Tonight, after I got home from work, I mowed the grass, and as I was mowing the grass, I was praying about the rain.
I had seen the forecast, and knew if I didn’t get the grass mowed tonight, it could be quite a few days until I’d be able to. So I did what any rational person does, and prayed that the rain would hold off until I could get the yard done.
Because I believe that prayer should also be accompanied by actions, I pushed the mower a little faster than normal. The thunder beginning to rumble may have also been a factor.
After I was done and cleaned up, I started thinking about how differently current me and teenage me prayed about the rain.
As a teenager, I would have prayed for the rain to start immediately so that I’d have an excuse not to mow the grass. Teenage me would have thought current me had lost his mind if he heard me praying for the rain to wait.
Which got me thinking about motives. Sometimes people can sound like they’re praying about the same thing, but when the motives are revealed, we realize that they were praying about the same thing differently.
One person prays for justice to be done because she feels empathy for the oppressed; another prays for justice to be done because the protests are a nuisance to get around on the way to work.
One person prays for a spiritual awakening because he longs to see an explosion of God’s love in the city; another prays for a spiritual awakening so his church can explode in attendance, and he can be highlighted at his denomination’s next convention.
See how tricky motives can be? We can pray for healing because we hurt for the sick person, or because we’re tired of serving the sick person. The prayers sound the same, but the root of the prayers aren’t even close to the same.
But here’s the trickiest part about motives: we are the least likely to be able to understand our own.
All a person’s ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the Lord. (Proverbs 16:2, emphasis mine)
So what do we do? Stop praying? Of course not. The answer is to continually allow the Lord to do what he does best: weigh our motives, and correct them as necessary.
And since we can’t even judge our motives, we’d be wise to stop thinking we can judge another’s. That, too, belongs to the Lord.
So instead of lessening our prayers, let’s add one more prayer to the list:
Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalms 139:23-24)
