Are our prayers consistent with the scriptures?

There are many reasons to read our bibles. One, obviously, is so we know God hears our prayers and answers prayer requests—sometimes with “no,” but that’s an answer!—and another is so we know God’s character and intentions, and know why he’d answer yes or no.

And another is so we know we’re not praying for something God forbids. ’Cause that’ll happen. God spells out what he approves of, and what he doesn’t, in the scriptures… but immature Christians don’t know the scriptures, and will pray for all the stuff God condemns. They’ll pray for evil things, immoral things, deceptive things, idolatrous things.

We’ll ask God for money—and we’re not even hiding how we worship money instead of Jesus, and we’re not even asking God to fund our daily provisions; we’re asking for conveniences, comforts, and luxuries.

We’ll ask God to smite our enemies. Not because our enemies are evil; sometimes they’re actually not! But they’re competition, and we wanna win. I’ve heard a lot of prayers before sporting events, both when I played in school, and among fans when professional teams play nowadays. A lot of vituperative prayers are made against the opposing team. Do the players and managers of those teams deserve any of the curses called down upon them? Not in the least. You think God appreciates any of this behavior? Not in the least. But fans do it anyway. Partisans do too.

We’ll ask God to hide our sins. Nevermind the fact God specializes in exposing hidden sins—if we don’t know our bibles, we won’t realize this, and actually think God might help us in our coverup. And he won’t. At all. He’ll tell on you. Ac 5.3 God’s our refuge in times of trouble, Ps 46.1 but not when we created and deserve the trouble, and definitely not when God’s empowering our prosecution.

We’ll even ask God for sin. We’ll ask him for idols; I already brought up money, but there are plenty of other things we prioritize over God. We’ll ask him for the things we covet—nevermind the fact we’re forbidden to covet. Ex 20.17 We’ll ask him to aid and abet us while we lie, cheat, and steal. While we abuse enemies and strangers. While we deliberately overlook the needy. We’ll justify all that lying, cheating, and stealing to ourselves, and presume that might be good enough for God too, and of course it’s not. Doesn’t matter what “righteous cause” you think you have which justifies evil.

I already brought up partisans; some of ’em are far more familiar with what their party proclaims than what the scriptures do. They naïvely presume their party is God’s party, and always does the right and godly thing, and that’s why they pray for their party’s wishes and success. Now, what if the party’s gone wrong?—what if it’s actually in opposition to God? Well, they can’t abide that idea; don’t you dare even say such a thing. They’ll persecute you like the pagan kings of Israel persecuted the prophets who dared rebuke the king on the LORD’s behalf. But obviously if the party’s gone wrong, God’s not gonna grant its members’ unrighteous prayer requests.

I could go on, but you get the gist. If you know God—if you know how your bibles describe God—there are plenty of things you won’t pray. Or you might pray ’em anyway, without thinking, but you do know better, and need to stop it.

“But God gave me peace about it.”

There’s a messed-up phenomenon I’ve seen among certain Christians: They’ll pray for something which God, his prophets, his apostles, and his scriptures have forbidden. They’re aware it’s forbidden. But they believe God’s granting them a special dispensation with this particular prayer request. That scripture which forbids it?—doesn’t count.

Sometimes they’re dispensationalists, so they believe lots of scriptures don’t count. We no longer live in the Old Testament era, so they claim none of the Old Testament commands count anymore. (Well, except the Ten Commandments, anything which forbids gays, and any commands they’d like to still follow and enforce. Everything else is cancelled out by grace though.) So they can totally request and receive what they want; it’s forbidden no longer! Wanna date your stepmom? Doesn’t matter if the Old Testament forbids it; Lv 18.8 do what thou wilt!

Other times they do believe the Old Testament still counts… but in this case, under these circumstances, God grants them an exception. Because they’ve prayed about it. Really hard. Yeah, they felt guilty as hell at first, but after praying and praying and psyching themselves into feeling good about themselves, they believe God has given them a peace about it. He’s no longer forbidden it to them. He’s okay with it. It’s like he told them, right in their spirit, “I myself am love, and I realize how much you love your stepmom, so I will no longer forbid her.” That’s why they feel just fine about praying for their depraved heart’s desires.

I’ve used this stepmom example before in my bible study, and had someone in the group object: “Stop; it’s nasty.” Yes I know it’s nasty. Nasty is the point: Plenty of sins, which people so casually justify to ourselves, are super nasty. But people self-justify so much, we’ll even ask God for nasty things. Even claim God gave us his peace about them. And God did no such thing. On the contrary; his Spirit is still shouting into our spirits, “Stop it!”—but we stopped listening to him long ago.

That’s why these people have “God’s peace”: They shut God off. They numbed their consciences so much, they can’t tell the difference between God’s peace and spiritual numbness. Can’t tell the difference between good and evil. Can’t tell the difference between devotion and apostasy. Kinda scary when you think about it.

Once again: If it defies the scriptures, it’s not God’s will. Not God’s peace either. Gotta repent, and start praying for what God does want.