I was sitting with my family at dinner the other night, and as I finished saying the prayer, I noticed that it was one of the generic script 'Thank you for
Sometimes I fall into just going through a 'canned' version of prayer.
“Father God,
Thank you for this food, thank you for this day, thank you for you blessings and Grace. Please keep my family safe.
Amen.”
Wow, think about it. If your cell phone went off and you looked at the caller ID and it was one of your most favorite people in the whole world, a person that you're just dying to talk to. Someone that you don't get to talk to enough. Someone that you love so much that you would be willing to die for them without even a second thought. You would be excited wouldn't you? You would be so happy that this person wanted to talk to you that you could hardly contain your joy. You would rush to push the talk button as fast as you could.
Now, what if the conversation went like this?
“Hi Buddy,
Thanks for coming over and helping with that fence last week. Thanks for the fruit cake at Christmas. Hey! Maybe next time the wind blows it down you can come help me again.
Bye.*click*”
Not much of a conversation is it.
I would dare to say that you might upset and even be a little bummed out because that 'conversation' seemed pretty one sided. Really, it wasn't a conversation at all. It was a checklist.
Are prayers supposed to be a checklist that we go through with God?
Sometimes I think we fall into a trap of being too comfortable with our relationship with Jesus and prayer becomes something that we do because... well... that is what we do. Prayer becomes something that is required before a meal, or before bed because that is just how it is done. We shotgun a few generic thank you message up or we send up a few personal requests and then we sit back and await an answer. It becomes more of a one-way telegram instead of a two-way telephone.
It seems that a lot of times, at least in my own prayer life, I ask for the same things over and over.
Peace, safety, strength and wisdom are common threads in my short, shotgun prayers to Him.
“Give me peace. Give me strength. Pow! Pow! POW! Rub a dub dub, thanks for the grub! Amen!”
Not much of a conversation with He who created the universe ehh?
I wonder, Do we sometimes see Jesus as a prayer request vending machine?
Do we drop a couple prayers into Him for what we want, and then wait for an answer to drop like a gumball from a storefront machine?
Are we cutting ourselves way short by not stopping long enough to have a actual conversation with Him? Are we trying to cut Him short by keeping the conversation one sided because we really don't want to hear what He wants for us? Are we stunting our spiritual growth by not allowing Him to mold us because the molding might cause us a little, or a lot, of pain? Are we taking the easy way out because
Think about this.... of all the things that you have requested in prayer....
Have you ever asked God to make you dangerous?
Yup, dangerous, you read that right. Have you ever asked God to make you dangerous?
Dangerous huh? That doesn't sound very Christian-like right!? Aren't we as Christians supposed to be nice and kind and loving towards others? Aren't we supposed to be known by our love? Wasn't love one of the greatest gifts that God has given us?!
How can we love Christ, love others and be dangerous?!
Well, you might be asking, what exactly do I mean by 'dangerous'?
I mean being dangerous to the ways of the world.
I mean being a danger to things that God doesn't like.
How about asking to be a danger to poverty or a danger to hunger or even a danger to the slavery that binds people? How about being a danger to the addictions that hold people in chains? How about being a danger to the loneliness that torments the elderly woman who lives across the street from us? We could be a danger to the yard work that the disabled vet around the corner fights with just to keep in check.
How about being a danger to the enemy? Could we ask to be a danger to the one that would lead people astray and away from God?
What if a whole group of us decided that we wanted to be a danger to these things? How much of a danger could we be then?
Yes, as Christians, I believe that we can be very dangerous.
God wants us to grow. God wants us to be willing to be changed into what He wants us to be. God wants us to make a difference in the world and that is going to make us danger to the ways of the world.
How about we go out and live dangerously?
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