Prayer Mentoring With David Jeremiah

This week David Jeremiah has been mentoring me in prayer from his book Prayer: The Great Adventure. He relates in his introduction to the book that his own learning came out of a diagnosis of cancer which ignited a new dimension to prayer in his life:

I learned how to pray out of desperation. For most of us, this is how the adventure usually begins. When we finally get serious about prayer, the trigger is usually desperation, not duty…

At least initially, serious prayer is almost always driven by necessity. We don’t pray because we ought, we pray because we are without any other recourse. I think God likes to see His people coming to Him in desperation and casting themselves upon His mercy!

Could it be that one reason we have great problems is that God wants to show us great solutions? He longs to show us the riches of His grace and the poverty of our own resources. Prayer is uniquely designed to demonstrate both truths.

Yet at the same time, we must remember that prayer is not a natural activity. It has been well said that prayer is stupid when viewed in the purely human realm. I remember the day I realized why it was so hard for me to pray. I wrote this down in my Bible: “Prayer is my Declaration of Dependence.”

I really relate to his statement that “prayer is stupid when viewed in the purely human realm.” But I am finding that more often than I’d like to admit that life is not in my control and I NEED to cling desperately to Him not just to survive whatever life throws at me but to thrive in the midst of it. I hate the fact that I am so hard headed and hard-hearted that God has to use crisis to teach me how to pray but I’m grateful that He is not willing to give up on me and will do what it takes to bring about transformation in my life.

I’m just sayin’!