COME SERVE ME AND MINE
Isn’t it true that so many of our prayers call God to come to serve us and ours? Of course we wouldn’t order him to do it; we’d plead and beg and request, though we’re not beyond a bit of argument aimed at proving to him that he should give us what we ask for. But whatever the tone the thrust is the same. Is that not true? But it’s out of the heart that the mouth speaks its prayers. And how does a heart get to be a heart like that? Is it sheer congenital selfishness? Are we simply bent on wanting what we want and going for it? I don’t believe that! I don’t deny that we’re bent by sin so that selfishness is there in every one of us but I tend to think that we’ve been taught a lop-sided view of God. There’s so much stress on the sugary and wooing note. God is anxiously, even desperately, waiting to answer our every request. He loves each...one...individually,don’t you see, so that as soon as we speak to him he drops everything and gives us his undivided and sweet attention. Einstein must have heard us talk that way because he remarked that Christians are sometimes guilty of colossal arrogance in this area.
Anyone that denies that God loves each individual has no biblical sense. But anyone who thinks that God loves each individual as if he or she wasn’t a particular member of a human family is light years off the mark. Of Christians Paul said, “We are members one of another.” What’s true of Christians at the level of election and life “in Christ” is true of the whole human race at the creation level. We are all his offspring (Acts 17:26,29) and he is the God of every one of us (see Paul’s use of this truth in Romans 3:29-30).
This has profound implications for how we should pray and how we should expect God to answer prayer.
We need to align our hearts and purposes and desires with God’s revealed heart and purpose. It isn’t for us to call on God to make it his business to align himself with our desires. Oh, of course, it is alright to make personal requests; we read that all over the Bible but the mass of scattered references all over the Bible have to be brought into harmony with the central and overarching purpose of God for the human family!
When our prayers as Christian individuals or congregations become habitually self-centred we have forgotten Jesus’ calling us to “seek first the reign of God and his righteousness” and all the other needed things will be added. The prayers that have God’s copper-bottomed guarantee are those prayers that further his kingdom agenda in Jesus Christ.
Let me repeat; there is no wrong in making personal requests, there is no wrong in expressing our immediate heart’s desire [Jesus himself did that in Gethsemane] so we should speak to the Holy Father about such things. But the thrust of our prayers must not be: “God, come and serve me and mine.” Our prayers, shaped by hearts that are being transformed by his Spirit, will be shaped by his call to us: “Come and serve me and my overarching purpose for the human family.”
We’ll do our best not to identify our own reasonable desires with how God should express his kingdom intentions. Before we ask for bread or forgiveness or protection we will pray, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Then we’ll ask for daily bread, for forgiveness and for strength and protection in temptation.
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