It was around 1870 when New York City had one of the most hotly contested mayor’s races in its history. The incumbent was Mayor John Tweed. Everybody called him “Boss Tweed,” and it was a name that suited him well. The time came when he ran for reelection, and Boss Tweed’s political machine began to roll. It represented politics at its very worst. His entire organization was corrupt to the core. But there were a number of committed citizens who decided that they were fed up with this kind of politics and decided to fight city hall. In the beginning they seemed to be making a difference, but as the campaign drug on, the cost of the commitment of time and energy became more than most people were willing to pay. Many of the good people who initially believed in the importance of what they were doing began to drop out. The fight was ugly and many of them did not have the stomach for it. So when the election was held and the results were counted, any hopes for good city government were dashed — Boss Tweed had been reelected. The next day the New York Times ran an editorial and analyzed what had happened. The article summed up the situation with these words: “The good people quit being good before the bad people quit being bad.”
I can’t tell you how many times I have seen that happen. One thing I have noticed is that evil and its followers have a tenacity that is often absent in the followers of good. We give up and give in at the most critical point. And nowhere is this battle won or lost more than in the battleground of prayer. Prayer is difficult. It is a learned behavior. It takes time and effort, so many people give up on prayer — and many times it is before the battle is really over. We quit long before the enemy does. The battle is long, arduous and ugly, and we get worn out and drop out before the battle is done. The problem is that we often give in just before the moment of victory. We give up when we stop expecting to win. We need to pray and live expectantly.
This was the problem that we read about in the twelfth chapter of Acts. This passage is so comical and at the same time so human. Peter had been arrested and chained between his guards, and the church had gone to prayer. Their prayers were almost cries of despair rather than prayers of faith and hope. And when the angel came to deliver Peter, even Peter experienced the shock of unbelief. He thought it was all a dream. When he was freed from the prison he went to the home where everyone was praying. A young girl named Rhoda went to the door, but when she heard Peter’s voice she didn’t open the door, rather she went screaming into the house saying that Peter was at the door. The people who had been praying for his release did not believe her, in fact, they said she was crazy. Then they got into a theological discussion: “If it is not Peter, who is it? It must be his angel.” Meanwhile, Peter was still standing at the door wanting to get in. And when they finally answered the door, the Scripture says they were astonished. Astonished ? Hadn’t they been praying for his release? But when God answered their prayers, they couldn’t believe it.
There are several things we can learn from this story. The believers were doing many things right. In fact, their prayers were answered. Peter was released and was standing at the door — in spite of the fact that they never expected to see him again. And with good reason. Peter had been arrested and taken into the Fortress of Antonio. He was being watched around the clock by four squads of four soldiers each. Peter was bound with two chains between two soldiers. The fortress gates and doors were all secured and sentries stood beside them. It was impenetrable. Herod had already killed James by beheading him, and sought to win further points with the Jewish leaders. King Herod was extremely cruel, killing all rivals to his throne, including his relatives, wife and sons. He was a political animal and would do anything to buttress his political power. So killing Peter would not trouble him in the least, and he could never have been dissuaded from his plan. So there was good reason for the believers to have been unbelieving at this point. It certainly looked impossible.
What amazes me is that Peter was able to sleep that night — on a stone floor, in chains, between two guards. He is at peace because he knows he is in the will of God. In Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s little book, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, he tells the story of Ivan who suffers through all the horrors of a Soviet prison camp. One day, as Ivan prays with his eyes closed, a fellow prisoner sees him praying and scoffingly says, “Prayers won’t help you get out of here any faster.” Ivan slowly opened his eyes and said, “I do not pray to get out of prison, but to do the will of God.” That must have been the prayer of Peter before he fell asleep.
The Christians who prayed for Peter did most things right, and there are several things we can learn from them. The first is this: We must pray passionate prayers. The scripture says that the church was praying “earnestly” for Peter. That is a rather mild translation of the word. The Greek word that is translated earnestly here is the word ektenos. It can also be translated as “fervent.” It literally means to stretch out — like a runner exerting himself during a race as he stretches out toward the finish line. It is the same word used to describe Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. Luke says in his gospel: “And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground” (Luke 22:44). So this is the kind of prayer that they were praying — it was passionate prayer. They did not casually throw out a little prayer like: “O God, please bless our brother Peter and make him comfortable in prison. And don’t let those mean guards hurt him too badly.” No, they were fervently calling out to God, and I imagine that they were doing so with tears. They were laboring in prayer.
In contrast, we pray polite little prayers rather than passionate prayers. So often church prayers come from a ritual book, or are planned and proper. They lack the zeal to which God responds. Passion catches the heart of God. It tells him that we are earnestly seeking him.
I remember the Korean students in my Doctor of Ministry classes. They were mystified by the way we pray here. It all seemed so calm, so measured, so controlled and unemotional that they could not relate to it. It did not seem sincere to them. I can still remember them telling me how they got up with the members of their church every day at 4:00 a.m. to pray for two hours or more before they went to work. One of the men that I became friends with said to me: “When we pray, we pray with tears.”
Passion involves emotion in our prayers as well as intellect. It is tied to desire. Passionate prayers are prayers from the heart. When I think of people who prayed with desire, I think of the woman who pressed through the crowd to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment (Matthew 9:18-22). There must have been many people who were ill in the area, but only she was healed because she passionately pursued Christ. I think of the blind man who called out to Jesus until he was heard, even though people told him to be quiet (Mark 10:46-52). I think of the woman who wanted her daughter delivered from an evil spirit and would not take no for an answer (Mark 7:24-30). These people were driven by a passion and their prayers and petitions reflected it. Ours should as well.
