Praying for Nothing

At some point early in our teenage years, every boy and girl has to face the reality that prayer is not a simple discipline. No where is it more honestly and simply recorded than in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain:

“Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn’t so. I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It warn’t any good to me without hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn’t make it work. By and by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but she said I was a fool. She never told me why, and I couldn’t make it out no way."

I never blame Huck for his views on religion. Huck is a boy. Miss Watson is a woman who has somehow ignored the fact that she doesn't get what she asks for all of the time. That's a little screwy.

These two characters are in our church. I'm mostly trying to persuade the Huck's to consider different definitions of the fundamentals they grew up with, but I also get to meet Miss Watson, who tends to speak for Huck and even answer the questions I direct at him. Both, however, have the misunderstanding that prayer serves one purpose: to get what you can't get yourself.

This is certainly a purpose of prayer: petition. The Scriptures tell us that we don't have some things simply because we don't ask God for them. But it's not solely what prayer is for. Prayer is for meditation, for reflection, for connecting with God, and so many more things.

That's why when Jesus taught his disciples how to pray (after they asked him), he gives us an extremely comprehensive and somewhat broad prayer, which includes worshipful, relational, petitionary, and reflective/repentant language. It's complex.

Overall, when Jesus asked things of his Father, he always put the relationship with God above the request with the line, "your will be done" and a repeating use of the word, "Father." Jesus always kept prayer multifaceted. We don't always get what we want, but God always gives us what we need: access to Him and His throne.

If your prayer is not being "answered," consider perhaps that what you need above your request being fulfilled is a relationship and knowledge of the Almighty. That might not change your circumstance, but it will certainly change you.