Prayer and Contentment

I like to try to take time to read the Bible and pray on a fairly daily basis (its a lot easier now that I am unemployed and not in school). I use a book given to me called, "A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants" given to me by Becky Modesto. Each week there is a new Psalm, and each day a new passage to read, but it always has the same statement for prayer, "V. Prayers: for the church, for others, for myself." Sometimes I find this incredibly broad and difficult to approach. I'm sitting there in my sweats drinking my tea thinking "...ok I pray for the church uh... that you would help..." it's a very unmotivated prayer. Then I realized that in order to pray I have to have an element of discontentment with things. I have to have a will that is similar to what I know God's will to be. Perhaps the reason I cannot pray comes from my present contentment with the world in my own experience of it. Its easier for me to pray when I am anxious about something, but for those precious days or weeks when I find myself content, I have no reason to pray. However, this is worldly.

Peace and contentment should come, though. Philippians 4:6-7 says, "...by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guide your heart and your minds in Christ Jesus." Of course this contentment comes right when we are least hospitable to it. If we really align our will with God's will (so as not to be content in our own worldly experience) we start to get these rules for ourselves like, "I will only have peace once every homeless person in San Diego has the option to stay indoors" or "I will only have peace when everyone in the youth group has a relationship with Christ" or "I will only have peace once there is peace in Africa." Ministry is a response of faith! Yet, often it leads to more discontentment than if we had never gotten off the couch in the first place. That ain't right. This discontentment again is worldly. It is walking a thin line of being concerned about being involved in the work of God in the world, yet remembering that it indeed is God's work in the world. Ministry is the faithful way of living. Once it becomes a task force or a cause, it will not lead us to contentment. Somewhere, we are need to find contentment and peace in the act of faithfully calling on God with our words, through prayer, and our actions, through ministry.

I think this peace comes from our belief that we are being obedient to God, and from a greater belief that God is ultimately going to win, that God is ultimately going to restore peace and wholeness to creation, and drive out evil and death. The former type of belief is called faith; belief in what God has said and done as it is known through scripture, church tradition, and personal experience. The latter belief is called hope; a belief in what God has said God is going to do, even in spite of our own present experience.