Praying Backwards: Transform your Prayer Life by Beginning in Jesus' Name

Praying Backwards
Transform your Prayer Life by Beginning in Jesus' Name
by Bryan Chapell
published by Baker Books 2005

{Phil's underlines from reading Praying Backwards. . . }

How would your prayer change if you began where you normally end?

Often we focus on asking god to ease our worries and satisfy our wants before adding"in Jesus' name" as an obligatory spiritual seasoning to make our petitions palatable to God.

But Jesus is not like a genie in a bottle whom we can command by invoking his name.

Prayer does not relieve all suffering, but it assures us that no difficulty comes without a purpose.

In this fallen world you cannot avoid suffering; you can have peace in the midst of it. You cannot avoid trials; you can have confidence of their purpose. You cannot bind God by your prayers; you can guarantee his blessing. You cannot direct the will of God; you can pray according to his will and rest in the assurance of his love.

Through Jesus we pray without the limitations of our wisdom or faith.

We ask for his blessing based on God's wisdom, not ours. We trust in his faithfulness, not in the adequacy of our faith.
So why wait to the end of a prayer to tag on Jesus' name?

When our routines have desensitized us to his priorities, then it's time to begin where we end. Praying backwards will inevitably turn our prayer priorities upside down. By saying "in Jesus' name" first, we will more readily discern when our prayers go astray from his purposes, hijacked by our self-interest.

When Jesus' priorities come first, our prayers will change. They will be less self-oriented, more Christ-directed, more blessed, and ultimately most satisfying to our hearts.

After almost three years of walking with Jesus, watching his life, and hearing his words, the apostles came to Jesus and said, "Lord, teach us to pray" (Luke 1:1). You would think they would already know.

Something in us whispers that it is not right to treat our God like a celestial vending machine into which we place faith nickels to get the jackpot we want. Such faith would seem to put more confidence in our wisdom about how the world should work than in an infinitely wise God. Somehow proper prayer must put more trust in God's will than in human wants; otherwise failure to get the things we want will force us to doubt either the power of prayer or the ability of God.

Praying entire prayers in Jesus' name profoundly alters our priorities and powerfully sends our requests to God.

Our prayers are not more powerful because we chant our Savior's name like a magic spell. If we use Jesus' name as some sort of spiritual incantation, then we fall into the error of the sorcerers in the book of Acts who thought that using Jesus' name was just another way of saying "abracadabra" or "shazam" (see Acts 19:13-16).

When we pray in Jesus' name, we confess that we are not coming to God or asking for his blessing on the basis of our merit.
Praying in Jesus' name is automatically a confession our unworthiness and a proclamation of his worthiness.
...Prayer in Jesus' name is not an incantation to make us worthy of divine attention; it is a confession that we are unworthy of even approaching God apart from the mercy and merits of our Savior. We pray in the name of Jesus to profess our need of him and to proclaim our trust in the provision of righteousness he made for us.

Not only does Christ's intercession grant us spiritual paupers the ability to have our appeals lovingly heard by the Father, Jesus' continuing work grants us direct access to the Father.

When we pray in Jesus' name, we are summoning the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish his purposes.

The Spirit has no more pressing business than advancing the name of Jesus. So when we pray in Jesus' name, we are summoning the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish his purposes.

Throughout the Bible persons use the name of God to indicate that fulfilling his purposes is their highest priority.

To do anything in the Lord's name means to do it for his purposes. When we pray in Jesus' name, we are petitioning God to bring glory to Jesus and we are asking for his will to be done in everything so that he will be honored above all. Prayers in Jesus' name are enveloped with concern that he be represented, blessed, and glorified. By appealing to Jesus' name, we surrender our prayers to his purposes. This means that, while we should present many kinds of petitions to God, a prayer offered in Jesus' name ultimately requests his desires.

Praying backwards helps clarify the priorities of our prayers so that we can distinguish childish from mature petitions.
...pray backwards means we back away from making ourselves, our wishes, or our wants the primary concerns of our prayer. We always put the purposes of Jesus first. We echo in heart if not in actual words the attitude of the psalmist who prayed, "Not to us, O Lord, not to us but you your name be the glory" (Ps.115:1).

