On the Subject of Prayer. . .

On the subject of prayer it seems that while those of the Church of Christ have or at least had men who spent much of their day in communication with God history shows there were many whom we do not consider Christian who spent just as many if not more hours each day praying to God, or thought they were. Interesting how they could think that while we, who do not equal them in their efforts, believe God was not listening to them.

Concerning corporate prayer one of the Charlie Brown cartoon scripts shows Charlie in the back yard shooting arrows into the fence. Wherever he shoots an arrow, he runs over and draws a target around where the arrow hit. Lucy walks over and asks him why he's doing this. His reply," This way I never miss." To often, this is how we approach prayer. We pray for those whom we have a duty to pray for. What does that mean? We "pray for Billy Bob." What does that mean? We pray for safety, from what?

Does it strike you has strange that the same person(s) who will not stand up in front of the people without taking time to organize their thoughts will stand up before the creator of everything with no time to prepare? Why is this? How about a group of Christians meeting to encourage each other to love and good works and to remember Jesus not talking to God first thing or more than once?

I'm thinking our corporate prayer is more for man than for God. We say we believe prayer is effective but why do we think that? We say our new building is God's will but why do we think that? Why does God want Joel Osteen to have a bigger building that we have? After all we are right and Joel is wrong. Does God care if we have a building?

Based on what we say, we believe God is more interested in us having a building, our visitors having safe travel, and that we be protected from our enemies than he is in the health and well-being of his followers. Isn't that strange? Causes people to give us money, keeps us out of traffic mishaps, but lets our friends continue to suffer. Maybe just maybe he is not answering any of our corporate prayers because we are not focused on what he wants us to be focused on? Are we like Charlie Brown? We find something that goes our way and we then put a target around it to show he answered our prayer, but who are we kidding?