This might sound like a strange question. I too thought these words were odd when our pastor, Dr. Drew Landry, talked about the subject of trust in one of our Wednesday night church services a while back. He did a series on trust and he preached from Exodus. First and foremost we need to know what the heck these words mean as they relate to our faith and our prayer life.
Prescriptive means that I set the conditions within my spiritual life and the outcome of my life. Basically, this theory states, “God, I will trust You if You do what I want You to do. We remove God from His throne and plop our little selves in His place. When things go our way, which might consist of a fat bank account, angelic children who never would dream of getting in trouble, and a spouse that always does what we want , we are happy and fulfilled spiritually speaking. We want it to go our way. I don’t know how many times I have prayed to the Lord or more aptly put, bemoaned to the Lord “Why can’t things ever go my way?” Why can’t things just go smoothly? Why do these things happen to me? Why do I struggle with things and that other family never does? Ever been there? Then you have a persciptive outlook, especially when it comes to prayer. We prayer for this and that and when we don’t get our way, we want to pick up all our marbles and go home. That is a prescriptive way of looking at things! I am the first to admit, shamefully so, that that is how I have looked at the things that have occurred in my life way to many times.
OK, now we have to define the converse of prescriptive, which is descriptive. This means that we say to God, “Lord, I have no idea, but I will trust you.” Whew! That’s a biggie!!!! We need to remove ourselves from God’s throne and let the rightful Owner reign. He is the Blessed Controller of our lives. He knows what’s best. Why do we struggle so much with control? We seem to think that we have “control” when in reality we have none. God has that job. Let it go! Just let it go! We have to get to the point in our spiritual lives where we just cry out to God! We have to adopt a descriptive approach to our prayer life, our spiritual life, and our everyday life. All three encompass our one LIFE! We only have one life and God is in control of it!
Do you really trust God? He will have His way regardless if you trust Him or not! Are you really happy in your life as a perscriptive? Isn’t is hard to keep all those balls in the air when you are juggling so much? Isn’t it exhausting “trying” to play God and trying to control every situation? I have found it is so freeing to be descriptive in my approach to all things as it relates to my life. I don’t have to worry or be anxious, because He is with me. I can’t say that I always live this way, but I am learning. OK, so here’s the question are you persciptive or descriptive? Which one will you choose today.
