Daily Devotions
When Prayer Is a Coverup for Disobedience
Reading for August 24th: Jeremiah 42-45
Then all the commanders of the forces, and Johanan the son of Kareah and Jezaniah the son of Hoshaiah, and all the people from the least to the greatest, came near and said to Jeremiah the prophet, “Let our plea for mercy come before you, and pray to the Lord your God for us, for all this remnant—because we are left with but a few, as your eyes see us— that the Lord your God may show us the way we should go, and the thing that we should do.” Jeremiah the prophet said to them, “I have heard you. Behold, I will pray to the Lord your God according to your request, and whatever the Lord answers you I will tell you. I will keep nothing back from you.”
Jeremiah 42:1-4
"I need to just pray about it."
Sometimes when I hear someone say this, it makes me nervous. What makes me nervous is that the truth of God's Word has been read and comprehended. Yet, the truth may require some inconvenience or sacrifice, and so the statement is made, "I need to pray about it."
I wonder what the prayer is for. If the prayer is for courage to do the right thing, that's good. If the prayer is for discernment to make sure everything has been appropriately interpreted and understood correctly, that's good. But if the prayer is for more revelation to come (especially revelation to contradict plain teaching in God's Word), then we've got a problem. It's kind of like when a child asks and doesn't get the response he or she wants and so they ask again and again until they succeed.
To pray for anything more than what God has already said (especially to suit our whims and fancies) is to pray for too much. In that situation we need to get up off of our knees and get our noses back in the Book.
Father, may your will and not our own be done.
