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| Not everything is awesome, as much as we want it to be |
What is the most difficult prayer to pray? To be sure, even understanding the concept of true prayer is difficult enough. See, anyone can pray. Any religion affords for its followers a form of communication with its deity. One-way. Now, whether the deity hears the prayer or not is an altogether lengthy topic that is beyond my brief introspection.
Biblical prayer presents fundamentally different. Scanning the Bible with regards to prayer, we find something that's peculiar: God speaks. It is not merely that He speaks, but it can be seen that He responds to prayer, whether positively or negatively. The God of the Bible even defines the prayer that is acceptable to Him. At its root, biblical prayer offers to us something else: it necessitates a relationship. The line of communication flows two-way: God to man, man to God. There is a peculiar, yet very real intimacy in biblical prayer. A cursory read of the Psalms reflect this truth vividly.
As to my question this might be the most difficult prayer: "not my will, but Yours be done." Or one rendition of that prayer that comes to mind is: "Lord, may I not interfere with what You are doing."
Common Christian messaging saturates us that we are God's instruments. And indeed we are. But others think that they are part of God's "top of the line." Close to being indispensable. But mostly and in reality, we are particularly poor instruments. We are jars of clay, to use the Bible's wording. We are not golden vessels.
The last thing the world would have us believe is that we are NOT special. The particular bent of stressing one's significance in the kingdom is assuming one's special role in the kingdom. In the Scriptures, the peculiarity, the holiness and the all-around "special"-ness of God's people is almost always a group description. The church together is special. The church being the church, in application of the discipleship commission of God, and of the one-another's, is special. If we are all lean towards over-stressing individual "special"-ness, we might not be thinking rightly about God's kingdom work. There are real repercussions and harm, a messiah complex being the worst, done in "service" to God. Then again, we tend to think highly of ourselves.
I honestly and personally think that God can afford in NOT using us. I mean, the world existed before I was born. But the problem is that we cannot afford it. Sometimes, my "special"-ness would like me to believe that I contribute a big chunk to kingdom work. Yet in most moments I come to the realization that I might be standing in opposition to it. I am not proposing not fulfilling my role, or continuing in some form of mediocrity. But any role that I play must be seen in the light of the beautifully woven context of God's church. The apostle Paul unpacks what most of us, as we wade in the world's sea of individualism, seem to forget: "through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places." The church is God's manifold wisdom, and that directs us how to pray. It does provide an extreme difficulty, because this is not how we pray. I am not the special. The church is the special.
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