to think on my feet during the unpredictable exchange. Is the person on the line going to be rude? Pushy? Honest? Competent?

If you’re like me, you might script what you’ll say before calling customer service so you’re not bumbling when the person picks up. But imagine if the person we’re calling already knows what our problem is and how to fix it. Imagine they are glad we called, speak kindly as we make our requests, and patiently offer help.

“Pray even though God knows what you need,” some may say, apologetically even and on the defense. Because, why bother talking to God about what he already knows I need? It’s a fair question and with good answers, my mind is less troubled than it used to be about it. Providence makes prayer effective, and God’s sovereignty has become the bedrock I stand on as I make my petitions. Still, I have often failed to consider that this truth— that God knows what I need before I offer a word in prayer— is more than a prompt for questions about divine paradoxes. It is even more than just rebuke against the babblers Jesus speaks of in Matthew 6.

What I am experiencing these days is not pray “even though” God knows. No, no, not as a concession. Pray because he does.

God’s knowledge, I am finding, is my assurance and sweet comfort for all his children.

Because when you’re young and think you know what you need, you can only see it as redundant to speak to God about it. But then, you live longer. And as life’s complications and sorrows and hard lessons come, we begin to see that maybe we don’t know what’s best like we thought we did.

And what do you ask God for then? What happens when your feelings can’t be trusted? When your mind is unable to make sense of things to form a coherent request? When your foresight has failed and your problems outweigh your wisdom? When you’ve run out of solutions and suggestions to offer to God?

Where do you start when you don’t even know what you need?

There are so many good things we can pray, much is modeled in Scripture for us. For deeper knowledge of God, for deliverance from trial, for perseverance through it, for greater joy, for more love. But never is the call to prayer a request for information from God.

I think of kids. How readily they go to mom and dad for help, and how often their needs aren’t even known to them. Babies just cry. Older children may carry their complaints, tears, calls for justice. Still, usually parents can tell if they’re just tired and hangry, or truly sad and discouraged, or hiding jealousy and wanting revenge. If we, imperfect parents, know our kids enough to give them what they truly need, how much more the Father whose parenting every good mom or dad faintly shadows?

Our Father, says our Elder Brother, knows what you need before you utter a word. Therefore, you are not heard because of your flowing eloquence, the strength of your passion, or the might of your wisdom. You are heard because you are known completely and loved deeply. You are known because through Christ, you belong to God. And you are invited to God’s throne room, not to offer him tidbits he doesn’t know, but to receive mercy and find grace to help you in time of need (Heb. 4:16). The nature of the help may vary, but always it comes from one who knows exactly what you need.

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Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Thus beloved, we pray. And when we don’t even know what to ask? It’s okay. My children don’t need to know much to get my help, only that they’re not doing so great and that Mom can do something about it. So it is that as we walk with Jesus we will come to times when we can only be sure of two things: One, our need is great and two, there is only one Person who can help. And as it turns out, in these moments, that may be all we really need to know.

Taking Heart

God Who Waits

Faith Chang

IMG_7676Note: These shorter posts are reshared from content on my Instagram. I’ve found it easier these days to write shorter reflections there, but still plan to hit up this blog once in a while for longer pieces too!

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Marvelous, infinite, matchless grace
Freely bestowed on all who believe,
You who are longing to see his face
Will you this moment his grace receive?
– Grace Greater Than Our Sin

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As a kid, I got stomachaches in the middle of the night. I’d want to wake my mom but was afraid I’d get in trouble. I never got scolded, but even so I’d wait until it was unbearable.

I’ve come to see I do the same with God.

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There’s no such thing as cheap grace. There‘s presumption, the wrong notion that love looks at sin and says, “whatever, no big deal.” But that’s not grace. Grace is costly. All who’ve come to love our crucified Christ know this.

Sometimes though, the enemy takes my understanding of costly grace and twists it. He says to me:

…You’re going to pray about that again?
…Shouldn’t you be doing better by now?
…Can’t you handle this one on your own?

So I try to. Because I don’t want to presume on God’s kindness. I don’t want to test his patience. I don’t want to keep being so needy. I don’t want to get scolded.

But I am needy, and God knows I needed these words this week:

“Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you.” (Isaiah 30:18)

It turns out that I test God’s patience my own way— by not going to him. I have tested him, and he has proven to be so, so patient.

Just when we think we’ve out-asked, out-needed, overestimated him—when we finally come to him— he exalts himself in showing mercy.

So beloved, pray about that need again today. Come to him broken, come sinful, come wanting.

He waits to be gracious to you.

Taking Heart, Truth & Orthodoxy

To Keep Me From Becoming Conceited: A Thought Experiment

Faith Chang

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“Only by surrender to our proper human place can we glorify and enjoy God the way we say we want to and the way he requires.” – Sensing Jesus, Zack Eswine

I was dreaming recently about what it would be like not to be beset with my particular set of social, physical, and emotional weaknesses. If I weren’t so prone to anxiety… If social situations didn’t make my stomach hurt… If my body were stronger and I had a bigger capacity… And it all seemed so ideal.

