Every night before our two kids go to bed, we spend a little time together as a family reading the Bible, praying, and singing a few hymns. Our youngest, at almost three years old, often excitedly asks to pray right after his big sister. And as many toddlers like to do, he repeats his big sister’s prayer as best he can before adding his own thoughts, which typically covers what he can remember from his day.
A typical prayer could consist of thanking God for the friends he saw at the park, reminding God he did not like the carrots from dinner, or asking God to help him find the monster truck toy he lost that afternoon. When he cannot think of anything else, he starts looking around the living room and thanking God for whatever he sees – the lamp, the couch, the snack crumbs on the floor, his mismatched socks – you get the idea.
My son prays what he knows; he prays what he has experienced daily. What he abided in that day – what he heard and saw and lived – is reflected in his prayers.
Abiding vs. Self-Serving Prayers
When I stop to take the time to reflect on my own prayers, I see a similar pattern. During seasons when I am consistently in Scripture and daily meditating on God’s words, my prayers reflect this. I can look back in my prayer journal and see the ways in which my thoughts, desires, hopes, and dreams aligned with those that I saw of Jesus in Scripture.
And God granted my requests such as deeper patience with my family, growing in wisdom and discernment of the Lord’s will, or the courage to more boldly share the gospel with my friends and neighbors. The fruit I asked for in these seasons was the fruit Jesus Himself had grown during His time on earth, the fruit He taught and encouraged His disciples to pursue.
Though God doesn’t promise to answer all of my prayers exactly as I want, I found that I was praying in God’s will as presented in Scripture.
But there were also seasons where I have not been connected to the vine. I’ve had seasons during which, for whatever reason, I was not spending time seeking God’s word and meditating on the life and teaching of Jesus. My prayers reflected that loss of connection and instead reflected the worldly messages I was abiding in. They were half-hearted, scripted prayers that I uttered from my own desires – desires to be successful at my job, answers for what was going to happen in the future, or even that God would produce spiritual fruit in others so that they would treat me better.
These prayers were not prayed out of a desire for God to be glorified but rather for me to find rest in my own success, security, or comfort. And these are not the prayers that the Lord answered. As a Christ-follower, my job as a branch, as John writes, is to produce Christ-fruit.
The Father will not grow fruit in us that is not reflective of His Son. Rather, in these times of disconnection, when we choose to abide in the words of the world around us and allow those words to abide in us, we will remain fruitless. We will ask and not receive because we are not meant to produce anything but the fruit of Christ.
A Lifestyle of Abiding
This fruitlessness should not lead us to despair, though. It should point us back to the vine, ready to seek out the fruit that Jesus has modeled for us. It should lead us to turn off the noise of the world and seek the words of Jesus and to fill our days with the kind of desperate pursuit the Psalmist described in Psalm 119:15-16. The psalmist writes a declaration that “I will meditate on your precepts and focus on your behavior. I find delight in your statues; I do not forget your instructions.”
When we abide with Jesus, our prayers will start to be a reflection of His will for our lives. Like my son’s prayers, my own prayers are reflective of what I fill my day with. When we are filled with His words and teaching and meditate on the life of Jesus, we will desire and seek the Lord’s will. In turn, God answers our prayers, and we will bear the fruit that brings glory to the Father.
There are so many ways in which we can invite Christ’s word to abide in us. We can fill our days with Scripture songs, meditate on His Word daily, memorize the words Jesus spoke, study His life and teachings with other believers, or share what we are learning with those around us.
My prayer for us, sisters, is the same as that of my prayer for my son – that we would grow not to repeat the prayers of those around us but only repeat the prayer of Jesus. I pray that we would allow the prayer Christ taught in Matthew 6:5-13 to abide in us daily and truly desire that God’s will would be done in our lives.
