Thursday, September 20, 2007

on prayer

"When a person is born from above, the life of the Son of God is born in him, and he can either starve that life or nourish it. Prayer is the way to nourish one’s life with God. Our ordinary views of prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves; the Bible’s idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself. It is not so true that ‘prayer changes things’ as that prayer changes me and I change things. God has so constituted things that prayer on the basis of redemption alters the way in which one looks at things. Prayer is not a question of altering things externally, but of working wonders in one’s disposition." [Oswald Chambers, Christian Personal Ethics, C. F. H. Henry ed., Eerdmans, 1957, pp. 573]

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oswald is usually pretty good. Not so much here. If God is the reality and everything else is to fade away, then prayer must actually change things. Our obedience to Him merely allows the prayer to become effective. If God actually establishes things (i.e. 1 Kings 9:5 ) then prayer to Him establishes what is really real. If the external things cannot be altered, then it is the Hindos who are in the right.