ARE WE PRAYING TO GOD “LONG-DISTANCE?”

by Shawn Brasseaux

Some people believe that God is some “far-off” Person. When they pray to Him, He is ever so far away from them and their prayers have to travel across the universe to reach Him… supposedly. One preacher, emphasizing this erroneous idea, comically referred to Jeremiah 33:3 as God’s “hotline.” God told the Prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 33:3: “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.” Is this how prayer operates today?

The fact of the matter is that we do not have to call out to God today for Him to answer us and give us revelation. Jeremiah lived in a day when the Bible was incomplete; God had not revealed everything yet. Today, however, we already have His written Word, preserved, and translated into English in the King James Bible. We do not have to wonder what God wants us to do. We do not have to guess His will for our lives. We do not have to beg Him to give us more spiritual wisdom, spiritual knowledge, and spiritual understanding. We have to open pages of the Holy Bible, and mine out the riches, the profit, God put in it for us!

Furthermore, when we trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal Saviour, the Holy Spirit came to live within us. Ephesians 1:12-14 explains: “[12] That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. [13] In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, [14] Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.”

The holy Spirit of God seals us until the day of our redemption, the Rapture, our gathering unto Jesus Christ (2 Thessalonians 2:1). Ephesians 4:30 says: “And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” The Bible says that the Spirit of God lives in us the believers. For example, 1 Corinthians 6:19: “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” And, 2 Timothy 1:14: “That good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us.”

Dear friends, when we pray, we are not praying across the heavens as Jeremiah was. We have the indwelling Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit links us to Father God. Moreover, the Holy Spirit helps us when we do not know what to pray for. The Holy Spirit intercedes for us, according to Romans 8:26-27: “[26] Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. [27] And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.”

The Holy Spirit will take the Bible verses we studied and believed, and cause them to become clear in our minds so that we can better apply them to the details of our lives. Whatever the prayer is about, the verses pertinent to the matter will come to mind. We can then pray with greater clarity. Prayer is not so much for God’s benefit, for He knows our hearts before we speak; prayer is for our benefit, that we reinforce our hearts and minds with His Word. Prayer is a reminder of what God is doing today in and through us, what God has told us today in the Pauline epistles of Romans through Philemon. God is not “far away.” We members of the Body of Christ have Him in our hearts in the Person of the Holy Ghost!

Also see:
» How should I pray?
» Should I recite “The Lord’s Prayer?”
» What about confession of sins in prayer?