Adultery in Prayer

John 14:13 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do; that the father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

As low as my spiritual antenna was at the time, I knew something was cutting across the grace of Christ. We were in a Sunday School class when the prayer request came: "We would just ask y'all to pray as we found our dream house, and had to buy it quick. We still have our old house and a beach condo, so money is really tight. Please pray that God would help us sell our house". After someone prayed for this and other requests, they slapped the tag "in Jesus name" at the end. After class, I probed a little more about why the couple had rushed out and bought a house in a two day time frame. Like most of our motives in the "housing rush", it had nothing to do with the will of God, but rather the desire to live in a better, more prominent neighborhood and the market forces demanded a rash decision.

Looking back, I now can clearly see how gross that prayer must of seemed to God. In John 14 above, and throughout the Bible, Jesus is not suggesting that His name be added to the end of prayer to act as some magical "Hocus Pocus" trick so that we can get what we want. Jesus is saying that prayers which seek to advance His name, fame and glory will be answered. Whether we like it or understand it, Jesus mission was and is self Glorification first and foremost. The glory of Christ, the gospel, is our only hope. As we fall deeper in Love with Christ and see our need for Him, we can then pray into His will of advancing His kingdom, which will result in our greater good as a member of it. Our prayer and mission is to worship Christ and make much of Him, as we all need Him in a larger way than we know.

Prayers that build His kingdom, by sons and daughters that find full satisfaction in Him, are what he is referring to in these verses. When I look back at prayers like the one above, and frankly many of my own, they are the exact opposite of what He is after. They are prayers made to advance our own little kingdom and glory because we are not satisfied in Him and His Kingdom. Our discontentment drives us to search for satisfaction outside of Him and so we wrongly ask God who seeks to be the fulfiller of all we desire for something that we perceive is a little more "filling". The sin in all of this is heavy. It is as if we use God as the means to get what we want (and He is not it). As if there were anything better than Him! He is the end of all Cravings, yet we are so prone to miss that fact and find our pleasures elsewhere.

If Evie came to me and asked me for money so that she could hire a male prostitute to fulfill her sexual pleasure, I would be utterly shocked and hurt. I would wonder "am I not enough?". When we come to God and try to leverage Him so that we can get our satisfaction elsewhere, I believe that to God, it looks as evil as my wife degrading my name, by using using my provision to get her desires met from another lover. It is a wicked form of adultery that we all need to repent and run from.

Our God will not play second fiddle in anyone's life. Worship of God is simply experiencing the beautiful satisfaction of Him.

In your prayer life, whose kingdom are you asking God to build up? His or yours? Who are you asking to be elevated, Him or yourself? Is He the ONLY desire you seek, or are you asking Him to fill you temporary treasures which will in effect take His place as your soul's satisfaction?