POWERFUL AND EFFECTIVE PRAYER

(Preached on Sunday, September 28, 2003)

Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.  The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.                   -James 5:16

 

In the midst of a Nebraska drought, some thirsty soul sent the following prayer to the Lincoln Journal and Star.

“O Lord, send us and our dusty neighbors around the world a good soaking rain of about 1.5 inches over a 15-hour period, at the rate of no more than a tenth of an inch per hour, preferably at night; and repeat once a week through April 15, with the exception of three weeks appropriate for spring planting; and thereafter once every two weeks until the soil-moisture deficit has been eliminated, or until the farmers wish it would stop, whichever comes first.  Amen.”

 

I think perhaps one of the greatest of human needs is the need to pray.

We want to believe in prayer.

Even people who profess otherwise.

 

She was a senior citizen neighbor, who had become a very good friend of the young pastor.

She had once confided to her clergy neighbor that she was an agnostic, but they had developed a close friendship anyway.

She was to enter the hospital one morning for a mild surgical procedure.

On the eve of the operation, as her priestly neighbor was ending a visit with her, he told her that he would be praying for her.

He comment was, “Thank you, dear, but I am afraid that prayer is just wishful thinking.”

His reply, “Perhaps.  But what a difference when God is listening!”

 

We want to believe in prayer, but we struggle to do so.

We look around us and see people who seem to have the ability to pray and they seem to enjoy fulfilling and secure lives.

But many of us consider ourselves incapable of prayer; at least of having our prayers heard.

And passages such as this from the Letter of James don’t help us.

Sure, the author calls us to prayer, both for ourselves and for one another.

But he also seems to play into our doubts about our prayers: “The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.”

Then why, after all my prayers and tears, is my child dying?

Am I not good enough?

Is it my fault?

The passage seems to raise more questions than provide answers.

 

But in truth those questions were already lingering in the hearts and minds of any of us who take prayer seriously.

After all, it’s difficult to face the fact that maybe God won’t aanswer our prayer in the ways which we desire.

Because if God is not going to do what we ask, especially in situations where we have nowhere else to turn, what’s the point of prayer?

If prayer can’t be guaranteed to solve the situation as we wish it to be solved, why bother to pray?

If my partner or my child or my best friend is seriously ill, but I can’t guarantee that prayer will instantly enable healing, why bother to be a Christian?

Why bother to pray for healing if the person might die anyway?

 

Part of the problem is our attitude toward prayer and our expectation of prayer.

If we look upon prayer as existing in order to answer our desires whatever those desires might be, sometimes we’re going to be doomed to disappointment.

It will be something like Old Mother Hubbard going to the cupboard and discovering that it’s bare.

The vast storehouse of riches that we believe God has available and that we expect to come our way because we’re Christians, won’t necessarily materialize.

Of course, sometimes prayers will be answered exactly as we wish them to be answered.

But sometimes they won’t.

There are no certainties when it comes to prayer.

 

The reason for this is that we are dealing with a living God.

God is not a divine automaton; nor a heavenly computer programmed in a certain manner.

God is not our servant, standing ready at our beck and call.

God is God.

God is the Creator and the Source of Life and the Cosmos.

God is so far beyond us that we cannot even begin to comprehend the thought processes and the wisdom of God.

Yet, human beings, since the dawn of time, have tried to bend the will and action of God to our wills and desires.

We have created complicated processes, rituals, cults, sacrifices, incantations, formulas, to try to influence God to meet and satisfy our desires for life.

That will just never work.

It would be like the ant queen trying to convince you that she and her colony really don’t mean you and the timbers of your house any harm!

 

This may sound harsh, but here is the good news.

God, distant and totally other than we are, has also given us a great gift.

The ability to communicate with God.

Prayer is that gift.

The prime reason for prayer is to communicate with God and to allow God to communicate with us.

It is not the means by which we harangue God until God gives in and grants us our requests.

Nor is it the way in which we let God know that we down here are on God’s side.

Rather prayer is our side of a communication which has been initiated by God.

Once we begin to view prayer not as the magical answer to all our desires but as the means of meeting with God and growing into an intimate relationship with God, most all of our problems over God’s failure to answer our prayers become resolved.

 

We begin to pray not in order to get something out of God, but in order to share precious moments with God.

Prayer’s reward is within the praying, not in some material benefit to be gained as a result of the prayer.

As our relationship with God deepens, so our prayer becomes richer and richer and more and more rewarding.

 

Prayer is natural for us.

We have been hard-wired by God for it, because we are “enfleshed spirit.”

In other words, we are not separate beings from God, but we are intimately and integrally connected to God.

Through prayer we gradually become more and more aware of this connection and of the presence of God which is all around us and in us.

The deeper our prayers become the more we realize we are not separate from God, nor is God separate from us.

Prayer becomes for us then a way of life, lived daily in the presence of God.

 

How do we live fully in God’s presence?

First, by being totally and brutally honest with God.

As we open ourselves fully to God, exposing ourselves, laying before God all of our actions, all of our deepest thoughts and desires, our feelings and questions — we let God into the very center of our lives.

As we do this we will experience a deep intimacy, love and acceptance by God in a powerful way.

 

Second, for our prayers to deepen they must move from talk into silence, at least some of the time.

As we grow silent before God, we will make space and time within our beings to listen for God’s voice.

Our prayers will deepen as we give God space to respond.

And not just to respond, but allow God to respond as God wishes to respond, not as we wish for God to respond.

Then, we must accept that whatever God’s response might be, it will be in our best interests because God loves us.

The more we are able to embrace this attitude, the more space we are making in our lives for God to enter and transform us into the image God has in mind for us — the image of Christ.

 

Third, as our prayers deepen, they will become powerful and effective for they will become less self-centered and more other-centered.

As God transforms us into the image of Jesus, the image of a servant, through our prayers, our prayers will become more and more filled with concern for others and for God’s world.

They will be less and less about what we want and more and more about what God desires for the world.

This is the primary form of prayer in the scripture.

Most of the well-known prayers in scripture are prayers made on behalf of others: Abraham for the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah; Moses for the Israelites; Jesus for his followers and for the world.

God’s purpose for us is to serve one another, not our own selfish desires.

Even this teaching from James is primarily that we are to pray for one another, not for ourselves.

 

This is why there are churches.

Because we understand that we need each other to deepen and strengthen our relationships with God.

This sort of mature prayer requires practice.

It isn’t easy to feel God’s presence.

Primarily because there are all sort of influences all around us trying to distract us from God.

Sometimes prayer is dry and boring.