Yet our trust in God is based not on our circumstances but on his character.

Jesus' suffering, death, and resurrection prove God's purposes are not thwarted by pain, and his affection is not exhausted by our experiences on this earth.

Then I rediscovered the Lord's Prayer. As a child, I learned the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples. I have recited it so many times that it can run out of my mouth and hardly tax my brain--or touch my heart.

When we pray in Jesus' name, we petition God to fulfill the purposes of his kingdom and bring him glory.

Psalm 37, which says God gives "the desires of your heart," begins with the command, "Delight yourself in the Lord. When we delight most in fulfilling his purposes (having his name reverenced and his kingdom furthered), then God gives us the desires of our heart.

He does not want to deny us our desires but helps remove the false objects of our affections so that we will have the greater blessings he longs to lavish on us.

The prayer for daily bread reminds us of God's provision of manna in the wilderness.

Their sin was not in desiring tastier bread but rather in not appreciating the God who sustained them.

The prayer for daily bread is really a petition for spiritual vitality to do heaven's work on earth.

When Christians pray for daily bread, we are not simply praying for our natural wants. We are praying for the ability to please God, because pleasing God satisfies us.

The more we desire to honor the Lord who loves us so, the more we recognize our constant need of his grace. Jesus' willingness to teach these words as a regular pattern for our prayers greatly encourages us, because we know that we will not exhaust his mercy.

The Bible...does not say where to include the phrase or even the precise words to use (see, for example, Eph. 5:20).

Perhaps the reason for the Bible's lack of specific direction is that the name of Jesus is the fountain, as well as the foundation, of every petition we offer when we pray as he taught us. Faithful prayer begins with, ends with, and consists of the desire to honor our Savior.
...praying without any doubt would seem to require us to tell God what to do.
...if God's will is really under the control of my will, then wouldn't that make me God?

Proper belief is not unwavering confidence that something we want will happen, nor is it doubtless trust that we know what is best. Our trust is not in the thing that we want or in our sufficient faith. The success of our prayers does not lie in exceptional confidence that we have pumped enough of our own faith into our prayer (and extracted enough doubt) so that now God must respond. Our belief must be in God. He, not our desire, is the object of our faith.

Praying in Jesus' name requires seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness with the absolute trust that God will then add all that is best for us (Matt. 6:31-33).
..do not let anyone make you feel guilty or ashamed for praying as Jesus did in the Garden Gethsemane.

He said, "Yet, Lord, not my will but your will be done." Jesus was not expressing doubt because he prayed for God's will to be done. Our Savior was right both to offer his petition and subject it to God's design.
...we seek him first, he will answer to glorify his Son.
...he will answer our prayers better than we can ask.

Faith in God's sovereignty actually causes us to rejoice that we do not bind God with the limited wisdom and mixed motives of our prayers.
...where in all of history has God most glorified himself? He did it at the cross of Jesus Christ, and it wasn't by delivering Jesus from the cross, though he could have.

I have often encouraged others not to pray for God to heal if it is his will -- as though maybe he will heal and maybe not. Instead, I encourage my friends and family to pray for God to heal according to his will.

Praying without doubting God's sovereignty can be tough.
...because god knows our needs better than we do, it might seem that we should refrain from praying about anything specific.

He knows what we need before we ask (Matt. 6:8), but he still likes to be asked. He urges us to pray in ways that deepen our love and trust of him. Even though we cannot fully understand or anticipate what God should do, we should not hesitate to pray. Not only do our prayers please God, the Holy Spirit uses them to accomplish heaven's purpose on earth.

With more fervor than we can express, and with the urgency of a mother in childbirth, the Spirit cries before the throne of grace, "Holy god, bless your people. God of Creation, bend the world to your glorious purposes for those seeking you. Heavenly Father, work all things together for your children's good."

We know that god's will is to make us more Christlike (I Thess. 4:3). but apart from this goal, we can rarely (if ever) know god's desires precisely.

We do not have to abandon prayer, however, simply because we cannot fathom the will of God. The Holy Spirit takes our humble prayers and conforms their content to God's will. When we pray in Jesus' name, we offer our desires to God with the foundational desire that he will accomplish his purposes through us. By his Holy Spirit that is exactly what God does, and this is why the Bible urges us to pray in the Spirit (Eph. 3:14-19; 6:18).

