Creaturely Dependence
“And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.” (Mark 9:29)
What is prayer? To quote Benjamin Morgan Palmer, “prayer is the language of creaturely dependence.” Prayer is putting our weakness and our finitude into words, of sending SOS signals to the God who is an all-powerful, all-wise, all -good, forever independent Creator. One can quickly gauge a man’s understanding of his weakness and God’s strength by the frequency of his prayers. Now, what do I mean?
We live in a world defined by “sweat equity.” If we can work hard enough, stay longer hours, burn the candle from both ends, then our problems will be driven away. If we can stay up late and eat the bread of anxious toil, then we can feast tomorrow. We aim to accomplish more by frantic activity than by faithfulness. Before you think I am not talking to you, let me ask you two questions. One, what problems do you take to God? I recall one man who said to me once, “Do I really need to ask God’s help for everything? I can do lots of things just fine on my own!” This is nothing less than practical atheism. This man failed to understand his own “creaturely dependence,” and lived under the motto of “God helps those who help themselves” – a phrase attributed to the unbelieving Benjamin Franklin, not to the faithful prophets and apostles. If we reserve our prayers for only the large moments in life, then we show God that we can live quite well without Him.
Two, when do you take problems to God? I once saw a shirt that said, “In case of emergency, pray.” Is that good advice? That sounds like calling the fire department when the house is ablaze, or asking for prayer for your marriage while filing for divorce papers. Before Jesus went to the cross, He prayed. Before He picked His disciples, He prayed. Before He ate, He prayed. Prayer never served as the Hail Mary pass with 15 seconds left in the fourth quarter; no, prayer functioned as the opening kick-off. What of us? Do we start our days in prayer? Do we end them the same? Does prayer precede our decision-making process? Do we put prayer first?
In churches and in individuals, prayer is our secret source of power. As Thomas Brooks says: “Let a man’s dangers be never so many, nor never so great, yet secret prayer has a certain omnipotency in it that will deliver him out of them all.” Let us find our greatest strength in the language of our creaturely dependence.
