Pray All The Things!

If you’ve been paying attention over the last few years, you may have noticed a disturbing trend in the Church. It’s sort of what happens when the culture you live in is overrun by people who value relativism and hate the truth. It’s where you believe that positive thinking literally makes things happen, and that everybody has “a little bit of God in them.”

This really scares me. People like T.D. Jakes, Joyce Meyers, Kenneth Copeland, and Joel Osteen are telling people “God will bless you financially/physically if you’re truly faithful” but let me tell you, people… this is not what Jesus said.

Kenneth Copeland says:

The fact is, you really haven’t prayed in faith if you pray about something, but don’t take it. If you get up from prayer saying, “I don’t have it. I’m still sick, I still feel bad,” then you didn’t take it…and you certainly don’t have it.

Joel Osteen says:

God has already done everything He’s going to do. The ball is now in your court. If you want success, if you want wisdom, if you want to be prosperous and healthy, you’re going to have to do more than meditate and believe; you must boldly declare words of faith and victory over yourself and your family.

And we could go on and on. How much emotional crippling damage has this done to people’s faith? It totally takes God’s will out of the equation. Can you imagine telling the Apostle Paul “I’m sorry, but God’s not going to heal the thorn in your flesh because you haven’t prayed in faith.“ Or maybe telling Peter “Sorry, if you had declared words of faith and victory, you’d be rich and comfortable right now instead of being martyred upside-down on a cross.”

What if God doesn’t want you to be rich in this life?

What if God doesn’t want you to be comfortable in this life?

What if God doesn’t want you to be healed in this life?

The truth is, God doesn’t need us to be healthy or rich for us to serve Him, for us to worship Him, for us to glorify Him.

And we aren’t called to do anything else.

If we don’t need those things to accomplish what God wants for us, who are we to demand that God fulfill a promise He never made directly to us? Most of this hinges on the misinterpretation of Mark 11:24:

Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.

But of course, what’s meant here (and Jesus didn’t need to explicitly say) is that all things that you pray for that are in God’s will shall be granted. How else can we explain this, when just a few chapters later, Jesus himself shows us? Mark 14:35-36:

And He went a little beyond them, and fell to the ground and began to pray that if it were possible, the hour might pass Him by. And He was saying, “Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.”

The key to this passage is this: “Yet not what I will, but what You will.”

Everything hinges on this. Even Jesus himself recognized the futility of praying for something against the Father’s will. It didn’t keep him from asking! But ultimately, he was prepared for what would happen. It could happen no other way. Acting outside of God’s will has a name: it’s called sin.

What can we take away from this? Praying for healing is good, even Jesus says (in Luke 18) that through persistence, prayer can sway the Father’s timing… but you can’t convince God to do something against His will. And we don’t get to choose what that is.

If you buy into these prosperity gospel lies, and then you don’t get what you prayed for, what happens? It will eventually destroy your faith.

We know God is just. We also know God is loving. We falsely believe that we get to decide what that looks like. We associate comfort with love. But God’s love isn’t a cushy, comfortable love. His justice isn’t a sanitary, plain justice.

God is uncontrollable, and He is in control. He is not obligated to change His plans to suit our earthly needs. Sometimes He does things that work out better for us (and our selfish definition of “better”), sometimes He doesn’t. His timing isn’t like ours. He has every right to wait to give us the promised health and prosperity in heaven… anything that happens before that is solely to bring God glory, not to make us comfortable.

Speaking of scripture out of context, Paul says it like this in Phillipians 4:12-13:

I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

Does he mean he can literally do anything? No, Paul means he can do anything that God calls him to do. And in Paul’s case, God called him to be beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, imprisoned, and eventually martyred. And yet, this man was used to write a huge chunk of the New Testament. It brought God glory! And Paul would not have been able to do it had God not worked in his life that way.

Do you want to be used by God? Pray. Fast. Approach God with the reverence He deserves. Be thankful that God offered us a way out of condemnation through Jesus Christ.

But please, don’t assume we know what “God’s best” looks like for us. God’s definition of “success” is not what Joel Osteen, T.D. Jakes, or Joyce Meyer say it is.