Focus Of Prayer

I heard something on Turning Point this morning that I haven't really thought about in much detail before. Maybe a fleeting thought in the back of my head, but that's it. The idea relates to the focus of prayer.

Right now something else just popped into my head that I heard before that sums up a lot of prayers:

Thanks, thanks, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, in Jesus' name, Amen.

Wrong focus.

But that's definitely how I used to pray a lot before I came to Christ. Heck, I'm sure its how I pray a lot know without even thinking about it. Still its the wrong focus!

God's not a worldly-junk-dispenser. Praying for that Ferarri, that mansion, or winning the lottery probably isn't going to go anywhere. Now I'm not going to pretend to know the complete will of God, but I'm just betting its not for a hundred million people to win the lottery. James backs this up when he says "When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures." (James 4:3)

Proper focus, rather, is to ask things according to his will, whether or not we know what that will is. "...if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us." (1 John 5:14). Jesus set the proper example of this when he was praying to his father before he was to be crucified and said "...yet not my will, but yours be done." (Luke 22:42)

So rather than pray to get what we want, let's instead pray that God's will is done.

DJ also made a point of being fervent in prayer like all the prophets and many great men of the faith over the history of the church. Do we feel strongly and so moved when we pray to God that we drop down, cry out, tear our clothes, dump dust on our heads, and so on? Now of course we shouldn't do this kind of stuff just to do it and look fervent, but do we have the feelings that drove those kinds of actions inside, or are we a little more detached?

I know where I stand and there's a lot of room for improvement. I pray you fair better! :-)