Exercise in Futility

Exercise in Futility:

Having spent nearly 25 years as a professional fitness guru, I’ve seen my share of exercise in futility.  The one that probably tops the list is the guy who came to the gym one day per week on Saturday mornings. He would camp out on the bench press with his newspaper. He would spend 5-10 minutes reading the paper and then – with the worst form you’ve ever seen – try to bench press a weight he couldn’t handle.  His butt would come up off the bench, he would writhe, wiggle, twist, and contort his body – and that was just to get the weight off the rack.  Then the guy would rerack the weight and spend another 5-10 minutes reading the paper.  He made the guy in the photo above look like a champ. This went on for hours every Saturday morning.  That’s a great picture of exercise in futility.

The way most people pray is like the guy on that bench press.  Our mind is elsewhere even though we’re camped out at church, a chapel, or our designated spot for prayer.  When we get to the praying part we writhe, twist, and contort… and like Saturday-newspaper-bench-press-guy – we never see any results.  Our prayer life boils down to nothing more than the pagans’ pitching of pennies in wishing wells.  We fire off prayers with little confidence and have no expectation for answers… or more accurately we truly expect that our prayers won’t be answered and we chalk it up to “Well, that must be God’s will” rather than realizing the problem being sourced exclusively in us.

If you want to transform your prayer life from an exercise in futility to powerful victories then read on.

Read 1 John 5:14-15. (Yes, I really want you to read it)

1. We’re supposed to approach GOD in prayer.

2. We’re supposed to approach Him with CONFIDENCE.

3. We’re supposed to pray for things according to HIS WILL.

4. We’re supposed to pray to God with EXPECTANCY.

So today we’ll just look at item #1: Approaching GOD in Prayer.

Who are you praying to? Are you praying to St. Somebody and asking them to take your prayers to God or are you praying to God Himself? Hebrews 7:25 tells us that Jesus, our God, Savior, Redeemer, and Great High Priest lives to intercede for us.  So if that’s what Jesus is living for – then why pray to anyone else?

I can’t find a single place in the Bible where praying to a person is modeled as the proper example of prayer.  What I do find are hundreds of examples of people (Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, the Prophets, Jesus, and the Apostles) who impacted the course of human history for the Mission of God as God’s faithful; and they all spoke to God DIRECTLY.  In the examples of people asking someone else to pray to God FOR them – things ALWAYS turn out badly.

Exodus 8:28 Pharaoh asks Moses “Now pray for me.”  Pharaoh was the king of Egypt who tried to prevent the nation of Israel from going into Canaan by keeping them in slavery.

1 Kings 13:6 Jeroboam asks the man of God, “Intercede with the Lord your God and pray for me.” Jeroboam was the leader of the rebellion who split the nation of Israel in two – the Northern Kingdom (called Israel in the Bible), and the Southern Kingdom (called Judah).

Acts 8:24 Simon the Sorcerer asks Peter, “Pray to the Lord for me so that nothing you have said may happen to me.” Simon wanted to buy the power of God so that he could add that to his ‘bag of tricks.’

Praying to angels, Moses, a man of God, Peter, St. Somebody, or anyone but God is an exercise in utter, total, and unmitigated futility.  Feel free to scour the Bible, and I hope you do, but there are no examples of anyone ever getting an answer to prayer apart from praying directly to God. If it's not in the Bible then where did it come from???  Great question.

If you want to change your prayer life from an exercise in futility to one of powerful victories then step #1 is that you need to be praying to God – and God alone.

Blessings,

-Kevin

PS I would be happy to join with you in prayer to God, but I can’t pray to God for you by proxy.  If there is anything I can be praying with you about then email me: LVNFIT68@yahoo.com