The previous blog article asked the general question, “How does prayer of supplication work?” Now I want to narrow it down a bit, and consider a very specific prayer of supplication: the earnest prayer that our government stop sponsoring the abortion holocaust.

For nearly four decades now, pro-life Christians in the U.S. have been beseeching God to deliver their nation from the legalized slaughter of innocent human babies. I’d really like to give this a positive spin, as so many do. But the plain fact is that these prayers have not yet been answered. In fact, it seems as if the longer we pray, the worse it gets.

Consider where we were 40 years ago. In 1973, the majority of people, voters and politicians alike, were shocked and angered at the Roe v. Wade decision that decriminalized abortion. But in the years following, the shock wore off and people learned to accept it as an established fact. Soon thereafter it was embraced by political ‘liberals’ as a right, and tax monies were allocated to securing this right for poor women. More tax money was allocated for Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers and abortion advocacy groups.

This development – the public funding for abortion – has been in many ways more damning than Roe v. Wade, because it has made every U.S. taxpayer complicit in the crime.

To those few of you who have been willing to read this far: please re-read that last sentence, and consider its ramifications – the moral and spiritual ramifications.

Returning to the theme of petitionary prayer: Is the willingness to be moved by one’s own prayer an important factor? Let me frame that as a negative question: If the believer is not moved by his own prayer of supplication, can the prayer itself be very real? Can one honestly expect God to be moved by such prayer? What if the believer is actively participating in an activity that contradicts his own prayer? Let me be specific: If we pray for our government to stop funding the abortion juggernaut, ought we to keep willingly funding it ourselves?

A pro-life tax strike is not primarily about forcing our government to do the right thing. It is first and foremost about doing the right thing ourselves. It is about purifying our prayers.

I have no idea whether a pro-life tax strike would have its desired effect, and reverse Roe v. Wade. But that’s not the main point. This thing is way bigger than any of us, and it will take an act of God to turn it around. That’s where our earnest prayers of petition come in. We must beg God to work a miracle of grace, to do what we cannot do on our own.

God will remain true to His own righteous nature. In order for Him to hear our prayers, those prayers must be earnest and honest, and we must be willing to be affected. At a minimum, we must cease our willing funding of abortion. A pro-life tax strike is not primarily about forcing our culture and our government to do the right thing. It is first and foremost about doing the right thing ourselves. It is about purifying our prayers, allowing the Spirit to move us as we pray, thus unleashing the power of the Spirit to work a miracle of grace, both in us and in our world.

Ref: "Purified efforts"

How does prayer work? Specifically, how does prayer of petition or supplication work? How does it come about that our making a request of God, our placing of a need or desire before God, has an impact upon what God does? And why are some prayers of supplication answered, and others seem not be be heard? Realizing this to be a tough subject, and not pretending to be a qualified authority, I will nonetheless offer a few thoughts…

St. James teaches that the fervent prayer of the righteous saint is powerful before God (Jas.5:16b). But if this means that one has to be sinless in order to pray, we would all be disqualified. Rather than worthiness, it may make more sense to consider the earnestness of the one praying. Which is to say, does the prayer come from the depth of the soul? Is it an honest and earnest cry from your heart to God’s heart? Are you moved by your own prayer? Then I suppose God may be moved as well. But if it is a perfunctory prayer, a mere mouthing of words, if your soul is not touched, then you can hardly expect God to be touched, either.

Please don’t misconstrue this to suggest the quasi-atheistic notion that you must yourself be the answer to your own prayer. We’ve all heard this humanistic approach: that the point of praying is not to move God, but to be moved by your own prayer into doing yourself what needs to be done to bring about the desired end. I call this quasi-atheistic, because it tends to minimize or even obviate faith in the power of our Heavenly Father. No, there are things beyond our ability, things beyond human power, and for those things we need God to move; we are incapable of answering our own prayers.

Nor am I thinking that some kind of spiritual exertion is the key. From time to time, a friend may ask me to pray ‘real hard’ for this or that critical intention. But I don’t know what it means to pray ‘hard’. The mental image that pops into my head is that of the Cowardly Lion, who, having been told that he must have faith, scrunches up his eyes real tight, saying to himself, “I do believe! I do believe! I do, I do, I do believe!” As if it required a concerted effort of mental or spiritual energy in order to conjur up the necessary faith.

Prayer that leaves the pray-er untouched is not a true movement of the Spirit, and is therefore useless.

So then, what does fervent prayer look like? I think it might be a ‘loaves and fishes’ sort of thing (Lk.9:12-17). The apostles really were powerless to feed the multitude, their resources pitifully inadequate. But those inadequate resources were nonetheless required. When they willingly gave what little they had to give, they then saw the power of God work through them and they saw God do what they could not do on their own.

So it is with prayer. The Holy Spirit moves in the human soul, through the Son, to the Father. That’s a real prayer, a prayer that may move mountains. And it is God that does the great work, not the human. But the human soul is the channel or vessel in which the Spirit of God moves. When true prayer happens, the vessel itself will necessarily be moved as well; the soul will be profoundly affected. A prayer that doesn’t have this effect, a prayer that leaves the pray-er untouched, is not a true movement of the Spirit, and is therefore useless.

You might ask what this has to do with a tax strike website. I will attempt to draw that connection in the next blog article.