Drawing Near to GodVzorec

Day 6: Finding Out About Prayer

Read: Genesis 18:16-33

“Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” (Gen. 18:17).

In 1952 a doctoral student at Princeton asked a visiting lecturer, “What is there left in the world for original dissertation research?” The visiting lecturer was Albert Einstein. His answer was, “Find out about prayer. Somebody must find out about prayer.” The problem is that the question was about science, and Prayer won’t yield its secrets to scientific methods. God won’t be put under a microscope.

But God most definitely wants us to learn about Prayer. First, he takes the initiative to get us to pray. Why he does this with Abraham is fascinating. He asks, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” He answers his own question: “Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all the nations on earth will be blessed through him” (Gen. 18:18). Since Abraham has a key role to play in God’s Purposes for the world, God decides therefore to bring him into the conversation about Sodom and Gomorrah. Like a king with his royal advisors, God wants Abraham to intercede for the cities!

Blaise Pascal suggested that one of the reasons God gave us Prayer was to give us the dignity of causality. Do you appreciate the Extraordinary Gift God gives in Prayer? He works on us by his Grace to get us to work on him by our faith. He grants to Prayer a Power to which he will graciously condescend to submit.

How God gets us to pray is equally fascinating. As with Abraham, he often uses perplexity to draw us into Prayer. Abraham’s nephew Lot lives in Sodom and may die if God carries out his Plan. Abraham is aghast, and remonstrates, “Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the Earth do right” (Gen. 18:25)?

Sadly, many of us would not pray if we weren’t driven to our knees. The result is that when the praying is over, we and Abraham discover God is better than we knew him to be before the perplexity. Prayer rejoices in testing because it makes faith pure (James 1:2-4). God himself seems to rejoice in the effects the perplexity has on us. He so wants us to pray that he seems to more than tolerate Abraham’s chutzpah in verse 25. He actually seems to enjoy it. In Prayer, God calls us to be active Partners, not passive spectators.

PRAYER: Great God! You don’t need us, but in your Wisdom and Love, you call us to this Partnership of Prayer. Get me out of the grandstands onto the praying field.