Praying In His Image

Praying in His Image

You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Philippians 2:5

ON HER WAY TO CHINA IN THE 1920S, Isobel Kuhn was told by a well-known Bible teacher that “all the scum of [her] nature [would] rise to the top” when she got to her field of ministry.^a Isobel wasn’t aware of much scum within her, but she kept that warning in mind. A couple of years later, when she moved to a remote area with her husband and discovered that the women she would be ministering to were covered with lice and fleas, that warning became clear. She did not want to feel revulsion for people she had come to love, so she prayed a prayer of faith: for God to make the souls of these women more important to her than any superficial concern.

God answered that prayer. Kuhn soon found herself hardly noticing the lice and fleas, drawn in love to the women and their spiritual needs. She had prayed to see people as Jesus sees them, to no longer regard others according to the opinions of fallen human nature (2 Corinthians 5:16), and her prayer was perfectly in line with God’s will for her and all of us. We are being conformed into the image of Jesus so we can see as he sees, love as he loves, have compassion as he did, be disturbed about the things that disturbed him, and pray as he prayed. In fact, that’s the true orientation of the entire journey of faith and life of prayer we’re called to. We are not asking for God to give us things independently of his nature. We are asking to enter into his love, purposes, promises, and life. We pray as human beings who have been united with him and are becoming like him in every way.

We hardly need to wonder if God is going to answer a prayer to conform us more to his image. That’s his stated purpose for us even from the beginning. And the more he fulfills those desires and prayers, the more we find ourselves praying from desires that line up with his. Our hearts become increasingly moved by love, our prayers begin to sound a lot like his, and our faith becomes increasingly fruitful.

Nearness to Christ, intimacy with him, assimilation to his character—these are the elements of a ministry of power.