Praying in the Spirit is not so much seeking magical expressions of God's power to fulfill our desires as it is asking that our Savior's priorities shape our desires.

We find the path easier when we discover prayer is a privilege for us rather than a bribe for God.

Key Thought: god does not give finite people the burden of solving the world's problems. Determining precisely how to pray to accomplish god's eternal will would devastate us. Instead, our God provides his Holy Spirit to match the fervor, content, and desires of our prayers to his purposes. The Spirit not only conforms our prayers to God's purposes but in doing so confirms how precious we are to God so that we will seek and trust him more.

Virtually every committed and nominal Christian knows to call on God in a time of trouble. But those who truly discover the power of his abiding presence do not reserve prayer for periods of isolated retreat. In addition, they converse with their heavenly Father through private thoughts on busy streets, in crowded stadiums, in stressed offices, on family outings, and through every day. The great nineteenth-century preacher Charles Surgeon wrote; "I never pray more that five minutes at a time, but I never go five minutes without praying."

Big prayers get out of hand not because we request miracles but because we demand them.

The extraordinary providences, whereby God suspends the physical laws of the universe or marvelously coordinates them, are never designed for entertainment. Rarely do miracles occur for the ease of God's people. In the Bible, miracles come as precursors of the expansion of God's kingdom - often to encourage those who will soon suffer for their faith.

The confidence that we express in such bold prayer is not in the answer we desire but in God. Others have expressed the essence of biblically bold prayer this way: "We should confidently petition God to be God."

Bringing specific petitions to God is not the same as demanding specific responses from God.

When Christians join together in expectant prayer, God's hand often becomes especially evident.

The Bible encourages corporate prayer because when God's people unite their hearts, they are more likely to encourage one another to pray, to examine the appropriateness of their prayer, to maintain their prayer, and to express thanksgiving for God's answers.

The crucial factor for powerful prayer is not the number of persons but the purpose that calls them together.

Great response to specific, corporate prayer still occurs. At the St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig, Germany, strong and weak believers gathered for prayer during the days of Communist domination. The nation had wearied of ineffective political rallies and demonstrations protesting the cruel regime. The prayer group grew weary too. Numbers rose and fell with the mood of the nation. At times only a dozen or fewer prayed in the massive church.

Then in 1989 the Spirit ignited the hearts of his people and hundreds began to come to the church to pray. East German troops blocked the exits of the autobahn on the days of the prayer meeting to keep people from the town. Systematic arrests of the prayer group's leaders were ordered on days prior to the meetings. Communist sympathizers even filled the seats of the church so there would be no place for those wanting to pray.

The praying crowds still came. They stood inside and outside the church while the Communists, at first, listened, and then many joined the prayers. When the numbers of those praying reached the thousands, troops were summoned to handle the anticipated revolt. The people did not revolt but continued to pray with candles in both their hands to show that they had no weapons. Word of the courageous and persistent prayer swept the nation. Though the corporate prayer movement lasted only a few weeks with these numbers, the Communists lost all public support. The government collapsed, and German history began a new chapter without barbed wire, machine guns, and tanks.

A member of the Communist Central Committee later wrote, "We had planned for everything. We were prepared for everything. But not for candles and prayers." What Communists could not prepare for, Christians must do. We pray corporately and specifically because we expect that in his time and according to his purposes, iron curtains will yield and God's Spirit will triumph.

Often those the Bible commends for their great faith did not receive an immediate answer to prayer.

Faithful prayer is not marked by the immediacy of answers as much as by persistent petition.

But why does God want persistent prayer? He can answer any prayer in the blink of an eye. Why does he sometimes delay his answer?

Persistent prayer in the face of initial disappointment can become the instrument of divine nurture. We grow to trust God more by seeing that often he prepares something better than our initial prayers did (or could) request. In fact God's greatest gifts may come through prayers that seem to be unanswered. Our persistence can help us discover why God blesses by not answering as we ask.

