We continue today on our topic, “Learning to serve in a Service-less Age”, more specifically looking at “The refurbished Life”. God refurbishes our lives, in part, through “The Habit of Prayer”.
I confess my struggle with this topic. It is complex yet simple. So complex that we will not even begin to scratch the surface of this profound topic. I can just as easily offer a teaching on quantum physics (I know nothing about quantum physics) as sufficiently address prayer.
A further struggle with this topic relates to hundreds of interpretations of what prayer is. We could list why we should pray, what we should pray for, or how prayer works and still not really grasp it at the end of the day. What we want from prayer is usually not what we get, and the deep lessons of prayer are lost because we do not have the discipline to reach for it until we have it.
Finally, and probably most troubling for me is my insufficient practice of it. I have good intentions and strong passions to pray but interruptions and a thousand other needs and demands seem to overrule my efforts to pray.
However, the subject is before us. God calls us to try if we dare to touch the surface of this mysterious and explosive thing called prayer. I can assure you that while our toes may dip into the water, we won’t get further than that. We will consider ourselves blessed if we manage even a touch.
I selected the title, “Prayer-works” for a couple of reasons. Aside from the obvious, tested experience that prayer works there is a second, more significant emphasis. It is the matter concerning the work of prayer. Why ‘work’ instead of ‘activity’ of prayer or ‘picnic’ of prayer? Why does ‘prayer concert’, or ‘prayer vigil’ sound so gray and bland? The answer is obvious. Prayer is hard work! It is rewarding; it is life-changing; but it is hard.
The Master-Teacher provides some amazing lessons on prayer in Luke 11. Prayer is
1. A Solitary Work
Luke 11:1…
Jesus’ “certain place” was not generally the normal concepts we have of kneeling at our beds or with folded hands in Sunday school or at the dinner table. References to Jesus’ prayer places take us in the wilderness and deserts (Luke 5:16) or in the mountains at night among the wolves (Luke 6:12). Jesus’ prayer habits always involved him going some place that allowed him to get away from people (Matthew 6:5-8).
Bill Hybels, author and founding pastor of Willow Creek Church in South Barrington, IL wrote, “Prayer is not a spectator sport.” It holds true for any of us. If we will be serious about the work prayer entails, there will be alone times and lonely times. There will be solitary experiences of shutting the world out and tuning in to God. This is very hard for a biologically framed being that longs for company and community. It is however, necessary at times to be in “solitary confinement”. We must turn off the flow of demands, priorities and needs long enough to know God is even nearby. Like Elijah who was our protégé a few weeks back, we must find our cave because until we do, we will not hear God. You cannot hear the “gentle and quiet whisper” (1 Kings 19:12, The Message) of God’s voice if your talking or the everything else that is making noise is given first place.
We need to take the solitary work of prayer further however than simply a change in physical conditions. It goes beyond merely blocking out ten minutes before everyone else gets out of bed, while that’s a good start. It especially speaks to a condition of spirit where the soul seeks quiet above noise and silence above voices. Soren Kierkegaard, a 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian once told the story of a man and his prayer experience. “A man prayed, and at first he thought that prayer was talking. But he became more and more quiet until in the end he realized that prayer is listening.” Richard Foster offers a striking benediction to this insight in suggesting that silence is “a necessary prelude to intercession.” Before we can do the fine work of bringing our family’s needs, our churches’ needs or societies’ needs to God, we must come first with a sense of our own need (the content of the prayer Jesus taught his disciples in this passage). Having ten minutes before the world awakes is not much good at all if the whole time is spent thinking of the two hundred things I need to get done today.
If we will really experience the power and activity of prayer, we must begin with solitude.
Jesus teaches further in Luke 11 that prayer is
2. A Presumed Work
Luke 11:2…
“When…”
The obvious lesson needs no explaining. Jesus assumed his followers were praying. They would have engaged in the religious function of Jewish prayers and incantations. Praying wasn’t the problem. The problem was lack of meaningful relationship that religion had imposed on the people. Jesus was about to change that by charging “when you pray, say…” and then he took them through several movements of prayer, like a musical arrangement that ends with a crescendo of glorious harmonies and loud calls of adoration and praise!
We cannot probe the movements unless you’re willing to take a lunch break and come back for round two! The ‘movements’ speak of relationship, hope, need and challenges. It is the content of the Lord’s Prayer, not the rhetoric or empty repetition of words that Jesus is pushing here. Max Lucado’s “The Great House of God” is a book on the Lord’s Prayer if you want something to help you explore it further.
The point is, “when you pray” you need to realise that God is in the room!
Prayer is a solitary work. Prayer is a presumed work. It is also
3. A Bold Work
11:5-8…
Have you had the experience of being asleep late at night, when everyone is gone to bed, the lights are out and suddenly you hear banging on the door? You shock out of your slumber and wonder what in the blazes is going on? Who would dare knock at this hour of the night? And you’re not sure if you’ll answer the door.
