I felt a cold lump in my gut when I heard a report last week on the radio. A new service has started that, for a small fee, will have a computer say your prayers for you.

That's right.  They want you to pay to pray.

According to their website, they use speech synthesizers to voice each of your prayers at given times throughout the day to keep you connected to God. "It gives you the satisfaction of knowing that your prayers will always be said even if you wake up late, or forget."¹ 

Are you kidding me?

Don't get me wrong. Computers are a great tool. Give thanks to the LORD for all the people who have contributed to the development and improvement of computer hardware and software. And sure, God never talks down technology in the Bible, especially technology that wouldn't be around for another 1,900 years. But selling a service that has a computer say your prayers for you isn't just silly. It's wrong.

Prayers are not just some collection of sounds that have some magical power to force God to action. Nor is God some kind of celestial slot machine - put in the right tokens, pull the lever, and good things will come out. And if God scolded his people for praying with their lips, but having their hearts far away, who would be foolish enough to think that prayer from a mechanical box is any better? Prayer is a precious gift from God, a way in which we can bring our concerns and requests, our praise and our thanks, all straight to the throne of God Himself.

And guess what? It's free.

Can you imagine if God treated prayer like your cell phone company treats your voice minutes and data plans? What if He charged 10¢ a minute for your prayers? What if you had a limit to how much you could pray a month, with 79¢ overage fees? My prayer life already isn't what it ought to be. I imagine it would be worse if I had to pay for it, even though I ought to be willing to pay hundreds of dollars per month, if that's what it would take.

Prayer is free. At least it's free for us. It wasn't free for Jesus. He paid a huge, one time fee for us to have this unlimited access to the throne of God. He gave his life to make us children of God and save us from our sins. Because of that, we can pray, "My Father, hear my prayer," and we know that he will.

Pastor Jansen

1. http://informationageprayer.com