Yancey on Prayer 1

I plan to post several entries on Philip Yancey's book PRAYER: Does It Make Any Difference? Here's a quote from his discussion on the value of humility in prayer:

"Why value humility in our approach to God? Because it accurately reflects the truth. Most of what I am - my nationality and mother tongue, my race, my looks and body shape, my intelligence, the century in which I was born, the fact that I am still alive and relatively healthy - I had little or no control over. On a larger scale, I cannot affect the rotation of the planet earth, or the orbit that maintains a proper distance from the sun so we neither freeze nor roast, or the gravitational forces that somehow keep our spinning galaxy in exquisite balance. There is a God and I am not it."

Yancey describes the tension between being a "patriotic American" who pulls himself up by his bootstraps, makes a living by the sweat of his brow, and accepts help from no one versus a humble citizen of the Kingdom of God who knowingly and willingly submits to the control that God has over the universe and everything in it. Ultimately we're all dependent upon other people for something. Even if we're multi-millionaires, we're dependent upon skilled craftsmen to construct our luxurious mansions or we'd have no place to live. (Of course by "we" I mean "they") We're dependent upon labor workers to put together our cars and utility workers to keep pumping electricity to our homes. We're dependent upon teachers to enlighten us and friends to keep us emotionally and socially "with it." We're all connected by a web of reliance and when parts of our web are removed we're sent scrambling to fill the void. We're all dependent on someone for something whether it's "patriotic" to admit it or not.

More than that, we're dependent upon God for our survival. As the Yancey quote above states, we have no control over the earth spinning on its axis or the gravity that keeps our feet securely fastened to the ground. The most basic components of life are held in God's hands, not ours.

This fact ought to dictate part of our posture in our approach to prayer. We ought not pray like the Pharisees as though we're informing God that we've achieved spiritual excellence on our own. Instead we're called to pray like the tax collector, humbly submitting our lives to the God who has ultimate control and asking His forgiveness, blessing, and empowerment upon our lives.

Spend a few moments today in a posture of humility - both inwardly and outwardly - and see how that impacts your perception of who God is and what He's doing in your life.