Thinkers Incorporated

A couple of weeks ago I published an article about taking responsibility for your life. In that article I shared a link to a wonderful video series by Andy Stanley. Perhaps you took the time to watch the series, but more than likely you did not. If you did watch the video, this concept won’t be anything new to you, but if you didn’t, you should definitely continue reading.

When I first watched the video series, there were several things that stood out to me. One such thing was the concept that Christians need to stop hiding behind prayer. Essentially, Christians need to get off of their posteriors so that they can actually do God’s will.

Does it make sense for Christians to pray for employment to just sit around waiting for an offer instead of going out and applying for jobs? Does it make sense for us to pray for revival while doing nothing to share the gospel? Does it make sense to pray to be freed from addiction or sin only to sit around and wait for God to do something?

Yesterday morning my pastor was preaching on prayer. He equated prayer to having a conversation with God. Of course, that makes me wonder what kind of a conversations we have been having. I know that for me it is often very one sided. I ask God to make my life easier, safer, more fun, less painful, etcetera, but I often forget about God in my prayers because my prayers are focusing on me. That is obviously not a healthy relationship.

Although we may sometimes misuse prayer, that isn’t really what I want to focus on. There is a trend in Christianity to pray and forget. We pray about our issues and then leave them up to God. Not that there is anything wrong with praying about our problems, but if that is all we do, I doubt that many of them will be solved.

All throughout the Bible prayer is coupled with action. Moses had a conversation with God and then led
the Jews from Egypt. Joshua had a conversation with God and then sent the Jews marching around Jericho. God, in the form of Jesus, told a lame man to rise and when he did, he was healed.

Why then do we think, today, that prayer is the only action that we need to take? Why do we think that we can pray and then wait around for something to happen? The Bible is filled with examples of prayer being followed by tangible actions.

Instead of praying about our problems and then forgetting about them, why don’t we start actually doing something about them? It is irresponsible of us to simply wait for God to magically zap our issues. We need to be taking responsibility for our lives. We can’t continue to hide behind our prayers, to pretend like our issues will be solved without any action from us.

I am not trying to demean prayer. However, Christians have gotten lazy and apathetic, and perhaps God wants us to become responsible for what is within our power. There is a time and a place for everything, both prayer and action, and we mustn’t forget that. It’s time to stop hiding behind prayer. Let’s take responsibility for our lives.