“Prayer can be a religious form of rebellion.”

A thought by Erwin Raphael McManus from his book, Chasing Daylight: Seize the Power of Every Moment (Kindle Locations 2186-2187). Kindle Edition.

I know that may not sound right but check this out.  Sometimes we may be reading through the Scripture and we don’t like what it says.  It is saying specifically that we are not to do something that we are doing and so we say, “I’m not going to accept what it says; I’m going to pray about it.”  When you do that, you are rebelling against God, against what He has already said.  

Prayer is not a place to strive to change God’s mind but it is a time to connect with God.  Now if you connect with Him and tell Him that you are having problems with doing what He says and you ask Him for help in understanding and doing what He says then prayer is not rebellion.  Or you ask Him to change your actions to do it His way with the right attitude then prayer is an act of obedience.

The key is to not use prayer to get your way when you know that it is not God’s way.  For example, the first commandment says that you are not to worship any other God.  He is the only one.  So you are not to go to Him in prayer and say, “God, I want to worship you and I want to worship my work.  I’m sure because you are a loving God, it will be OK.”  But He is not going to change His mind on that.  He said, “You can’t do it.”  “Prayer can be a religious form of rebellion.”  So we are not to use it that way.

You see, sometimes we know what we are supposed to do so we don’t need to pray about it.  we are to just do it.

So how are you using your prayer time?