There are hundreds of books on how to pray. One of the most important questions the disciples ever asked Jesus was for Him to teach them to pray like He did. They observed Him, they knew how often and how well they prayed, and yet they were pretty much clueless. That's encouraging to me, because I sometimes feel clueless about how to pray.
It seems odd to be taught to pray. It's kind of like being taught how to have a conversation with your best friend. Except that's not usually what we want to learn is it? Don't most of the books on prayer seem to be more about how to sell yourself and or your cause to God and how to get Him to do what we want more than about how to have a conversation with a friend who is closer than a brother? Most of our instinctive prayers can either be classified as wish lists where hitting our knees is tantamount to sitting on Santa's lap, trying to convince Him that we've been good enough to deserve to have what we want or they are 911 calls seeking help with the mess we find our lives in, most often a mess caused by our own choices and selfishness.
But relationship with God is not a long term con to get what we want, and no matter how well we pray we don't always get spared the mess. Daniel was a man who knew how to pray. He spent hours on a regular basis chatting with the master. It was the most important part of His day, so important in fact that He refused to stop doing it even after a decree went out saying no one could pray to God. He got caught and sentenced to thrown in a lion's den full of hungry lions. In other words He was to be executed by being eaten alive. There is no record of Daniel asking God to spare Him the discomfort of the den. Yes, he was spared. The Lord shut the lions' mouths and they didn't eat Daniel. They also didn't claw him. But while he was eventually delivered and the event showed the power of God and brought Him glory, Daniel still spent his time in the dark with a bunch of lions. They stank. The place stank of death, decay and lion dung. There were no pillows or mattresses on which to rest and no food for him. It was not a fun place, and Daniel was not spared the experience.
Shadrach Meeshach and Abednego were men so faithful to God that they were the only three who refused to bow to a false idol. Their reward was a bonfire. They were spared as Daniel was. Not a hair on their hair got singed, even though the fire was hot enough to kill some of the guards escorting them to where they were thrown in. But they still got tossed to the flames.
Sometimes we look around and can't see anything in the dark, but we can smell the lions and their mess. Sometimes they're just enough light to see the mighty beasts lurking in the shadows. Sometimes we see through distortions from the heat that the flames are coming our way. We cry out to God to help us and deliver us. Then, when the lions don't disappear and the flames don't die, we get mad and hurt. We start doubting that God doesn't really love us. But we're so focused on the fact that the situation isn't changing we can't notice that the lions aren't eating us. We could be dancing in the flames with Jesus but we're too busy screaming fire.
We're like someone in a goof ball comedy who thinks that they've been shot because a ketchup bottle exploded and got all over them. They see what they perceive as blood and freak out. Once they realize that it's not blood they also realize that they're fine. So often if we would stop freaking out we would realize that the lion's aren't biting or at least that Jesus is in the fire with us. God is faithful. He does care. And often if we'll stop paying so much attention to our wounds we'll see they're really not as bad as we thought. We can get to that place easier when we see prayer as a tool to get us closer to Him rather than as an eject button for the situations we don't like.
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