I didn’t realize though, that I was neglecting a key variable in this thought experiment. That is, until a wise friend said a few days later, “Maybe if you were able to do all you wanted to, you would come to the end of your life and say, ‘Look at how productive my life was.’ But because you can’t, now you’ll say, ‘Look at what God did.’”

Truth.

God has countless, hidden purposes in our weaknesses, and I would never claim that guarding us against pride is the only, or even main, reason why he assigns us our trials. But in the Scriptures and in my life, it is one of them.

The Apostle Paul had a thorn, a trial, that he pleaded three times for God to remove. But God said no, saying to Paul instead these well known words, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). At times I have seen my weaknesses used this way, as the lightning rod for God to display his greatness and power. But lately, I have been camping out a few verses back to where Paul writes of his thorn and says, it was “to keep me from becoming conceited” (2 Cor. 12:7).

In the calculations I was making which resulted in a picture of my ideal self, I had not accounted for one weakness that isn’t merely human frailty, but an insidious, deadly, and corrupting sin in me— pride. With my friend’s words of truth factored in, I’ve been thinking again of what it would be like if God removed all the weaknesses I wanted him to. But this time I shudder.

You see, if it were up to me, I’d be super human.

I’d be fearless, confident, and competent. A force to be reckoned with, I’d be, for all intents and purposes, limitless in strength, wisdom, and capacity.

I wouldn’t need to eat or sleep or sit down or go to the bathroom because I’d be doing more “productive” things. (“Are you an ascetic?” my sister has asked, and with good reason.)

I wouldn’t be needy, and would ever be in the position of giver rather than in need of others.

And, come to think of it, I guess wouldn’t need God.

I am not unlike our first mother who listened to the voice of the serpent. You will be like God! — not in the sense of being his representative, but his replacement. Like the builders of Babel crying, “Let us make a name for ourselves!” my heart in it’s twisted depravity yearns to say, “Look at all I’ve accomplished (for God)!”

But this is not the way of our Lord. God does not take delight in the strength of men (Ps. 147:10). He is never the beneficent of our works, never in need of our productivity. He alone never slumbers nor sleeps (Ps. 121). He alone is always at work (Jn. 5:17). God destroys the wisdom of the wise and discernment of the discerning. He makes foolish the wise and does not choose the strong. And he does this so no human being might boast in his presence (1 Cor. 1).

Just as Paul’s thorn was given to him by God’s grace for the sake of his own soul, sometimes God guards us from ourselves through our weaknesses. The very weaknesses we pray for God to remove may be God’s grace to us, for the sake of sparing our souls. God only knows who we would be not only apart from his saving grace, but for gracious trials from his Fatherly hand.

I know partially the danger I would be to myself and those around me if I were unencumbered by weaknesses. It is scary how much harsher I would be to others and how much credit I yearn to take. Through my weaknesses, God is in some ways keeping me from being tempted beyond what I can bear.

Even more importantly, God knows I would be blind to his grace, power, and lovingkindness if not for his work of bringing and keeping me low. Our Lord delights to show himself glorious as our powerful, kind, and gracious Giver and Sustainer. His righteousness is on display as he lifts up the powerless and defends the weak.

God wonderfully takes our work, bound in time and fraught with weakness, and accomplishes his eternal purposes through them. And when we come to him in humility, in recognition of the reality of our dependence, how kindly he supplies our needs and reveals his grace. All these things he does to the praise of his glory, giving us the most precious gift of all, true knowledge of him in a loving relationship.

As God is shedding the light of grace upon my weaknesses and limits, I am coming to a very different conclusion today in my “If I were/weren’t…”  thought experiment. Could God be doing the same for you? Maybe he is, in unexpected ways, answering our prayers to spend and end our days proclaiming truly, Look at all God has done– through, in, and for us, to the praise of his glorious grace.

Truth & Orthodoxy

If God Is In Control, Why Pray?

Faith Chang

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When it comes to God’s sovereignty and prayer, it is enough for some people to know that 1. God is sovereign (in control) and 2. God commands us to pray. But there are others who struggle with seeing prayer as an Achilles heel for belief in God’s providence and sovereign control over all things.

In other words, they sincerely wrestle with the question,  If God is sovereign, why pray?

All of us, though we may not verbalize the question,  practically live out our implicit answers to this question in how we pray. I’ve seen this play out in my life and in teaching, both good and bad,  I’ve received through the years. If God is immobilized by my lack of prayers or constrained by their content, I will pray with feverish anxiety, maybe in fear of forgetting something important or asking for the wrong thing. If my prayers only change me, my intercession for others end up short and passionless, “Do what you will, you know what’s best, amen” with faithlessness masquerading as faith in God’s sovereignty.

The question of “Then, why pray?” came up in church during a class on God’s sovereignty a few weeks ago, so I thought I’d share a few points here. They’re brief but may be helpful for some wrestling with the seeming contradiction of God’s sovereign will and our supplications in prayer.

