Prayer always provides great opportunity. It is our opportunity to express whatever is in our heart to God in whatever terms is congruous and holds integrity. It is God’s opportunity to have our undivided (most of the time when we are not drifting) to tell us what we need to hear. It is an opportunity to serve humankind by petitioning God on their behalf. It abounds with opportunity, many of which are under-utilized.
There are two prayer opportunities that are wedged together in the scripture (Mark 11:24-25). The first is quoted frequently. The second rarely quoted. But, they are duct taped together certainly by the author who was quoting Jesus. The first is simply that we can get an answer to whatever we are asking for if we ask in faith. The second is to make sure that when we are standing there praying, that we fix whatever is broken in our relationships with others. Put another way and bridged together- “Ask big and in faith and God will supply. But, oh by the way, don’t do it with a lot of relational junk which is bound to invalidate the effectiveness of the prayer.”
Jesus pressed the same thoughts together in and around the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-15) where we usually separate them with an “For thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever, Amen”! This last portion is not even in the Scripture where we gather the bulk of this prayer we most often quote (see also Luke 11:2-4). The Lord, whose prayer it is, is not quite so neat in dividing his thoughts on prayer and relationships. He runs the thought right from “deliver us from evil . . . .” to “For if you forgive. . . .” I’m not sure why we have a tendency to pull those adjacent thoughts of Christ apart and slap our nice, closing verbiage on his model prayer.
The Bible is doggedly determined to keep them together. Perhaps it is because some people like the ask part more than the forgive part. The first is clean and cuts to the chase of our need. The second is messy and very complicated not to mention time-consuming. Also, our efforts to forgive and heal often backfire. Try to reconcile with others and we soon discover that this requires two people. Try to forgive someone else and we soon discover that they might not want the conflict to cease or even be forgiven. So, it is much easier to simply resort to “asking for whatever we might ask for in faith” and leave it at that.
But, let’s be true to the context of Scripture and the obvious intent of Jesus. This asking thing and forgiving thing are knit together by Jesus and we should view them as seriously as he intended them. They are tandem opportunities every time we come to the Lord in prayer. We have big stuff to ask for. And, we have lots of relationships, some that might need cleaning up.
What might it look like if we came before the Lord regularly with a prayer something like this, “Lord, I have a lot of big requests and needs to bring your way today and I truly believe you can do it all. But, before I get there, is there anything in any relationship with anyone in my life that I need to fix before we get in too deep into this prayer?” I just wonder how many mountains (Mark 11:23) would be moving in our lives if we took that as our daily approach in prayer.