A Very Bold Prayer

Scripture: Then he prayed, “Lord, God of my master Abraham, make me successful today, and show kindness to my master Abraham. See, I am standing beside this spring, and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water. May it be that when I say to a young woman, ‘Please let down your jar that I may have a drink,’ and she says, ‘Drink, and I’ll water your camels too’—let her be the one you have chosen for your servant Isaac. By this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master.” Genesis 24:12-14

Observation: Was Abraham's servant even a believer? In this prayer, he only claims a third-hand knowledge of God - the God of his master. He seeks understanding of the situation, but in the context of showing kindness to Abraham. He also clearly wants personal success. And yet, he is praying, and he is praying boldly - not just asking for success, but defining a very specific 'test' to ensure success.

Application: I recently saw a document where a pastor was challenging the biblical justification for praying boldly. This pastor was stating that asking for explicit, bold prayers demonstrated a lack of humility by both claiming a knowledge of God's will and even commanding God ... that instead prayer was supposed to only involve humbly asking God for "his will" in a vague manner. In other words, asking God for something that suited your own goals fell somewhere along the continuum between "prideful" to "mortally sinful" and was absolutely non-biblical if not actually evil.

However, I see bold prayers ALL the time in the bible! In this case, we have someone who might not even be a believer giving a bold prayer, specifically asking God to meet his goals and to 'show kindness' toward Abraham, with a challenging test God must meet first. And God ... immediately delivers!

Clearly, when we pray boldly, it must also be aligned to God's will - in this case, certainly God wanted Isaac to have a wife. There is a pitfall in praying boldly, therefore, about whether or not we are truly understanding God's will. However, in the context of knowing God's clear will, praying boldly is biblical and honorable to God.

Prayer: Dear God, you know the person on my mind today. I do believe it is in your will that he continue to grow and mature in his Christian walk with you. Though I would never presume to be a person who can aid in that, I do pray for his growth. I pray that this very passage today illuminate new understanding for him.