The Divine Protection Racket?

God may be in control, but I don’t think my prayers providing him with lists of things that need to be prevented and rescued really gets his attention.

So I’m having trouble joining in with prayers for God to protect various people from various things, or prayers asking God to straighten out all kinds of problems which I suppose he could have stopped from happening anyway.

In my desire to have a Christ-shaped spirituality, I’m convinced that Jesus didn’t offer his services to “protect” his disciples from bad things. He seems pretty clear that all kinds of bad things are going to happen to them, and he’ll work with whatever comes along.

This article from The Internet Monk could have been written by Tom. He comments to me often about people's expectations in prayer not matching what Jesus said about it in the Bible. We discuss time and again that prayer is about bringing ourselves internally more in line with God and relationship with Jesus than about changing the externals of our situations. Yes miracles happen, but as with Jesus' example, they act as signs of God's power and presence ... Check out the post. It's a good 'un.