It just occurred to me that there is such a thing as passive prayer.

It started a couple weeks ago, when, during a church service where they were taking prayer requests, I asked for prayer about selling our house. I ended with saying something like “pray that it sells quickly.” I was thinking about the double-mortgage/rent that we’re paying each month until it sells. But the lay minister who was asking for them responded with a chuckle and, “Let’s just pray for God’s will to be done.”

Since when is it wrong to pray for action? There’s nothing wrong with praying that something happen quickly. The Bible is full of examples of people praying for immediate needs, with the full expectation that God would meet those needs quickly. I’ve read about the same thing in other books and heard people talk about it.

I think many Christians have become passive pray-ers. It’s easy to feel pious and just ask that “God’s will be done” and think you’ve prayed the best you can. God WANTS us to place our concerns before Him, and sometimes He’s just waiting for us to ask. Many (I’d almost hazard a “most” here) things in life do not fall into a “perfect will of God” situation. I’m convinced that we have many options in life and are free to choose what best pleases us, so long as we are living in a way that is striving to please God in all things. In the same way, we don’t have to just turn things over to God and say “Your will be done.” We can and SHOULD ask specifically for our hearts’ desires, even to the point of asking for a quick sale of a house. “God, please help our house to sell sometime whenever it pleases You” just doesn’t cut it.

That method of praying is very close to the hyper-Calvinist approach to missions, which says that God is going to save whomever He pleases, so we don’t have to work to bring souls to Him, which frankly goes against the Bible’s explicit teachings and Christ’s command to “Go” and make disciples.

Current music: Suite No. 2 in F for Military Band, by Gustav Holst