Prayer as Dominant Desire

Post One

I think we all readily admit the need for prayer.
I think we all are willing to confess that at some stage in our life in Christ Jesus, (and it might even be currently), we have had our difficulties with prayer.
I also believe that each of us sees the need to make prayer a regular activity in our life.

And yet, we might succeed in making prayer a regular activity in our life, and still find that it falls far short of the kind of prayer that our Heavenly Father desires from us.

You see, the ultimate goal as far as our own personal prayer life is concerned…is that prayer becomes for each one of us… not just something we see the need to do, not something we are necessarily constrained to so… but that it becomes something we desperately want to do. The ultimate goal is that prayer becomes for each of us personally a dominant, a ‘foremost’, an ‘over riding’ desire.

Have you eve spent three hours talking to someone on the phone?
You only ever have 3 hour long conversations with someone whom you are really interested in talking to. Someone with whom you ‘click’; someone with whom you feel a bond.
You may have even, on rare occasions, stayed up talking with someone all night.
And obviously if you have done that, then it is clear that talking to that person was a dominant desire at the time, so much so that it overrode the natural urge to sleep.

The Lord had that kind of relationship with his Father. He wanted to speak with Him. Mark 1:35, Matthew 14:23 And sometimes, how often we don’t know… he wanted to do so, so much that he did so all night. (Luke 6:12)

And we marvel at that… how can that be?

Its only love and need that can produce that desire.

Post Two

I’d like to share something quite beautiful I noticed recently in John’s account of the gospel.

And we begin in the upper room in John 13…

We know that the Lord is close now… close to the end. The cross looms ever nearer… dark and foreboding… and yet, how was Christ seeing the events that lay before him?

Well… he knew about the cross, he knew about the shame… but he knew something else… and it was dominant in his mind… what was it?

John 13
1 Now before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. (KJV)


What did he know? ‘that his hour had come’ what… to be crucified? NO!

‘that he should depart out of this world unto the Father…

He knew he would shortly be going to the Father…

Oh he knew, the way to his Father’s right hand was inevitably via the cross… but see what thought is uppermost in his mind!? He is going to the Father!


Let's trace that theme through!

Still in the upper room:

John 14
12 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. (KJV)

28 Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come [again] unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I. (KJV)

Chapter 16, middle of verse 10:

John 16
10 Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; (KJV)

“I go to my Father’

John 16
16 A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father. (KJV)

28 I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father. (KJV)

And now… the intensity increases – Gethsemane is within sight:

And we have the prayer of the Lord in John 17

The Hour is come…

John 17
1 These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee: (KJV)

11 And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are. (KJV)

And see, I think that coupled with the horror at what lay ahead… was almost anticipation, an excitement, a joy… that the road ahead though painful in the extreme was going to result in him going to his Father… and one can see him in the judgment hall, under the lash, enduring the spittle, the crown of thorns, the cross...

Reminding himself… ‘I go to my Father… Father… I come to thee…”

It was a dominant thought… it was his overriding desire… it enabled him to endure the cross.

But you see, it had always been a dominant desire in our Lord. He had always wanted to be with his Father… He had always known that one day he would go literally to the Father. But he had also known that he couldn't just yet…

So he constantly went to him in prayer. He could not go to him physically. He would have if he could have… so he went to him in prayer.

Post Three

Prayer, for our Lord, was a dominant desire… and it was expressive of his desire to physically be with his Father…

And maybe you haven’t thought of prayer like this before, but prayer for us, ideally is to be the same thing… our desire to pray, is to be indicative of our relationship with our Father, and expressive of the fact that we earnestly to desire to take the relationship to the next level… that next level being when we are one with him in immortality… when He dwells with us in the ultimate sense…

If we truly love Him, we will desire to communicate with Him.

I have one more example I would like to shareof prayer as a dominant desire in a faithful man… Daniel 6:

7 All the presidents of the kingdom, the governors, and the princes, the counsellors, and the captains, have consulted together to establish a royal statute, and to make a firm decree, that whosoever shall ask a petition of any God or man for thirty days, save of thee, O king, he shall be cast into the den of lions. (KJV)

Faced with that decree…

10 Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime. (KJV)

"his windows being open…"

The point is that those windows were always open. Daniel always had those windows open. And they are so expressive aren’t they of Daniel’s mindset… the windows of communication – as far as he was concerned, they would not be shut… and they were open – almost as if Daniel was inviting God right in…

And it wasn’t mere ritual for him…he had a desire. And there was also order and consistency about the way he approached his God… but the point is that this desire overrode the threat of the lions den… he would rather go without food, and become the food of wild beasts than stop the lines of communication with his God…

What do we allow to come between us and prayer? How dominant is our desire to pray?

See I think if you are anything like me, sometimes we find that instead of prayer being a dominant desire, and occupying a prime position in our daily lives so much so, that we fit everything else in around that…

Often prayer is neglected… or entered into at our convenience… that being… a time that suit us… and sometimes that time may not come…

Our prayers to the Father ought not simply be when we have a need. Or when its time to pray because we are about to eat. If our prayers are only ever for those reasons I don’t know that we could really say that we have the relationship with Him that He is seeking.

He wants us to pray to Him, because we want to; because we have a desire to do so.
And prayer, can only really be a dominant desire if we love Him to whom we pray.
And we can only love Him, if we know Him. We can only know Him and love Him, if we understand Him.
This is why meditation, bible reading and bible study is such an important aspect of our life.

Post Four

So to summarize:

Prayer must become for each of us, a dominant desire, and that dominant desire will be a product of our love for Him.. And if it is that, then we will have no problem finding the time. We will make the time. Other things that take our time will have to find a place around our prayer life. That part of our life will be sacred to us.

A friend once told me, when I was very young and I have since experienced this to be so true as many of you will have… that prayer is a measuring stick which tells us how well we are going in our discipleship…

To put it another way, ‘prayer is the measure of our relationship with God’ which is… the purpose of life in Christ. If we don’t have a relationship with our Father and His son… we have nothing. The question we need to constantly be asking ourselves is: Do we feel a bond with our Father… do we genuinely love Him and everything He represents to us…

If we do, prayer will become a dominant desire.

End