1. Prayer is more than just asking for things.

Worshippers of God praise him in prayer because adoration is a natural and fitting response to seeing his greatness. We pour out our hearts before him in prayer not because he does not know our minds, but because he is a refuge for his people and he comforts us as we lay our burdens before him. We confess our sins in prayer not to inform him of what we did while his back was turned, but to receive his cleansing forgiveness and power to change.

Prayer is more than just asking for things and it is relational, not transactional. Even as we present our requests before God, our supplications are not so much like placing an order for Amazon as much as it is approaching our Father. We come to him with the longings of our hearts, trusting in his goodness and wisdom, knowing his love and care. Those who believe that prayer is pointless if God is in control do not yet understand our communion with God in prayer.

2. Scripture affirms that our supplications are effective as God responds to them.

Prayer changes us as we commune with God, but does not only change us. Scripture is full of stories of God responding to his people’s requests. Israel’s mass exodus from slavery is preceded by,  “Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.” (Ex. 2:23-25) And the prophet Elijah’s showdown with the prophets of Baal proved that, unlike false idols, Yahweh is the God who lives, hears and responds to his people. These are only two of innumerable Biblical examples.

In the New Testament, James says, “You do not have, because you do not ask.” (Ja. 4:2b) Paul urges supplications to be made for all people and asks the churches to pray for him (1 Tim. 2:1, Eph. 6:19, Col. 4:3.) And Jesus himself straightforwardly says, “Ask and you will receive.”

3. God’s sovereignty does not negate the meaningfulness of my prayers, but rather upholds their effectiveness.

Scripture overwhelming attests to God’s sovereignty, or providence.* At the same time, it also attests to the meaningfulness of my actions, including my prayers. The Westminster Confession of Faith puts it this way:

God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established. (WCF 3:1-2)

When we think of God as merely an actor in a pre-existing world, then his sovereignty seems to negate the effectiveness of our prayers. But remember that everything that exists is continually held together by his command and that fabric of the universe would completely unravel if he did not uphold it (Heb. 1:3). Therefore, “second causes” or what we may think of as “means” make a difference not in competition with but because of God. Our actions have consequences in the world because God upholds it. Our prayers are effective because and only because God himself establishes their effectiveness.

4. God has sovereignly ordained means.

Also, in believing that God has ordained all things, Christians believe that he ordains means. For example, though we believe that God has chosen how many days we have on earth, we still eat (Ps. 139:16). We don’t throw up our hands and say, “Well if God wanted me to live, I would,” because we believe God has chosen to use physical sustenance to prolong our days. God has not only determined outcomes in history, but the means toward these outcomes.

When it comes to prayer then, as one of my professors put it, What if God has sovereignly ordained your prayers as a means toward accomplishing his will on earth? 

5. Ultimately, we pray not in spite of, but because we believe in God’s sovereignty.

R.C. Sproul has said, “If there is one single molecule in this universe running around loose, totally free of God’s sovereignty, then we have no guarantee that a single promise of God will ever be fulfilled.” Similarly, rather than feeling demotivated to pray because we know God is sovereign, Christians can pray in faith because God is in control of all things.

Our God is able to direct the will of earthly kings, so we pray for leaders in our home, work, and nations. He can make dead hearts live, and so we plead for him to grant salvation to hardened hearts. He is able to break the power of sin in our lives, families, and churches, so we plead for more grace to overcome. And he has chosen to do all this and more through the prayers of his people to the praise of his glory.

Nothing is outside of our Sovereign King’s rule and thus nothing is impossible for him. What great confidence we have in Christ to approach the throne of grace to find mercy and grace to help us in our time of need.

* Kevin DeYoung writes in, The Good News We Almost Forgot:  “The Bible affirms human responsibility. But the Bible also affirms, much more massively and frequently than some imagine, God’s power and authority over all things. The nations are under God’s control (Pss. 2:1–4; 33:10), as is nature (Mark 4:41; Pss. 135:7; 147:18; 148:8), and animals (2 Kings 17:25; Dan. 6:22; Matt. 10:29). God is sovereign over Satan and evil spirits (Matt. 4:10; 2 Cor. 12:7–8; Mark 1:27). God uses wicked people for His plans-not just in a “bringing good out of evil” sort of way but in an active, intentional, “this was God’s plan from the get-go” sort of way (Job 12:16; John 19:11; Gen. 45:8; Luke 22:22; Acts 4:27–28). God hardens hearts (Ex. 14:17; Josh. 11:20; Rom. 9:18). God sends trouble and calamity (Judg. 9:23; 1 Sam. 1:5; 16:14; 2 Sam. 24:1; 1 Kings 22:20–23; Isa. 45:6–7; 53:10; Amos 3:6; Ruth 1:20; Eccl. 7:14). God even puts to death (1 Sam. 2:6, 25; 2 Sam. 12:15; 2 Chron. 10:4,14; Deut. 32:39). God does what He pleases and His purposes cannot be thwarted (Isa. 46:9–10; Dan. 4:34–35). In short, God guides all our steps and works all things after the counsel of His will (Prov. 16:33; 20:24; 21:2; Jer. 10:23; Ps. 139:16; Rom. 8:28; Eph. 1:11).”