Romans 8:26-39
Persevere in prayer (Romans 12:12).
Devote yourselves to prayer (Colossians 4:2).
Pray in the Spirit (Ephesians 6:18).
My house shall be called a house of prayer (Matthew 21:13).
Teach us to pray, said the disciples.
Prayer, whatever it is, is very much a part of our life.
A universal thing … every human being prays … an instinct hardwired into our DNA.
We cry out in a hard moment, “O God” whether we believe or not.
It’s a rare person who does not pray … I suppose there are some, but I suspect they are few and far between.
What is prayer?
I don’t know!
“Preacher, you’re supposed to know. You’ve been to seminary; you have a theological degree; preacher, you oughta know.”
But I don’t know.
Do I pray?
I pray most every morning … my Forty Days of Prayer Journal.
I pray before I eat … I pray while I’m driving (but I never close my eyes) …
I pray a lot.
I’ve prayed all of my life.
Everything from:
“Come LORD Jesus, be our guest, let thy gifts to us be blessed. Amen.”
… to …
“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the LORD my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the LORD my soul to take. Amen.”
Do I know what prayer is?
No, I don’t know.
Sort of like asking,
What’s bicycle riding?
Sitting on a porch at Lake Tahoe with a great book?
Having dinner at a fine restaurant with the one you love?
Going to sleep?
Taking a shower after a hard day’s work?
Sitting and crying with a friend who’s lost her husband?
What are any of these things?
Can we put ‘em into a computer, or a test tube?
What is prayer?
I have no clear idea what is it … but I pray, and I pray a lot, and I know that you do, too.
We’re human beings.
That means we pray.
There are different ways of praying … different postures … standing, sitting, kneeling … hands folded, hands open; arms raised … head bowed or head raised upward … eyes closed, eyes open.
A part of praying is learning something about God.
A little refrain that’s been popular in recent years:
God is good … all the time.
All the time … God is good.
O taste and see that the LORD is good (Psalm 38:4).
Someone might ask, “But how can a good God allow all of this suffering?”
Let’s think about it for a moment … “What should God do?”
Should God hold up every airplane in the sky?
Should God stop every mutating cell?
Should God eliminate every dangerous microbe and virus?
Should God prevent every auto accident, every robbery, every argument, all disagreement?
Should God halt arms dealers, border disputes and ethnic issues?
Should God put an end to capital punishment?
Should God replenish oil supplies, modulate the weather and manage the commodities market?
Should God wipe away every negative thought, every jealousy, every angry emotion, every moment of doubt and fear?
Should God answer every question, resolve every cognitive dissonance, make everything black and white?
Should God put a stop to hurricanes, earthquakes and lightening strikes?
Should God eliminate every wolf that takes a cow, every bear who attacks a hiker, every ant who crawls on our kitchen counter, and every one who speaks unkindly?
Should God do away with death?
Should God make time stand still and the sun never set?
Where would God draw a line?
What should God manage and what should God leave alone?
If I don’t want it to rain on my parade, what about the farmer who needs rain for the wheat?
The tectonic plates move only because our planet has a molten core that generates a gravity field that prevents oxygen from escaping.
We channel our rivers so that folks can live beside them, and when the rains comes, the channels force the river every higher, and higher levels weaken the levees, and the levees are more likely to fail … and when they fail upriver, the downriver threat lessens.
It’s a complicated thing being God, hearing the prayers of billions of people – all at the same time – enemies engaged in war praying for victory over the other … basketball teams and soccer clubs praying for a win …
Everyone of us in this room has prayed mightily for something or someone … but nothing happens, or the worst happens.
Sometimes we hold God accountable for this … maybe we walk away from God – angry that we didn’t get what we wanted … because in our mind, what we wanted was really good; it made sense, and would have been terrific, if only God had come through on God’s part of the program.
What’s a good God to do?
I wouldn’t want to be God even for a moment.
Bruce Nolan finds that out in Bruce Almighty.
At first, when given the chance, Bruce is taken with the absolute power of it all – “I can do anything I want” … but slowly realizes that power alone isn’t the answer to anything … in time, Bruce “Almighty” realizes how small his mind and heart are … and when it’s all done, he’s glad to turn it all back to God!
So what’s up with prayer?
Paul says, we don’t know how to pray as we ought.
Hmm!
Is that true?
Do we know how to pray?
Most everyone prays …
Prayer is a natural instinct …
But then so is eating … but we learn to how to eat well.
Love is an instinct … but we learn to love wholesomely.
Being a parent is a natural thing … but we learn how to be a wise mother or father.
Prayer is a natural thing … but we learn to pray rightly.
