The Attitudes of Prayer (2)

In our last installment, we looked at the first two attitudes of prayer (boldness and access) in Ephesians  3:12-13: In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him. Wherefore I desire that ye faint not at my tribulations for you, which is your glory.

Third, we have confidence. The Greek here (pepoithesis) gives the idea of “trust, confidence, and total persuasion.” All these ideas are vitally important. In what are we to place our trust and confidence? About what are we totally persuaded? We are totally persuaded that we can come to the Father, trust Him to do His will, and be confident of the result.

Notice that we didn’t say that we trust God to do our will, rather His will. The very essence of prayer, in fact, is not getting our will done in heaven but getting God’s will done on earth. It is us coming into line with God’s will. Can we ask God for things? Of course, but we ask according to His will. Our Lord made this clear when He declared, “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (Jn. 14:13). Our Lord didn’t mean here that we just tag our prayers with the words, “In Jesus’ name, Amen.” While we should do this, what this really means is that ask on behalf of Jesus, we ask in line with what He desires. Our requests must be in harmony with His will. It is, in fact, impossible to ask for something in Jesus’ that He does not want. The Apostle John picked up on this principle and wrote later: “If we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us” and only then do “we have the petitions that we desired of him” (1 John 5:14, 15).

This also brings us to the complete warning: boldness does not mean insolence, access does not mean impetuosity, and confidence does not mean arrogance. There is today, without doubt, a lot of arrogant prayer. There are many who pervert verses like Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ, Who strengtheneth me.” Many twist the meaning of the verse to say: “I can do anything I want because Christ gives me the strength,” when what it proclaims is that we shall always be given the power to do what God desires of us. Many today turn to this verse and others to prove their “self‑image” teaching and their “Christian success‑motivation” philosophies. But all this is nothing but humanistic arrogance with a Christian label pasted on it. Our trust and confidence must NEVER lie in “self.” Rather our trust and confidence lies only in Christ.

Do you have absolute confidence in God? If not, perhaps you are asking, “How can I acquire this kind of confidence?” Some today teach that it comes by chanting a certain prayer or through some mystical experience, but such teaching is not based in Scripture. Rather, how does one acquire confidence in any area of life? By the old fashioned method called: PRACTICE. To illustrate, most of us remember how we learned to ride a bicycle. Confidence came only through faithful practice, and as someone pointed out long ago, riding a bicycle is something we never forget. Likewise, we trust the Lord and have confidence in Him because we faithfully practice at it—we do it over and over again, day in and day out. And the day will come when we will not forget it.

Perhaps you have heard of the Aeolian Harp, a popular 19^th Century musical instrument in which several equal length gut strings are stretched over a narrow oblong box. When placed in a focused current of air, such as in narrowly opened window, it produces eerie chords. The story is told that in Germany there stood two tall towers, each on the extreme end of a castle. The baron of the castle stretched huge wires from one tower to the other, thus constructing a giant Aeolian Harp. Ordinary winds produced no effect, but when fierce storms and wild winds came down from the mountains and rolled through the valleys, they produced majestic music on the harp. So it is in the Christian’s life. The soft breezes of easy living produce little growth. It’s when the storms of trials and tribulations come that we truly grow and sound out great praise and glory to God for what He is doing.

Oh, may we have total and absolute confidence in the sovereign God!