Pray Like It's MMA — Soulwrights

Everyone is gathered around the circle. The order of pray-ers prep themselves for their concert of soliloquies. The requests have been disclosed. The “unspokens” have been furtively revealed before the room, as if through invisibly sealed cryptic spirit-envelopes. And then we begin to pray.

Without fail, once the work of request is underway, you will hear most if not all of the petitioners couch their invocation in the most luscious insulation they can contrive. There is something we are asking of God, but we can’t pray Him into a corner. So, we give Him a litany of possible means by which He could satisfy our requests, which always includes the provision of ignoring them altogether. Because, ultimately, “Thy will be done.” Right..?

I want to show you something scandalous about the way that we are instructed to pray. This falls out of the Luke 18:1-8 parable. If you would, please read that passage before continuing.

Of course, you have heard this before. Be persistent with the Lord, like the widow is with the unjust judge. But there is much more than mere persistence at work here. This widow is violent in her contention. She is willing to go to blows if it comes to it in order to see that her cause is met, as we see when the judge says, “so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.” This is not a figurative beatdown, as 1 Corinthians 9:27 helps us to see.

If you compare translations of this verse, you will see the struggle the linguists have in conveying the fullness of Paul’s meaning. Where Paul says “I discipline my body,” the Greek verb translated as discipline in the ESV is a bit more robust than that. Other translations vary in the range of their efforts: to subject, to pummel, to treat roughly, to train like a champion athlete, etc. The more precise efforts use the language of a boxer, of bruising the body, of a man coming to blows with his opponent.

In another missive I will play that out in regards to self-discipline. For today’s purposes, however, we’ll stay on the particular point of prayer. The rough manner with which Paul treats his own body is the same manner that Yeshua instructs us to approach God. This verb at work in both passages, ύπωπιάξω, conveys real bodily violence. It is not figurative, not in the least. “To strike beneath the eye” is one way of rendering its particular violence, “to bruise” is another. The English colloquial equivalent of the term might say “to leave a person black&blue.”

Both Paul and Jesus are speaking to us of pugilism at its finest. This is the sweet science, the noble art of face-punching. Paul pulls no punches with himself and Jesus instructs us not to pull them with God. In both matters, the life of self-mastery and the work of prayer, it is a boxing match. No, that’s putting it too nicely. It’s a street fight. And God wants us to win, even against Himself.

At this point I am going to stay far afield of any talk of the mind of God. That is a hornet’s nest that I will resist swatting presently. Whether you hold to Calvinism, Arminianism, Molinism, Open Theism… it doesn’t matter. Obedience looks the same in any context. We aren’t discussing the “why” or the “how,” we are only addressing the “what.”

You see, when we pray “Thy will be done,” included within the provisions of His will is the contingency of our will. He wants us to contend with Him! Go do a Biblical survey, if you doubt me. Moses, Abraham, Jacob, David and a holy host of many others did exactly this.

They squared off with God. They stated with no apologies whatsoever precisely what they wanted and unflinchingly why He should deliver. They cut their angles and found lines of attack. They reasoned with Him. They did their absolute best to back Him into a corner and tee-off, toe to Toe. They prayed like it’s MMA.

And so must we. Of course, this isn’t going to envelop the entirety of our relationship with the Godhead. His presence in our lives as father, lover, nurturer, deliverer all remain… we most certainly need to cultivate the practice of crawling into Daddy’s lap. But I think you have already been instructed about doing that. It’s unlikely that anyone has given you a helpful how-to guide on a good ol’ fashioned match of holy fisticuffs.

Here it is. Begin this practice just as soon as you have the nerve. Go into your prayer closet with the gusto and determination of an old lady swinging her purse in a fury. Prayer is as much a battle of attrition as it is a supplication.

Pray like it’s MMA.