This morning, I have been reading the opening chapters of With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. In it, I found this prayer and thought I would share it (I hope that the King James English does not detract from the content):

“Blessed Lord! who ever livest to pray, ‘Thou canst teach me too to pray, me too to live ever to pray. In this Thou lovest to make me share Thy glory in heaven, that I should pray without ceasing, and ever stand as a priest in the presence of my God.

Lord Jesus! I ask Thee this day to enroll my name among those who confess that they know not how to pray as they ought, and specially ask Thee for a course of teaching in prayer. Lord! teach me to tarry with Thee in the school, and give Thee time to train me. May a deep sense of my ignorance, of the wonderful privilege and power of prayer, of the need of hte Holy Spirit as the Spirit of prayer, lead me to cast away my thoughts of what I think I know, and make me kneel before Thee in true teachableness and poverty of spirit.

And fill me, Lord, with the confidence that with such a teacher as Thou art I shall learn to pray. In the assurance that I have as my teacher, Jesus, who is ever praying to the Father, and by His prayer rules the destinies of His Church and the world, I will not be afraid. As much as I need to know of the mysteries of the prayer-world, Thou wilt unfold for me. And when I may not know, Thou wilt teach me to be strong in faith, giving glory to God.

Blessed Lord! Thou wilt not put to shame Thy scholar who trusts Thee, nor, by Thy grace, would he Thee either. Amen.”

It seems to me that Christians, as a group, would be better served to spend more time in prayer and less time using social media as an outlet for verbal hand wringing.

The longer I am a Christian, the more I realize how dependent upon God we really are. This quote from John Stott resonated with me:

“Many people visualize a God who sits comfortably on a distant throne, remote, aloof, uninterested, and indifferent to the needs of mortals, until, it may be, they can badger him into taking action on their behalf. Such a view is wholly false. The Bible reveals a God who, long before it even occurs to man to turn to him, while man is still lost in darkness and sunk in sin, takes the initiative, rises from his throne, lays aside his glory, and stoops to seek until he finds him.”

I recently heard a speaker make a comparison between Christianity and other religions. Christianity at its core reveals a God who initiates and man who responds. Other religions reverse this by making man the initiator who seeks to gain a response from God. In those religions, man earns the notice of God through his diligence in following rituals and his performance of good deeds.

We cannot be the initiator in the relationship with God. This is because we have a fundamental problem which Jesus came to address. I borrow from John Stott again:

“For we are not only ignorant; we are sinful. It is not sufficient therefore that God should have revealed himself to us to dispel our ignorance. He must also take action to save us from our sins.”

To put it another way, we are wilfully ignorant of God. We are ignorant because we choose to be. The coming of Jesus confronts us in our rebellion and forces us to make a choice. We can choose to remain as we are or engage in the process of learning to respond to God’s initiative.

In coming to Christ, we begin the process of learning to choose correctly.