Prayer with No Conditions
Pray big prayers and be willing to pay the cost. Then get out of the way and let God work.
Ever since I was a child, I’ve been fascinated with prayer. I think the idea that you can just talk to God Almighty, the creator of everything, at any time of day or night, is amazingly cool. No appointment necessary. No waiting in the lobby.
A couple of years ago, I purchased Prayer: Communing with God in Everything, by A.W. Tozer. This book really changed my life.
If you haven’t heard of A.W. Tozer before, it doesn’t surprise me. He’s one of the greats of the Christian faith, but he went to the Lord in 1963, and most people these days don’t know who he was.
Tozer was a Christian pastor and author. He accepted Jesus as his savior in his teens. The Wikipedia entry about him says
In 1919, five years after his conversion and without formal education in Christian theology, Tozer accepted an offer to serve as pastor of his first church. That began 44 years of ministry associated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA), a Protestant Evangelical denomination, 33 of them serving as a pastor in several different congregations (his first, a small storefront church in Nutter Fort, West Virginia). Later, he served thirty years (1928 to 1959) as the pastor of Southside Alliance Church in Chicago; the final years of his life he spent as pastor of Avenue Road Church in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Observing contemporary Christian living, Tozer felt that the church was on a dangerous course toward compromising with "worldly" concerns.
Born into poverty, Tozer was self-educated and taught himself what he missed in high school and university.
The Wikipedia entry also lists a number of his publications, many of which were compiled from his sermons and writings after his death.
If you have not read any Tozer, I highly recommend you do (The Knowledge of the Holy is great). He was a man of God, and it showed in everything he wrote. Simply, you will be blessed.
So, again, I bought Prayer a couple of years ago, and it changed my life. It’s flat out the best book on prayer that I’ve ever read.
Chapter 8, titled “Praying Without Condition,” was particularly impactful for me. In it, Tozer writes:
Julian of Norwich at the beginning of her wonderful Christian life addressed a prayer to her Savior and then added the wise words, “And this I ask without any condition.”
It was that last sentence that gave power to the rest of her prayer and brought the answer in mighty poured-out floods as the years went by. God could answer her prayer because He did not need to mince matters with her. She did not hedge her prayers around with disclaimers and provisos. She wanted certain things from God at any cost. God, as it were, had only to send her the bill. She would pay any price to get what she conceived to be good for her soul and glorifying to her heavenly Father. That is real praying.
Many of us spoil our prayers by being too “dainty” with the Lord (as some old writer called it). We ask with the tacit understanding that the cost must be reasonable. After all, there is a limit to everything, and we do not want to be fanatical! We want the answer to be something added, not something taken away. We want nothing radical or out of the ordinary, and we want God to accommodate us at our convenience. Thus we attach a rider to every prayer, making it impossible for God to answer it.
Tozer, A. W.. Prayer (pp. 67-68). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Boom. Those last words hit me like a ton of bricks: “We want nothing radical or out of the ordinary, and we want God to accommodate us at our convenience. Thus we attach a rider to every prayer, making it impossible for God to answer it.”
How often have we prayed for something reasonable, like a renewed relationship with someone in our family, for example, but then, when God pushes us forward, we’re unwilling to do the hard work of taking the first step in putting that relationship back together? We want to the outcome (renewed relationship), but we want it done our way, the easy way, where our family member just walks up to us and spontaneously breaks down and asks for forgiveness for everything they’ve already done, taking on the responsibility of all the past years of hurt and absolving us of any participation in the problem.
We want our prayers answered, but in a cost-free, no-hassle way. Tozer says, “We want the answer to be something added, not something taken away.” God, give me the outcome, but don’t ask me to sacrifice anything in return.
As I was reading through Chapter 8 of Prayer for the first time, I finally understood. How many times have I prayed a prayer that tried to put God in a box?
“Father God, I want such and such, and I want it to happen like this.”
I can almost hear God reply, “Well, David, I was all set to help you with that. But then you told me how to do it, and I can’t work with that. What I had in mind for you is so much better than you can ever imagine, but I’d have to violate your conditions. So, I guess my answer is ‘No.’”
God Almighty is able to do so many BIG things, if we would just get out of the way and let him. Unfortunately, we pray too small because we are unwilling to pay the cost that might be associated with the answers to big prayers.
How much more would God do in your life if you prayed big prayers “without any condition,” willing to accept any cost. Let’s try it and find out.
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Coolness mingled with fear.
I heard Tozer mentioned in a sermon recently. Possibly the same book. I'm also familiar with C&MA. We have an ethnic C&MA church down the street, which we are hoping to visit soon. We will need to arrange for a translator, though.
I hadn't heard the phrase "Praying Without Condition", although I know the practice. Thank you for providing a name for it.
I often hear prayers for healing for preventable diseases, and I don't quite know what to think, let alone say. "Save me from my self-inflicted damage while I continue in it?" That would seem to be very limiting.
I am quite concerned. There are hundreds of people with fairly visible, preventable metabolic disease at my church, especially among the younger adults and teens. They are in my prayers, for knowledge and discernment.
"Liked" and shared. God bless you David.