Prayer as a Means to an End (Psalm

You thought that I was altogether like you…

-Psalm 50:21

Anytime we go into a room, say our prayers, and then go away in the same spiritual state in which we came, we miss God’s purpose for prayer. That is not to say that God does not hear our prayers, or that our prayers are entirely ineffective. We may get what we asked for, and we may be happy when the answer comes. Still, we have not quite entered into prayer as God intended it. 

If prayer were only about answers, I am confident the Lord would not have commanded us to ask. He knows the number of hairs on our heads, and he adjusts the count every single time one falls to the ground. He knows our needs before we even open up our mouths to ask. If prayer is just a mechanism for answers to requests and provision for needs, God would say, “Don’t bother asking. As soon as you become aware of your need, you can know the answer will come right ahead.”

Prayer is a means to an end for God. As much as we exalt its value and stress its power, prayer is only useful because of the beauty and glory and goodness of the One to whom we pray. In Psalm 50, God stresses to us that He lacks any need for the animal sacrifices which He Himself had commanded. This may seem, on the surface, to be a contradiction. He says, “every beast of the field is Mine,” and goes so far as to say, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you; for the world is Mine, and all its fullness” (50:10, 12). Why, then, did God command it? Could it be that something occurs in our hearts when we sincerely sacrifice valuable things to honor the Lord? Could it be that this heart condition of true worship, proven by our actions, is what God was after, rather than fresh meat?

Under the new covenant, Jesus tells us, “Ask, and it will be given to you,” because, “whatever you ask the Father in My Name He will give you” (Matthew 7:7; John 16:23). Paul tells us, “pray without ceasing,” which is reminiscent of the fire that once burned on the altar, with the command that, “it shall never go out” (1 Thessalonians 5:17; Leviticus 6:13). Prayer is like the fire that burns continually on the altar of our hearts as we “present [our] bodies a living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1).

It follows suit that, in prayer, God is not primarily seeking a request-and-answer transaction. Just as God did not need animal sacrifices, He does not need our requests, or to hear our burdens. He has all power, and He knows everything. Instead, He is after a deeper transaction, which occurs in the heart. We make requests, lay down burdens, and He gives a spirit of worship and surrender!

Perhaps we, as a people, are guilty of underestimating our great need to become more like Jesus. As He did to Israel, perhaps Christ says to us, “You thought that I was altogether like you.” It is not unreasonable to expect that, after encountering the very God who formed the universe with a word, we should walk back into our lives changed.

The Lord chose some choice words for those who claimed His name but lived wickedly. “You give your mouth to evil, and your tongue frames deceit” (Psalm 50:19). The ultimate power of prayer is to walk away no longer offering the members of our body to sin, because we have offered ourselves to the King of Kings, and we taste and see that His service is infinitely more blessed than any fleeting pleasure of sin. 

As Israel entered the promised land, they made a treaty with the Gibeonites, one of the peoples God had commanded them to wipe out of the land. At the moment of decision, we read these words: “but they did not ask counsel of the Lord” (Joshua 9:14). This ungodly covenant could have been avoided if they had asked the Lord for advice. In the same way, it is possible to pray while God is saying, “you hate instruction and cast My words behind you” (Psalm 50:17). Some of us go far too long with sinful habits and thoughts lingering in our lives, all because we have not taken time to seek God’s counsel and wisdom. When He told us to pray, God was not aiming to provide us a spiritual soda machine, but to meet with us and shape us, as a Father disciples his son or daughter.

-Pastor Alex