The Bible is valuable because it is the Word of God. It is his breathed-out words for our good (2 Tim 3:16-17). What makes the Bible powerful is the powerful Person who spoke it out. We love to read the words of the Bible, not because they are wonderful words on their own, but because they are God’s words. The same is true for prayer. Prayer is not magic. There is no intrinsic power in praying. We know this because, when people pray to false gods or idols, their prayers are not answered. Prayer is wonderful because there is a real God who hears and responds.
In The Efficacy of Prayer, a short essay by CS Lewis, there is a great point about this. He says that the question, “Does prayer work?” is the wrong question. Why? Because prayer doesn’t (in and of itself) work. God works when He chooses to answer prayer. The power is not in the prayer, but in the Person.
So what does this all have to do with Christian education or biblical integration? Well, it is a good practice to pray in class. And when we do pray, or call students to pray, we must point them to the truth—prayer is not important in and of itself… God is. We don’t pray to pray. We pray to speak with God. We aren’t engaged in a ritual of speaking our wishes or hopes into the air. We must teach our students that prayer is important and powerful because God is. Here are a few good questions to start your thinking:
- What is our posture when we approach the living God?
- What is our language when we speak with the King of all?
- What expresses our belief that God hears and cares about what we say?
- What about our prayers reinforces the truth that God is with us?
- What about our prayer shows our confidence in Jesus as our mediator?
Satan would likely love it if we help raise a generation of people who pray often, but don’t pray rightly. He would love it if they learned to love prayer, but never learned to love God. He would love it if they declare the value of prayer, but live lives that deny the value of God. Let’s not get things backwards.
In your class, keep this in mind: People who believe in a living God will pray and know the power of prayer, but those who practice prayer may not really know God at all. Teach them the power of God and then they will grasp the value of prayer.
