After becoming a Jesus follower I was told often that South Korean believers know how to pray. After several later-in-life trips to see for myself, I can verify it's not Christian media hype but reality. They really pray.
I did not come back from the Korean experience with some new fangled prayer techniques. Rather than dazzling me with shiny new things about prayer it has forcefully confirmed very old things about prayer. It's closest to reality to say that what I long ago learned in prayer, by merely praying alongside some good and godly instructors, has simply been sharpened by watching Koreans pray. Additionally, I now know why many American believers don't pray much, or as much as they would like.
It's a chore.
Plenty of firm resolutions are made to drastically, quantitatively increase our prayer lives, and not just in January of a new year. Fixing our minds to pray more, we set the timer for fifteen minutes or more a day and with some struggle hit it for a day or two or three . . . until we don't. By day four the creep backward has begun as small emergencies, interruptions and unscheduled time grabbers put a choke hold on our holy resolution and we pray less than our goal. With some shame, at the ragged end of day five while falling into bed we remember our pledge and mumble a wilted half prayer ending in "Sorry, Jesus". But the resolve as we drift off is a strong and sincere one that tomorrow and tomorrow will be different, and they are . . . until they aren't.
Guilt, self reproach and fiery recrimination set in and do their best work. Maybe we get a reprieve from our internal gut bludgeoning with a decent prayer meeting or a welcome boost from a top selling prayer author and make another sunny start at it. But our new life of prayer inevitably sputters again, leaving us, except for Sundays and emergencies, the prayer poor wretches we've always been. The obvious reason for our failure in prayer stares us mockingly in the face and it's transparently clear why a consistent, sustained prayer life beyond our miserable, embarrassingly self-focused safety net praying is so elusive.
It's a chore.
From Isaiah 64:1 we know that God will respond to extraordinary prayer, what earlier generations called prevailing prayer, sustained prayer - what some Koreans call the absolute prayer life.
"Oh that You would tear open the heavens and come down!"
We also know that when God comes down, everything will change. Entrenched, unsolvable problems, societal and personal, will be beautifully resolved. But we don't pray. The dilemma is all ours - we just can't seem to sustain the kind of prayer that would bring God down into messy situations that cry out for divine help.
Isaiah 59:2 indicates there is an insurmountable barrier stopping us, always crippling our best intentions.
"Your sins have placed a barrier between you and your God, causing Him to turn His face away so that He does not hear you."
"Your God" indicates the verse is not for outsiders but insiders. The sins of God's people, not the ugly, public sins of the nasty pagans in Washington or Hollywood are to blame. The repulsiveness of believers' sins causes a visceral revulsion in God that makes our prayers inaudible. No wonder prayer is such a chore - even for the iron willed, resolution making believer. No One is listening and it feels like it.
It's not the atrocious and visible sins of the world but the secret sins of God's people that keep Him from hearing, coming down and doing His best work. The barrier has got to be removed.
It is removed by repenting. Not the take-one-trip-to-the-altar kind of repenting. Daily, frequent repenting is needed to remove the sound impervious, prayer deadening, barrier between the believer and her God. It's also the only way to keep the barrier from building back up.
Why repent often? Because we sin often. Damaging judgment calls, condemning thoughts, unspoken prejudice, a sense of entitlement that robs others, secret jealousies, unvoiced rage, lust for the unattainable, unwarranted pride, pursuit of unearned praise and staggering arrogance just for the fun of it are the secret sins of believers that block the ear and arm of God. These quiet, largely undetectable sins are daily sins and always deadly.
I must repent often because I sin often.
Repenting is difficult work and our deceitfully wicked and unknowable hearts would rather do anything other than repent. Sacrificial service, worship, preaching, church building, fighting culture wars, feeding the poor, tithing, teaching, tending to the wounded are always preferred over the morphine forbidden soul surgery that is repenting.
With tremendous force the Korean experience has brought me to this: repenting must come first and often but once the sin barrier is removed, we are drawn into a realm of extraordinary prayer. We pray the way we've always wished we could and as the scattered heart finds it's true home we reach a place where time becomes almost meaningless. We really pray. We pray longer and with ease. We pray as we've always longed to pray.
It starts with repenting. Often.
Thanks pastor !
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