By persisting in prayer for answers that require the processes of time, we confess to God our perpetual need of him. Regular prayer for continuing needs also testifies to others our confidence in God's continuing work in our lives.

We trust our Saviour because he works perfectly, not because he works quickly.

When we pray for God to provide good for us, we are implicitly asking to be more like Jesus - for our lives to further Christ's glory. This is another reason we pray in Jesus' name. A prayer in our Savior's name submits more than its content to his purposes. By invoking Jesus' name, we also submit ourselves to Christ's purposes. We ask God to do whatever he wills to make us all that he wants. And we know he wants us to reflect Christ's glory more and more. God alone knows whether Christ will receive more glory through the removal of our trial, through our continued faithfulness in the midst of suffering, or through an ultimate sacrifice that takes us to heaven where pain is replaced by eternal praise of unending joy.

It is more important to obey God's Word than to try to predict his will. Only through obedience can we know God's will - and pray for it.

Praying to be Christlike is more than pious exercise; it is spiritual power. Prayer in Jesus' name promotes his purposes, and his greatest purpose in our life is for us to reflect him to the world. By praying to God to make us more like Jesus, we ensure that he will do all that his sovereign power determines will most glorify Jesus through us. Heaven and earth bend to his will when we pray for the Father to glorify Jesus in us.

Praying for courage to obey God's Word is a better sign of faithfulness than pretending to know more than God's Word says.
Respected Scottish pastor Eric Alexander gives a modern account of believers praying with spiritual sensitivity. In the 1950s three evangelical ministers - James Philip, George Philip, and William Still - felt compelled by the Holy Spirit to pray that God would revive the Church of Scotland. They met regularly and prayed for an increasing number of Bible-believing pastors. Then, after four years of fervent, joint intercession, the three ministers felt released from this burden of prayer. When they stopped, they confessed to being disappointed. They saw no evidence that God had chosen to revive his church.
Twenty-five years later, these same ministers hosted a conference for Bible-believing ministers who had begun to fill the pastoral ranks. About two hundred pastors came - roughly about one-third of all Scottish ministers. One of the three pastors who had prayed for this increase asked for a show of hands by those who had been converted during those initial four years of prayer. A number in the room raised their hands, including Eric Alexander. Then the conference leader asked those present who had been born during those four years to raise a hand. Most of the rest of the pastors then raised a hand. God had answered the prayer of the original three ministers in a way they could not have expected. Now they also know why the Holy Spirit had released them from their prayer compulsion after those four years of concentrated effort.

Prayer is more than a conversation with God.
Too often references to prayer as a conversation with God create a false expectation. Believers think they will speak to God and he will speak back with a voice made audible in our mind or whispered on the wind. Then, for lack of hearing this voice, many consider their prayers ineffective. We could avoid much disappointment by recognizing that the supernatural process of prayer has no easy analogy in our natural experience.

Healing thrives in the recognition that God listens. Christian psychiatrist and author Paul Tournier says, "It is impossible to overemphasize the immense need that humans have to be really listened to, to be taken seriously, to be understood."

Praying in Jesus' name is not merely the postscript to a good prayer; it is the prelude to God's providing the best of all things for his loved ones. Putting the name of Jesus first when we pray is not really praying backwards. Such prayer is actually putting first the purposes of the One whose glory and delight it is to give us the best of earth and heaven forever. By praying backwards, we always move forward with the assurance God will use whatever life brings for the Savior's glory and our good. He can do no less than provide his best for those who offer prayer in Jesus' name. Such prayer is our great privilege, power, and peace.

Jesus taught us never to voice a prayer we could not pray backwards. We utter every petition with a heart of praise, seeking first the honor of our Savior. Praying in Jesus' name is ultimately no sacrifice because he chooses to glorify himself by providing the best of his kingdom for his people. When the greatest desire of our heart is his glory, the greatest joy of his heart is our blessing.

We pray in Jesus' name because we have the blessed assurance that the Father will do for the sake of his Son all that is best for him and those he loves. With this confidence, we have the privilege, joy, and peace to pray to him again and again, "Thy will be done. In Jesus' name, amen."

Perhaps the best measure of the impact of our habitual prayers is the frequency of impromptu prayer in our lives.