Proverbs 28:9 “He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination.”

Pretty serious verse here! But oh so needful!

Prayer is a wonderful gift from God, to be able to speak and commune with our heavenly Father and be heard and accepted and be right with God is amazing.

… but prayer for many has become a substitute for obedience.

To be clear, prayer is not a valid substitute for reading and obeying God’s word.

Yes, if you really want to, you can make it your substitute! … but you’ll just be praying with and to yourself!

The thing is, God has already spoken if we actually care to read and hear what he’s had to say, and oftentimes, to be honest, there is nothing to “pray” about at all.

Read Numbers 22, and the story of Balaam… some people come to see Balaam to hire him to do a job for them, and he seeks God about it, and God gives Balaam two “thou shalt not”s… and yet when these people come again, he goes “to pray about it” when there is nothing to pray about! … and God is very angry with him.

… If God’s already spoken, and he has, there really is nothing to pray about, because he’s sure not going to change what he’s told you to do in his word… the Bible.

The reason why many people like praying is because prayer is them talking to God… but they don’t like reading God’s word, because that’s God talking to them… so it’s very much a one way street… but if he’s Lord, shouldn’t the Lord be doing the talking and we doing the hearing and obeying?

… the thing is, if we are being honest, most people really don’t care what God has to say other than him validating what they’ve already decided they’re going to do regardless. Is your prayer just getting the tick of approval that you’ve already decided God’s going to give you?

… And he might well give you that tick of approval too! Because God did exactly that to Balaam. If you really have decided to mock God in this way, he might just let you go ahead with it. Yippee! But look up how it turned out for Balaam in the end.

… None of us as Christians should really want to tempt and provoke God by being so audacious to pray to him while turning away our ear from him.

Who does more talking in your relationship? You or God? There’s a big Bible waiting at your fingertips, see if what you’re praying about hasn’t already been answered!

Prayer is often just a reflection of where our heart is at, and if we’re being honest, none of our hearts are in that good a place most of the time.

I often had questions and doubts about answered prayer, but eventually I wondered if it wasn’t God’s failure after all, but rather just a sad reflection on my own wretched spiritual condition… as has probably been the case for most of us.

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