(This is the 4th installment of a series examining the differences between Christian prayer and a pagan, magical worldview. You can find the previous 
posts here, here and here.)
The fourth distinction I want to make between magic and Christian prayer is the magical emphasis on secret knowledge.
For the magical mindset, incantations, spells, etc. (let’s call them magical prayers) are effective because the properly trained and educated magician knows the secret ingredients, words, phrases and names that make the incantations powerful and effective.
These can include the bizarre ingredients we popularly identify with cartoon 
witches: frog eyes, bat wings, snake bladders and more. Specialists now debate whether or not such weird recipes were to be taken literally or if, perhaps, they were code words signifying more common items available in the average home. I suspect that we will may never know the answer. But regardless, the average person seeking help from the local magician certainly believed that actual bat wings and newt testicles were essential items in the magician’s bag of potions.
Magicians also knew the secret names and titles that allowed the magician to command the many gods, spirits, and angels required to bring a positive response to a prayer. Every spiritual force had multiple designations. Some
names and titles were public knowledge. But only those who were initiated into “the mysteries” of a spiritual power knew the secret names and titles of that power. When those secret names and titles were used properly, perhaps combined with a potion containing the necessary secret ingredients, then the person offering those magical prayers could expect the designated deity or demon to do exactly what was requested.
We can see a good example of such magical thinking in Acts 19:13-16 when the apostle Paul encounters the seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest
Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “In the name of the Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?” Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.
This text provides an ancient example of Jewish magical exorcism practiced by Jewish magicians (who were probably entirely orthodox in their religious
beliefs). The sons of Sceva had seen Paul’s successful exorcisms when he declared the resurrected Jesus’ victory over the power of Satan in this world.
As was common in ancient religion, the concept of “personal faith” was not always relevant to religious practice. The Jewish magicians simply latched onto Paul’s use of a new secret name – Jesus.
Here is another example of magical prayer and its emphasis on technique (see the previous post). The Jewish magicians thought they had discovered a new, obviously effective, technique – call upon the secret name of Jesus and watch the demons flee.
Little did they know that Christian prayer is not magic. The results of authentic prayer in the name of Jesus have nothing to do with using the correct technique, or saying the proper phrasing with the right names in the right way.
So, what lessons can we learn?
First, the results of Christian prayer are tied up with personal faith in a real personal relationship with one’s personal Lord and Savior, allowing his Lordship to determine the answers we eventually receive. True prayer is about spiritual intimacy not technique.
Second, there is no hierarchy in the Body of Christ determined by secret or special knowledge. There is no “in group” who is privileged to know the more powerful, more effective ways to pray. Ways that are not available to others who have not yet learned the correct “prayer language,” who haven’t attended the proper conferences or seminars, who haven’t had certain mystical experiences, who have yet to learn the most effective ways to express themselves to God. Such ways of thinking are characteristic of Gnosticism not Christianity.
Third, every Christian should be suspicious of anyone unduly fixated on acquiring and possessing spiritual power. Certain strains of the Christian church seem obsessed with gaining power, exercising power, seeing displays of power, being empowered and living a power-filled life.
Typically, this fixation with power fills the concept with more worldly, pagan notions of power that it does New Testament ideas of power. In fact, I find very little New Testament precedent for this common preoccupation with becoming a more powerful Christian.
For example, let’s look at THE New Testament power- prayer where Paul most explicitly prays for believers to experience more of God’s power, Ephesians 3:14-19:
For this reason, I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
As far as the apostle Paul was concerned, the most vital experience of spiritual power available to any Christian, and the focus of his prayers that
fellow believers become endowed with power, concerns the Christian’s daily experience of union with Christ leading us to a deeper and deeper awareness of the eternal, immeasurable, divine fullness of Christ’s love for each of us.
Get that?!
The immeasurable height, depth, length and breadth of Jesus’ love for his people is so infinitely beyond any human ability to comprehend that the most profound operation of God’s eternal power is best realized when a sinful follower of Jesus slowly apprehends a bit more and a bit more and a bit more again of what the full measure of Christ’s love means in his/her life. That blows my mind…
THAT’S a display of divine power in this life, my friends. And it’s the most incredible display of power anyone can ever experience this side of eternity.
