Prayer Is Not The Master Key -By Rev. Fr. John Oluoma

The bible never said so anyways, it is one of those popular sentiments that is gradually becoming a genetic meme in our piety genome. “Pray always”(Lk 18:1) is not the same thing as “prayer is the master key”

It is not all doors that prayer opens. Rev 3:20: ” I stand at the door and knock, if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I’ll come in”. Here, It is decision that opens the door of your heart. Even the almighty God conceded certain rights and powers to us.

Prayer is like oxygen. Without oxygen we die, yet with oxygen, we die if we don’t eat food, drink water or has a damaged respiratory system. Prayer is A KEY, a crucial and irreplaceable one, but it’s not THE MASTER KEY.

The master key is UNDERSTANDING. Prov 4:7: “seek wisdom, and to it UNDERSTANDING at all cost”. Yes, it says get understanding at all cost. Prov 3:13 says: “blessed is the man who has acquired wisdom, who has gained understanding”.

Understand the doors prayer unlocks and the ones it does not. When Herod wanted to kill Jesus, Joseph was told to RUN to Egypt, they were not told to PRAY and cast fire on HEROD.
When a certain Pharaoh ordered that male children of Hebrew women’ be slaughtered at birth and the midwives refused, allowing them to live, they were apprehended by Pharaoh and questioned, what saved them was A LIE they told, they told Pharaoh that the Hebrew women were not like other women, that they delivered too fast for any midwife to help. It was a lie, but our ‘fire spitting, Holy Ghost anointed prayer warriors” of this era have turned that lie into a prayer point: “may we deliver like the Hebrew women’”. Just the same way people still bandy and brandish “generational curses, ancestral curses” and have made flourishing ministries out of them.

UNDERSTANDING is the master key. Understand when to pray for safe delivery through natural birth process and when to submit to Caesarean section. Understand that life is a composite of many parts, a system of many units and interconnected complexities.

Someone who neglects studies for prayers will fail exams and watch someone who studies without praying pass. If God makes you pass exam you didn’t study for, will He also do the job you are not intellectually and skilfully qualified for?

Life doesn’t work that way, and it’s God that established the principles that govern life presently, irrespective of what anyone believes. If you believe otherwise, wait until someone who has never trained as a pilot prays and decides to fly the plane you boarded. When you are looking for a teacher, driver or doctor, go and pick prayer warriors who never trained and qualified for these professions.

Understand that for a happy, prosperous and good life, spirituality( where prayer falls in), politics, culture, economics, relationships, and society all play indispensable roles. Where one is missing, the whole is affected. If you make life all about spirituality only, you will suffer the consequences of neglecting others or quietly bear the consequences as a sacrifice for the spirituality you prefer, same is true of the other components.

It was not by error that St Augustine said: ” pray as if everything depends on God and work as if everything depends on you”.
Understanding is the master key.

Coincidentally, prayer is not one of the gifts or fruits of the Holy Spirit, Understanding is. Understand that prayer is not one of God’s commandments, you don’t do God a favor when you pray, it’s for your own good. If you still need external motivations and incentives to pray, you are still a baby Christian.

You reap the benefits of prayer more when you don’t see it merely as a legal tender for transaction, and begin to see it as a time of conversation, bonding, communication and rapport with your loving father. More importantly, prayer is not mathematics with formulas that guarantee same results everywhere. Patterns? yes, especially as exemplified by our Lord Jesus Christ in the bible. Formulas? I don’t think so.

Finally, understand the doors you are supposed to knock on and those you have the keys to open. You only knock on doors you don’t have or own the keys. May we not be foolish to knock on doors we have been given the keys to open.