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Blunt, outspokenness: Learning to Pray


I have to admit that prayer has been a struggle for me in recent months, more like a year really.  As I’ve studied the Word and worked to really believe more of what I am, I’ve been challenged not to doubt when I pray, to quit asking for things that God has already said are mine (how annoying is that, to have someone ask you for something six times when you’ve already given it to them?); I’ve learned that prayer is supposed to be filled with longing and desire (for Mark 11:24 says, “Whatsoever things you desire when you pray …”), and that after I pray, it is my responsibility to believe that I have received and to celebrate – even if I can’t see the answer yet.  That’s what faith is.  Throughout this journey of painful reevaluation, I’ve found myself so convicted of all the unscriptural ways I’ve prayed in my life that my routine devotional prayer times have kind of fallen by the wayside.  Despite this discouragement, God continues to teach me.

 This week, it was quite by “accident” on my part.  I was studying out the verse in Hebrews 4 where it says, “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (that’s verse 16 in the KJV).  Turning to the Strong’s concordance, I looked up the meaning of that word “boldness” and I was stunned to read its original meaning.  According to the Strong’s Concordance, this word can literally be translated, “All out spokenness, that is frankness, bluntness …”  Do you have any idea what that has done to my insides this week?  To know that I am to approach God with bluntness, all out spokennes, and frankness?  That I don’t have to be flowery, perfect or otherwise?  That God wants me to trust Him enough to be completely open with Him?  God gives us, through his Son Jesus, the privilege of coming to him with as much candor as we can muster – and He responds to that.  This is not to say that we shouldn’t be reverent – but there is no reason for us to beat around the bush, to pray “religious” frills to God, to leave out certain parts of our lives as we pray.  He wants our honesty – about how much we love Him, about how much we long to see Him move, about how hard it is to stand on the Word, but that we’re looking to Him for that strength.  Look at the Psalmists – they told God when they felt deserted, when they needed food, when they wanted their enemies to be crushed, when they were celebrating all the mighty ways He’d moved on their behalf. Or the Lord’s prayer – Jesus talks with longing about wanting God’s will to come to pass on earth as it is in Heaven, asks specifically for food to eat for that day, asks for forgiveness – it’s honest, open, powerful.  How often do your prayers sound that way?  Perhaps this is why we aren’t seeing answers to our prayers.  1 John 5:14-15 uses the same word (all outspokenness, bluntness, and frankness) when it says: “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: and if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.”  God says that when we know His will (which comes from spending time in His Word - seriously, He changes our hearts as we bathe ourselves in His Word so we’ll want to pray in accordance with His will), and pray passionately and bluntly about it – He hears and answers us. I don’t know about you, but this idea of blunt and outspoken prayer was kind of liberating and challenging for me … You know? 
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