Prayer, the Productivity Nemesis

Prayer is no doubt a very essential part of our lives. It is the dialogue we have with God.

God certainly answers prayers and I haven’t seen the scriptures that back up the claim that when we pray, God says yes, no or wait. Rather, what can be gleaned from the scripture is whatever we ask according to His will, He hears us.

“For this reason I am telling you, whatever things you ask for in prayer [in accordance with God’s will], believe [with confident trust] that you have received them, and they will be given to you.”

‭‭Mark‬ ‭11:24‬ ‭AMP‬‬

“And we are confident that he hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases him. And since we know he hears us when we make our requests, we also know that he will give us what we ask for.”

‭‭1 John‬ ‭5:14-15‬ ‭NLT‬‬

The nemesis of prayer lies in the problem with our unjust dependence on prayers when we pray about things we should act on and live with the delusion that because we haven’t gotten the result of what we prayed for, that God is probably saying ’no’ or ’wait’. This leaves us in the waiting mode with nothing substantial happening in the long run.

We can see such antithesis in the following examples:

• Praying for salary increase when we should be working our ways up
• Praying not to lose our job when we are not adding value to the bottom line of the organisation
• Praying to be promoted when we should be developing new skills that solve critical problems
• Praying to find favour with our bosses when we should develop and position ourselves as too good they can’t do without us. Think about Daniel, Nehemiah, Joseph, Esther

I think God respects street wisdom when applied in solving problems. Consider the unjust steward who was about to lose his job for incompetence. He realises the danger ahead and quickly put structure in place to secure his post employment life. It wasn’t whether the guy cheated his master or not, what was commended was his foresight when Jesus said ”for the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light” (Luke 16:8&9).

A big lesson for us here is that God expects us to apply judgment and reasoning in our approach to solving our problems. God wouldn’t have given us brains, put information at our disposal, given us the internet and access to free learning tools if he wanted us to solve our problems only by praying.

What He said is that we should not lean on our own understanding but acknowledge Him in all our ways. In other words, make sense of your issue but always check with me because as high as the heaven is from the earth, so are my ways different from yours.

Many of us have forgotten the part of our own understand and imagination but run to God in prayers, justifying our inaction and unproductivity by such thought as may be God is saying ’no’ or ’wait’. As a result of this, many Christian Employees have not made the progress God expects from us.

The truth is that this Covid-19 saga and the global economic impact will cause loss of employment and Christians will not be left out. It will however be a new dawn for some while some others will go down, praying for the come back of the cheese that had since moved.

We need to pray, but not as cry babies who have no imagination or understanding of what we are doing.

Rather than pray ’God save my job’ you may pray ’God open my eyes to the new opportunities this situation has presented’ And as you are praying, you are also conducting research, acquiring new skills, asking yourself what will change in your place of work and what should you do to be at an advantage.

Every challenge is an opportunity. It is like writing a promotion examination. You can either pray, study ahead, attend tutorials, review past questions, ask intelligent fellow student or pray without doing those other things. You can figure out the result.

God bless you

Akindele Afolabi

Christian Employee Series.

Prayer: Lord open my eyes of understanding to know what you use me do this season.