WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO WALK IN THE LIGHT? by Gretchen Ronnevik for Core Christianity
From the imaginative prayer of a five-year-old, to the awkward prayer in a circle of teens in youth group, to the elegant prayer of a seasoned saint—how should we approach God in prayer?
Our approach will have less to do with our skill with poetic words, and more to do with what we believe about God. We will pray differently if we think that God is always angry with us, or if we think that God is like a Santa Claus in the sky, who just wants us to be happy. The foundation of all our prayer life is rooted in what we believe about who God is.
When we believe that God is holy and righteous, we have to deal with the reality of our sin and unholiness. If God is holy and we are sinners, what are we to do? Two wrong approaches would be, 1) to lessen the holiness of God to make him more approachable, or 2) to lessen our sin, either by our perception of sin or by cleaning up our act “enough.” Both those approaches leave out Christ.
Now is your chance to support Gospel News Network.
We love helping others and believe that’s one of the reasons we are chosen as Ambassadors of the Kingdom, to serve God’s children. We look to the Greatest Commandment as our Powering force.
What Christ did for us is foundational for our prayer life, because while he maintains and lifts up the truth of God’s holiness, he also deals with our sin boldly. It is Christ who cleanses us from sin and clothes us in his righteousness.
“The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth” (Psalm 145:18).
We may have wrong agendas as we make requests in prayer, so we must recognize the importance of truth, or you could say reality, when approaching God. In fact, it’s only in truth that we can approach God. When we start pretending to be someone we are not, or pretending that it is by our own righteousness that God is pleased with us, we are losing sight of the purpose of prayer. God doesn’t need us to tell him what we think we should be doing. He wants us to tell him what is actually happening. He doesn’t need us to tell him what we think we should be feeling. He wants us to share what we are actually feeling. He doesn’t want us to pretend we have no struggles or doubts. He wants us to tell him about our actual struggles and doubts. God deals with reality, not pretense. He can handle the truth.
“But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8, ESV). God is aware that we are dust, that we need him to breathe. We are not always mindful of this.
So then, what does honesty in prayer look like?
It’s terrifying to be honest before a holy God. This may be why we delay or avoid praying. Instead of confessing the sin that we are currently struggling with, we wait, and hope that we will get ourselves unstuck. Instead of confessing our anger, our unforgiveness, our hurt, our jealousy, we hope we will soon be over it. That way, we can reminisce about it with God later in prayer, and receive assurances that now that we no longer struggle, we are fine. Instead of asking God for things laid on our hearts, we edit and question our motives, and try to get our hearts in the right place first. But we can bring our hearts to God and say, “Help me sort out if this is good or not. Help my fickle heart. Please deal with my motives.”
