On a personal note I want to apologize for missing my last two regular blogs. My goal is to post a blog each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday but I got to enjoy the inside view of hospital room for five days last week and finally said goodbye to a gall bladder that had been with me for decades. The skies look exceptionally blue and the sun exceptionally bright after being in a hospital room for nearly a week. I few more days at home and then I can get back to the office and a couple of weeks after that I can start playing bad golf again.  My apologies, however, for missing those blogs. The upside is that I’ve had some time to pick up some new reading and I hope that the surgery also cured my slice.

I’ve been looking at a little book or booklet by Graham Cooke entitled “Crafted Prayer.” I like Cooke because he challenges my programmed thinking on things and then I usually end up agreeing with him. In this book he gives us a definition of prayer that is almost counter-intuitive for most believers. How would you define prayer? Most of us have defined prayer as taking a laundry list of needs and concerns to the Father, lifting them up with passion and persistence, and then trying to persuade God to see things our way. Of course, we always throw in a “ Thy Will Be Done” in order to keep from sounding selfish or presumptuous.

Cooke defines it this way: “Prayer is finding out what God wants to do and asking him to do it.” My automatic response to that is, “Well, why ask him to do what he wants to do because he will probably do what he wants to do anyway! I pray to get God to do what I want to do!” That’s honest but the truth comes out that I’m praying to get God to do things my way rather than joining him in what he wants to do.

Remember when Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can only do what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does” (Jn.5:19-20). That sounds a lot like Cooke’s definition of prayer. His approach is to pray about a situation by asking the Father what he wants to do and then waiting to hear or sense what it is the Father has already determined to do. Then as we pray into that, our prayers release the power and will of the Father into the situation. Remember that our Father wants to do things with us and not just for us.

In addition, it is sometimes important not just to know what God wants to do but how he wants to do it. Naaman, the leper, came to Elisha in search of healing (2 Kings 5). It wasn’t enough for those who loved Naaman to know that God was willing to heal him but they needed to know how God wanted to go about that. In Naaman’s case, seven big dips in the Jordan did the trick. Think of how often Jesus healed people in unique ways: mud on the eyes, spit in the eyes, spit in the ears, in the midst of crowds, leading people to private places, with a word or with a touch. Jesus did not use formulas but healing seemed to be crafted to the needs of the person or to the needs of those near the person. I don’t know that Jesus always knew the “why of the Father” but he knew the what and the how.

The power of Cooke’s definition is that it fits what Jesus modeled for us. It forces us to believe that God is already aware of every issue and already has a solution that is in the best interest of his children. Once we hear from the Lord about what he wants to do, then we know with certainty that we are praying according to his will. Then the only question is when will God pull the trigger on the answer that we are totally assured of.

This approach to prayer challenges us but consider it. If you want to pursue the concept I would encourage you to get Cooke’s book from Brilliant Books at $7.00. Be blessed in Him today and for a start simply ask the Father what he wants you to pray about, wait on the Lord, and then pray for whatever comes to mind that is consistent with the written Word.

See how it feels.