Radio
Repeaters are devices that receive a radio signal that is weak and then amplify
it and send it out again. Sometimes they transmit on the same frequency that
they received. Sometimes they send it out on a different frequency. The content
of the signal doesn’t change. What they received they send out. Repeaters
extend the range of the original signal. As an example, most police and fire
services use repeaters to be able to communicate across their large geographic
area.
Effective
prayer is very much like a repeater system. We get so close to the LORD,
listening to His every desire, and then we transmit that desire back to Him in
prayer. We end up praying His will in a situation. And He knows what is best
for us. He has our greatest good on His mind. So when we pray according to His
will, the best outcome is guaranteed. He always wants us to join Him in what He
is doing. He wants us to join His bandwagon.
This
is the confidence we have. Our prayers can be answered when we pray what He
wants us to pray. But one of our biggest struggles connected to prayer is our
own selfishness and shortsightedness. We want what we want and we want it now.
There is so often little actual flexibility in our prayers. We so often don’t
bother listening, tuning in to His frequency, before we pray. We just let it
rip.
John
tells us we can have confidence when we pray. We can know we have eternal life
and we can know that our prayers will be answered. Pray His will! Take time to
get in His presence, silent enough to hear His heartbeat, then pray what He
tells you to pray. But we don’t like having to slow down and listen. We must
still our trembling heart. We must fight our urge to rush in and ask. We have
to submit our will to His will. We must surrender.
Some
have taken these verses and transformed God into a winning slot machine or
internet marketplace. In goes the prayer and out comes the answer. They string
together verses to suit their fleshly desires and then claim that their fleshly
desire is God’s will. And since it is God’s will, at least in their warped
mind, they twist God’s arm until they get their answer. Some TV preachers are
famous for this kind of manipulation. They get the money rolling in from viewers,
buy the corporate jet and MacMansion, and then they say, “See, it works.” God
didn’t answer their prayer. Guilt inducement and manipulation did.
One
of my professors in college years ago said something that has stuck with me. He
said that if the Gospel being preached didn’t work among the poorest people in
the world, then there was something wrong with the Gospel being preached. If the
prosperity teaching wouldn’t work in the slums of Calcutta, it wasn’t true.
God
does not run a Ponzi scheme, taking wealth from one per and passing it on to
another using manipulation. He is not behind those preachers and their
teaching. Their judgment is waiting for them. They have stored up wrath for the
day of judgment.