A blog post I wrote in 2017.
In 1993 we visited the Bundaberg rum factory in Bundaberg Queensland. Bundaberg rum is made from molasses, which is a by-product of sugar production. The interesting thing about molasses is that although it is a liquid, you cannot swim in it. The harder you try to propel yourself forward in molasses, the more you would stand still. The tour guide at the rum factory, therefore, told everyone to make sure not to fall into the giant vats of molasses.
There are days when praying seems like trying to swim in a vat of molasses. No matter how hard I try, I get nowhere. Recently, on a day when prayer felt like this, I sensed a word from the Spirit saying that this is a very common experience in the body of Christ. For this reason, I thought that I would offer a few thoughts about how to get out of the molasses and get praying again.
There are many books about prayer and I don’t want to write very much today, so I am sticking to two simple things in this post. There are two basic questions in prayer. Will God hear me? And what should I pray about? Let’s consider access to God first.
Christians often live as if the Christian life is some kind of quid pro quo with God. This is a fancy way of saying that we imagine that God will do something for us in exchange for something we do for him. This makes access to God in prayer dependent on how well we have performed during the week. So we can start prayer with all kinds of justifications as to why God should hear the prayers that we bring to him. An appropriate analogy might be the way children imagine Santa decides whether they should have a present. “You know that I’ve been good and tried really hard this year. Please give me a new bike for Christmas.” The problem with this view of prayer is that you and I have failed to be good and we know it. No amount of spin can convince us that we are good enough for God. This makes praying rather hard since we have nothing to offer God and therefore cannot imagine him actually listening.
The good news (gospel) is that there is no quid pro quo with God. It is all grace. We have nothing to offer God, since we have nothing that he did not give to us and he has no need of anything. He is the one who offers us his salvation through Christ and our response is to say, “Thankyou”. That is faith. Faith is nothing more than taking hold of the grace of God with intense gratitude. Access to God is something which God has graciously given us because of the work of Jesus. It is never something that we have to gain through working for it. “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Heb 4:14-16).
The second issue is what to pray about. It is not uncommon to hear people say that after five minutes they have run out of things to say except Amen. Sometimes, even often, I find it difficult to get started in prayer. The thing which I have found most helpful is to start off with giving thanks. There is always something to be thankful for, the first of which is that access to God is given freely because of Christ. But then, even in the bleakest times, there is something to say thanks for. “Thanks for food on the table and a bed to sleep in. Thanks for grace and mercy. Thanks for rain. Thanks for seasons. Thanks for the promises of the word. Thanks for answering my prayer from last week.” Sometimes I can even say, “Thanks for the difficult things in life, since they have served to mature me.”
As to what to pray about after that, there is no limit on the things which you may ask God for. I pray for my physical family, my church family, the government, the persecuted church, my own life, my fears and hopes, the people of Australia, the church in Australia and sometimes other events that are taking place. One reason that you may be finding it hard to know what to pray about is that life is so often inward-focused. If you look outside yourself and see what is happening around us in Australia and the world, then many possibilities for prayer open up.
The two questions are really connected to one another. If I do not think that God would answer me, then I don’t want to approach him and I don’t think that there is anything to pray about. I will turn to other means of trying to get what I need. Be confident that you are able to come to God in prayer and he will hear you because of Jesus. This opens up a world of possibilities as we trust that God hears. Instead of being people who complain about the world or the church or the government, we can be people who bring all these things to the God in heaven, who actually has the power to bring about change. Then there is no more need to try swimming in a vat of molasses.