Have you had the experience of being the one on the other side of the door banging against a darkened house late at night? You don’t know if something might come through the door to meet you or if they called the police. Does it take more courage to knock on the door than to listen from the inside?
The boldness spoken of here is not one of ignorance and arrogance but one that sees no alternative to the demand that is in front of him. To have someone visit in the culture of this text and not have sufficient food was shameful and dishonoring. There was only one answer – get the resources the guest needed. The man who was gone to bed for the night would have likely been in a single or double room house. Everyone would have slept in the same space. The homeowner would likely have even brought some of the hens and livestock into the same house if there was no other place to put them. Everyone and thing was sleeping; to get up now would create chaos everywhere. Yet, the need demanded help.
I wonder if boldness in this passage is about focusing on insistence for the right reasons; a type of ‘demanding’ if you will because one knows what God wants? Author Richard Foster notes, “In prayer, real prayer, we begin to think God’s thoughts after him: to desire the things he desires, to love the things he loves, to will the things he wills. Progressively, we are taught to see things from his point of view.”
To be bold may relate to knowing the heart of God, therefore crying out for his desire; it is not ablaze for personal satisfaction or desire but for the will of God in a given situation. Too often our praying is characteristic of the little boy’s prayer I read about. He prayed, "Lord, if you can’t make me a better boy, don’t worry about it. I’m having a real good time like I am.” Or we pray for the purpose of wanting God to do something to satisfy a personal desire. James 4: “2You want something but don’t get it…You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”
Prayer is a solitary work, a presumed work, and a bold work. Prayer is also
4. An Engaging Work
11:9-13…
Is Jesus telling us this story to suggest that if we are insistent with God and if we bang long enough on his door we’ll get what we want from him? Not at all. It is a lesson that if insisting with someone in this world gets an answer, when we are selfish and insensitive to humanity, surely God will pay attention when we knock on his door! Verses 11-13 drive this idea home further as Jesus opens up another example. If a child asks a parent to meet their need, in this case food, they’ll receive what they asked for. If humanity in its selfish, sinful form can even do that much and love that deeply, meeting the needs of another human being, imagine what God waits to do! When we say, “Give us this day our daily bread” or we ask for the Holy Spirit (the clear point of asking, seeking and finding in Luke 11:9) we can be sure we won’t have to ask a second time. God will not throw a careless or empty response like throwing a dog a bone.
One of the secrets to this engaging work of prayer is the attitude or understanding that prayer lives in the moment! I call it popcorn praying! An example springs out of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Abraham, the father of our faith, was living in Canaan. He wanted his son Isaac to have a wife from his homeland. When Abraham’s head servant went to the city of Nahor in Aram he needed a sign to know which woman Isaac should marry. We pick up in his prayer in 24:12 – “O God…make things go smoothly this day…As I stand here by the spring…” The depth of relationship with God led to prayer that corresponded to the circumstances and need. It was a natural interaction, a type of dialogue and exchanging of ideas and processing thoughts and will.
While prayer is an intentional ‘coming aside’ as we learned earlier, it cannot be restricted to only that form. Henry Nouwen shows us that “Praying is not simply some necessary compartment in the daily schedule of a Christian or a source of support in time of need, nor is it restricted to Sunday mornings or mealtimes. Praying is living. It is eating and drinking, action and rest, teaching and learning, playing and working. Praying pervades every aspect of our lives. It is the unceasing recognition that God is wherever we are, always inviting us to come closer and to celebrate the divine gift of being alive.”
I appreciate the way Bill Hybels captures our problem: “most of the time we think of prayer as talking to God, rarely stopping to wonder whether God might want to talk to us. But as I’ve studied prayer and prayed, I’ve sensed God saying, “If we enjoy a relationship, why are you doing all the talking? Let me get a word in somewhere!”
WRAP
I realize I haven’t answered the questions you have about how prayer works. I warned you we could only hope to dip our toes in the water of this mystery.
The best teacher on prayer is the Holy Spirit. The most powerful teaching will come with the use of it. The deeper we go in its use, the more we will come to discover a depth that we cannot easily explain. Most precious of all is the intimacy that comes with walking with God in the cool of the garden; when we hear him in the quiet whisper and feel his gentle touch in the breeze; when we are touched so deeply by him in our souls that (to quote author and Pastor, Max Lucado), “there are times when to speak is to violate the moment…”
To get there – and continue going there – we have to come to terms with the fact that it is a work. It won’t come by offering a few quick “Hail Mary’s” or popping in a few fast lines when we need something. It’s about relationship – with God.
Prayer is a pillar of the Church. Are we building on it?
If you will know the power of prayer, you must entertain prayer as a solitary work. You must give yourself to it often but with intentional relationship, not as a scheduled activity for the sake of praying. It calls you to get so in tune with God’s heart that you can ask without doubt because you know what God wants. It is here you will learn to pray as an Agent for God, engaging his heart and Spirit through prayer.
Are you ready for prayer-works?
