Prayer....again. I'm guessing.

Before I continue.  I downloaded a sermon from the church I would attend if I attended church.  AKA, the church my wife and kids attend.  AKA, the Meeting House in Carlisle Pa.  The messages and action I see coming from this church continue to lift my hope that their are christians that actually care about the message of the Gospel.  Is this church perfect?  Far from it.  But what makes this place a "church body" is awesome.  

Anyway.  I'm still wrestling with what prayer is and how it works.  Hopefully the podcast I listen to will help clear things up.  

So many things in our lives we just do because it's what we've always done.   We don't even know why.  We don't even know if it's needed.  We don't even care.  But I want to explore some of those behaviors.  

I just think most people are doing it wrong.  Not intentionally, just because that's what they've been taught.  Perhaps by others that have been taught wrong.  Here's the example I used yesterday.  We've all been there.  We fart.  And all of the sudden that fart is more than a fart.  We gotta poop, asap.  But we have no idea where the nearest toilet is.  It's so urgent that we even pray, "God, this seems so silly.  But if you are real and you care about prayers like this, help me not poop my pants.  Please reveal the location of a toilet."  I would say, most of the time, that you make it.  Do you give God the glory for that?  

If you believe that God can miraculously step in and find a toilet, don't you think God could miraculously stop the urge for you to poop?  The God that parted the Red Sea and raised people from the dead.  Couldn't he stop your poop?  

Or how about when you pray for rest?   Why not pray that instead of needing rest, that God would give you the strength and energy so you don't even need to rest?  

See what I mean, it's almost like we give God an out to not work for us.  We tailor our prayers that if God answers them or not answers them we can still squeeze God into the outcome.   

If we poop our pants, God didn't help us because he knew we took a chance by eating that food we knew we shouldn't eat.  And that we opted to try to make it home instead of using the bathroom he provided at the restaurant.  Or that he doesn't provide rest because we were on our phones cruising Facebook when we should have been napping a few hours earlier.   See what I mean.  

The most common, sports teams wins.  A quarterback thanks God for granting him the win.  What does that say about the loser who also prayed for a win?  Now we start trying to figure out how God works.  Why did God have him win and not me?  Then we start looking at that other guys lifestyle and comparing what they do instead of what God wants us to do.   God has nothing to do with win loss column. 

So why do we pray?  When do we pray?