Prayerfully Coming to Grips with Inadequacy Without Becoming Inactive
“Waiting on God” is not an excuse to be inactive.
Take a look at Nehemiah 4:7-23 which records part of the story of the Jews rebuilding the walls. Remember, the opposition from angry neighbors was stiff enough that the Jewish guards slept with their clothes on, weapon in hand.
Nehemiah records a pertinent detail.
He wrote, “And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night” (Nehemiah 4:9).
Nehemiah had an understanding of the power of prayer and the role of human effort. In response to the attackers, he and his men prayed AND set a guard.
Inadequate But Not Inactive
Setting a guard did not deny their inadequacy to meet the attackers. But it did keep them from being inactive.
J.R. Miller wrote a golden snippet on this subject of prayer and duty:
We are in danger of making prayer a substitute for duty; or of trying to roll over on God, the burden of caring for us and doing things for us–while we sit still and do nothing! When we pray to be delivered from temptation–we must keep out of the way of temptation, unless duty clearly calls us there. We must also guard against temptation, resist the Devil, and stand firm in obedience and faith. When we ask God for our daily bread, pleading the promise that we shall not lack–we must also labor to earn God’s bread, and thus make it ours honestly.
A lazy man came once and asked for money, saying that he could not find bread for his family. “Neither can I!” replied the industrious mechanic to whom he had applied. “I am obliged to work for it!”
While we pray for health–we must use the means to obtain it.
While we ask for wisdom–we must use our brains and think, searching for wisdom as for hidden treasure.
While we ask God to help us break off a bad habit–we must also strive to overcome the habit.
Prayer is not merely a device for saving people from toil, struggle and responsibility. When there is no human power adequate to the need–we may ask God to work without us, and in some way He will help us. But ordinarily we must do our part, asking God to work in and through us, and to bless us through faithful obedience.
Resources to Accompany Responsibility, Not to Replace It
This is not to lessen the importance of prayer, but to keep prayer in perspective.
As prayer increases in importance to us, we do not escape responsibility but instead run to the One who’s strength is made perfect in our weakness.
The prayer warrior has resources to accompany responsibility, not to replace responsibility.
“For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” (Colossians 1:29)
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Dude!
I love it. The section from Miller is spot on. We get to pray to God to help us through stuff while taking part in it ourselves.
For a while now, I have really been wondering about the place for work…”striving for the mastery” (a very active sort of phrase) vs. being God’s “workmanship” (a fairly passive sort of term). Then, I started reading Colossians and ran into the very Scripture you quote at the end of this post. The whole book is beautiful and so full of rich admonition and teaching. I think I’ve run into part of this Miller quote before; it’s very helpful as well. Very useful post!
Don and Ruth: It’s encouraging to see that the post hit on something important.
And on a side note, both of you are so faithful in coming to comment that people in my “real life” wonder who you are. Brothers and sisters in Christ who I’ve yet to meet but already enjoy friendship with, that’s who you are.
When Peter was in prison, the angel came to take him out. Isn’t it interesting that the angel told Peter to put on his shoe & get his cloak. You see God will not do for us what we can do for ourselves.
Good thoughts. I will be preaching the first Sunday after Christmas and will be talking about being so “focused” on the things of God, that we end up not doing anything. It’s the idea of having tunnel vision. We get so focused on God and what He’s doing for us, we walk right by the wounded person on the side of the road just like the Pharisee in the story of the good Samaritan, because our “focus” has become our blinders. The same way with prayer. We shouldn’t think that just because we pray, that we aren’t supposed to do anything. Believing prayer is acting upon it.
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