Divine amnesia
Thoughts on prayer addressed to God
Lord you know the deepest corners of each person’s heart (Acts 1:24).
You have searched and known even the blackest pits of my own heart (Ps. 139:23).
In thrall to the power of Sin, my heart condemns me. But you, O God, have plumbed its depths, and your grace exceeds its sins, stretching out beyond them in every direction and swallowing them whole (1 Jn. 3:20).
I am laid bare before you, as are all things.
No heart, no mind, no thought, and no body escapes your penetrating glare (Prov. 15:3).
You are the beginning and the end (Rev. 22:13), and all things in between.
You Lord, know all things (1 Jn. 3:20).
Then what of prayer?
Lord if you know it all, then are my prayers futile?
How can I make my supplications known to you (Phil. 4:6) if they are already known to you?
Is prayer just telling you things you already know?
Or is prayer only effective in the sense of reminding me of you?
That can only be but a part of the whole truth, albeit one of the deepest importance. I need to know you and be reminded of you as you truly are, and not as I imagine you to be. I need my heart to cleansed of false projections of you.
Or is prayer’s sole purpose to give you glory, as though you needed reminding of yourself? No Lord, you are no amnesiac, you do no forget yourself. You forget only Sin (Heb. 8:12). Let that also be my prayer, Lord.
Nor do you require my praise. For the Gospel tells me that while I was captive to the power of Sin, while I was dead in sheol, unable and unwilling to praise you (Ps. 6:5), you loved me enough to endure the shame of the cross and the agony of its cruel death (Rom. 5:8). Recognition and worship are not prerequisites to your love.
Or do my prayers move you to take an action you would not have otherwise taken?
Are your good works locked behind a paywall of prayer?
Surely not. If that were so, I’d be left with the feeble belief that you sit around twiddling your thumbs waiting for someone to pray before you act. That is prayer directed towards a lie of a god, and a functional atheism which is animated only by wishful thinking and chance (you know that I know this only because I am guilty of it).
But although unchanged and unchanging, impassable and immutable, never subject to any conditions but always the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8), surely you are not unaffected by my prayer?
Why request my petition otherwise?
Indeed, the prayer our Saviour taught us is primarily petition…
Give us…
Forgive us…
Lead us…
Deliver us…
Perhaps in some unimaginable incomprehensible way, my prayer does do something to you?
Perhaps you choose that it should.
You choose to be affected by your creatures.
If you did not you would be a dead god - that is worse than a lie.
You are not a dead god.
You are my lively and dynamic unchanging Lord - wholly consistent, wholly reliable.
If that is so, then what is my prayer Lord?
If you know my heart better than I do myself, if you already know my deepest desires, then is my only meaningful prayer silence?
Perhaps it is - after all your command is for me to be still and know that you are God (Ps. 46:10).
Perhaps prayer is to be naked before you with nothing to say.
However, I am not naked and ashamed before you, but naked and known by you.
Yes it pains me Lord to be so utterly known by you, to have no secrets before you.
It hurts that I can hide no thing from you.
You see right through me.
Even my most shameful parts are exposed by the bright dawn of your Son.
Every time I arrive at prayer, I sense my own inadequacy.
I move to pray and before a word is on my lips, the memory of my failings rushes in, whispering to me “You are not worthy.”
My prayers are ever refracted through my sins (Ps. 51:3).
Who am I to address you, Lord?
Who am I to dare speaking to you?
But I do dare.
I dare to say at least one thing.
For prayer is daring to cry “mercy” from under the crushing burden of your judgement. But, painful as it is, the weight of your judgement is felt as a warm embrace for your judgement is grace.
In your eternally begotten Son, you stretch wide your arms in a gesture of selfless love to grant me safe passage through the hellish abyss of my selfish will to power. In so doing you disregard my plea for mercy.
Your grace is merciless.
Your grace allows me not one scrap of self-righteousness, it gives me no leg to stand on, it takes no prisoners.
In one breath it casts my sinful self into the fires of hell, and resurrects my true self into eternity.
Your grace is consuming wrath and restorative love.
But there is more, Lord.
Before you I am dumbfounded, exposed, and known.
But you do not wish for me to remain silent.
Prayer is the invitation to participate in the divine conversation, in your triune life no less. You invite us to make our voices heard before you and within you. This is only possible because my sinful words and desires are refracted through my sinless Messiah who ever lives to intercede on my behalf (Heb. 7:25).
You have shown yourself to be my lively and loquacious Lord, having said all that need ever be said in your one Word. Through Him you spoke creation into being, through Him you raised Israel from bondage in Egypt, through Him you resurrect me from my captivity to death into my true life.
In Him, I participate in prayer.
His prayer is mine, and mine His.
Through this one narrow gate all the cries of humanity are funnelled into the one space where all their superficiality is taken up, sanctified, and heard as the wordless groaning of the Spirit (Rom. 8:26).
Lord, it seems ludicrous that you should invite me to participate in providence when I can hardly keep my own life in order. It is absurd to suggest that the clay is invited to tell the potter how to perform His craft (Isa. 45:9), and yet in your grace your heed our requests. This is no more ludicrous than the Gospel’s claim that God became Man so that Man might become God.
Though you know them already, you desire to hear our desires. And you hear them as they truly are, free from the distortions of Sin. You hear them in their purest form, as desire for you. My prayer is my desire for you.
I know that deep down, my prayer is for you and you alone.
Open my eyes to behold your presence.