A father and his five year old son were headed to McDonald's one day, and passed a car accident. Usually when they saw something terrible like that, they’d say a prayer for those who might be hurt, so the pointed and said to his son, "We should pray."
From the back seat he heard his son’s earnest prayer: "Please, God, don't let those cars block the entrance to McDonald's."
How then shall we pray?
Is there a right way or a wrong way to pray?
Let begin with affirmation: “God hears every prayer, no matter what, and God answers every prayer appropriately.”
The essential answers to prayer:
Yes.
No.
Not yet.
Maybe.
Sometimes we hear someone say: “God didn’t answer my prayer.”
Well, yes, God did answer.
It’s just not the answer we’d hoped for.
Sometimes the answer comes slowly … over a period of time … in unexpected ways.
In one of my espionage books, an Alan Furst character says: “This is a war, and, in a war, sometimes you lose, sometimes you win, and, sometimes, when you think you’ve lost, you’ve won” (The Foreign Correspondant, p.58).
How shall we pray?
The Spirit helps us, says Paul.
The Spirit of God … at work in our spirit … helping us to pray.
Jesus says: Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive (Matthew 21:22).
LORD, let me win the lotto.
LORD, let me have a fabulous career.
Let my loved one get better.
Help my children do well.
Who doesn’t want to win the lotto, and who wouldn’t do good things with the money?
Who doesn’t want a good career … or a loved one to recover … or our children to do well?
Is this what Jesus means?
Whatever you ask for in prayer, says Jesus … with faith.
The key word is “faith” – whatever you ask for in faith.
We could substitute the word “love” – whatever you ask for in love … in love with God, in love with your neighbor, in love with life …
We could substitute the word trust … whatever you ask for, with trust in the goodness and reliability of God … with trust, that God is at work in all things for good … with trust, that God has His eye on the sparrow.
We might use the word patience … we are those who wait with patience for the things of God … we wait upon the LORD … as Abraham and Sarah had to wait for the promised son … as Israel had to wait a long time in slavery until God set them free … and then had to wait 40 years until the Promised Land … waiting is a part of the program … and patience is the virtue.
We learn to ask in ways consistent with God’s will and purpose.
We learn how to align our heart with God’s heart.
Our tastes are elevated … we begin to desire what God wills, and we begin to will what God desires.
Prayer, too, is very much about remembering grace … paying attention to how many times we’ve been saved and didn’t know it … how often good things have come our way, and we didn’t notice … how many accidents didn’t happen; how many illness were averted … how much the luck of the draw on our investments was really the hand of God.
Remembering grace … all the free lunches we’ve had … gracious moments that came in the blink of an eye, and we didn’t even say thanks.
Paul says, pray without ceasing …
To live gratefully.
To live generously.
To live kindly.
To hunger and thirst for righteousness.
To be peace-maker.
To love Christ.
Thank you LORD for the gifts of life.
For the folks who love me.
For everyone I love.
For opportunities and possibilities.
For doors that close, and doors that open.
For the hard times that have sharpened me.
For the good times that have delighted me.
For all the dear and sweet people who keep this world going, who build things and manage things … who protect us at night and take care of us in the hospital … for teachers and dancers, for magicians and car mechanics, for painters and producers, for Hollywood and New York City, for Phoenix and Dallas, for Fords and Chevys and the Honda Prius … for Vons and Ralphs, Bristol Farms and Trader Joe’s …
O LORD my God, thank you, thank you, and thank you.
Thanksgiving opens our eyes to the abundance of life.
I remember, in my first calling – two small churches in the mountains of West Virginia south of Charleston – Toots Adkins – Toots had never worked a day in his life, always sickly, always frail; not a tooth in his head, and he lived in a little tar paper shack no bigger than my office, at the head of Camp Creek.
He was an elder in the Camp Creek Presbyterian Church … and taught himself to read by reading the Bible, and when the kids had a dance at Pee Wee Sutphin’s place, someone playing the fiddle, Toots would do a mountain clog that was both wonderful and funny, as he clogged away with shoes too big for his tiny frame.
Toots was a man of prayer.
Every prayer - a prayer of deep thanks.
For the simple thing of life.
The grace of God.
Jesus and the Bible.
The church and its missionaries.
Preachers and teachers.
Birds and flowers.
Streams and clouds.
Rain and sunshine.
Toots was a man poor by the standards of the world.
But his heart was rich with the grace of God.
Toots had everything.
Toots was a man of prayer.
What is prayer?
I really don’t know.
I pray every day … you do, too.
There’s always something to learn about prayer.
And the Spirit helps us. Amen and Amen!
