Prayer - the Resonant Frequency

If you are an Engineer or a Scientist, you are bound to have heard of resonant frequencies, or resonance.  It can be a pain if, say, you are trying to design a bridge - in which case it is best avoided if you don't want the whole thing collapsing on you, as with the infamous Tacoma Narrows Bridge .  Resonance can, however, be a useful thing too.  If you have two guitar strings adjacent to each other, tuned to exactly the same pitch and you pluck one of them, the adjacent string will resonate in sympathy with the one you plucked, without you touching it.  Most instruments use resonance in some form or another.

Likewise, if we say that something resonates with us, we mean that we agree with something in a deep way and it has an effect on us.  The idea might influence us in some way or engender our support.  In politics you are most likely to vote for the candidate or party whose manifesto resonates with your core beliefs or ideas.

I think that prayer is like that in many ways.  When our will is perfectly aligned with God's will it is like the two guitar strings being perfectly tuned to each other.  When we are tuned in to God, we can start to resonate at the same frequency and our will becomes His will, or vice versa.  An amazing thing happens when you have a whole bunch of Christians in a room together, all praying - everyone is in agreement with each other because of one key thing - we are all tuned in to God's 'resonant frequency'.  And that, my friends, is when amazing things start to happen.  It is just a small matter of finding that frequency.

So how, you ask, do we do that?  Well, when we start to pray, several things happen.  The first is that we become aware of God listening to us.  The second is that we recognise His Spirit in us, helping us to pray according to His will, and probably realise at that point that we were spouting a load of rubbish (or maybe not 'rubbish', but you know what I mean), and God is wanting us to pray about something else.  We change tack and slowly but surely come to realise that we are on the same frequency.  When that happens, we start to hear Him speaking back to us.  Sometimes it's not that simple.  Sometimes there are clouds separating us from God, our own fears and anxieties and worries, and we cannot pray in alignment with Him.  But all is not lost.  If we are willing, He will help us by His grace.

So let us be in resonance with God's will today.