The second point is that, if we are going to pray expectantly: We must pray persistent prayers. Jesus taught us that we “should always pray and not give up” (Luke 18:1). People who pray expectantly never give up. Howard Hendricks, the famous preacher and professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, prayed for his father to know Christ for 42 years before God answered that prayer. He never gave up. It happened through unusual circumstances. Someone gave a young preacher a tape of Howard Hendricks speaking, and on the tape he spoke of his father’s need of Christ. Sometime later, this young preacher happened to be driving the church bus when he saw a man that looked so much like Howard Hendricks that it was uncanny. He actually stopped the bus and asked him if he was the father of the famous professor. He said, “Yes, are you a student of my son?” They began to meet for coffee, and from there they developed a friendship until the young man was able to talk to the older Hendricks about Christ. To all appearances he was resisting having God as a part of his life, but this young preacher took the chance and asked him if he was ready to give his heart to Christ — and he did. He did what his son wondered if he would ever do. But like the people in the scripture today, even Howard Hendricks was surprised when it happened. Hendricks said that when the phone rang and the young preacher told him that his father had given his life to Christ, he said, “He what? You’ve got to be kidding ”
Sometimes we pray so long we wonder if the answer will ever come, but in spite of that we never give up. Do you remember the parable that Jesus told about the widow and the judge? Here it is in his own words: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming ’ And the Lord said, ‘Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:2-8).
The point of Jesus’ story is not that the obstinate judge is like God — far from it. The point of the story is the persistence of the woman. If a persistent widow of that day could get an unjust, obdurate judge to hear her case, how much more will our persistence pay off with our God who loves us
I am amazed, as I read the book of Revelation, of the part that the prayers of God’s people play in what happens at the end times. Listen to these verses: “He [Christ, the Lamb of God] came and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne. And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints” (Revelation 5:7-8). In other words, our prayers effect the future and are important in the plan of God. They are collected and placed before the throne of God. Again we read in Revelation: “The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel’s hand. Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake” (Revelation 8:4-5). Think of those verses when you are tempted to quit praying and think your prayers have no power. You need to be persistent.
The third point is that, if we are going to pray expectantly: We must pray believing prayers. The early Christians who prayed for Peter prayed passionately, and they were certainly persistent — they had been praying all night. But it does not appear that they were really believing that they would see the answer to their prayers. The power of the Romans seemed so formidable that even God could not break through. But it was so easy that God didn’t even bother to show up personally, he sent an errand boy angel to handle all those Roman guards, chains and locked doors of the fortress — and it was more than enough. The chains fell off and they walked right through the guards and the doors.
Tony Campolo tells about the time he was asked to speak at a Pentecostal college. Before the service, eight men had him kneel so they could place their hands on his head and pray. Tony was glad to have the prayer, but each of them prayed a long time, and the longer they prayed the more they pushed on Tony’s head. And then they even seemed to wander in their prayers. One of the men didn’t even pray for Tony, he prayed for some guy he was concerned about. He began to pray and said, “Dear Lord, you know Charlie Stoltzfus. He lives in that silver trailer down the road a mile. You know the trailer, Lord, just down the road on the right-hand side.” Tony wanted to interrupt and tell him that God already knew where they guy lived and didn’t need directions, but he just knelt there trying to keep his head upright. The prayer went on: “Lord, Charlie told me this morning he’s going to leave his wife and three kids. Step in and do something, God. Bring that family back together.” With that, the prayer time ended and Tony went on to preach at the college chapel. Things went well and he got in his car and began to drive home. As he drove onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike, he saw a hitchhiker and felt compelled to pick him up. No one can tell a story better than Tony Campolo, so I’ll let him take it from here: “We drove a few minutes and I said: ‘Hi, my name’s Tony Campolo. What’s yours?’ He said, ‘My name is Charlie Stoltzfus.’ I couldn’t believe it I got off the turnpike at the next exit and headed back. He got a bit uneasy with that and after a few minutes he said, ‘Hey mister, where are you taking me?’ I said, ‘I’m taking you home.’ He narrowed his eyes and asked, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Because you just left your wife and three kids, right?’ That blew him away. ‘Yeah Yeah, that’s right.’ With shock written all over his face, he plastered himself against the car door and never took his eyes off me. Then I really did him in as I drove right to his silver trailer. When I pulled up, his eyes seemed to bulge as he asked, ‘How did you know that I lived here?’ I said ‘God told me.’ (I believe God did tell me.) When he opened the trailer door his wife exclaimed, ‘You’re back You’re back ’ He whispered in her ear and the more he talked, the bigger her eyes got. I said with real authority, ‘The two of you sit down. I’m going to talk and you two are going to listen ’ Man, did they listen . . . That afternoon I led those two young people to Jesus Christ.”
Somebody prayed a believing prayer Faith is what moves the hand of God. The Bible says, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). Later on the writer says, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11:6).
What a God we serve He loves to bless us. He is there to answer our prayers. But our part is to pray passionately, persistently and with faith.
Rodney J. Buchanan
July 25, 2004
Mulberry St. UMC
Mt. Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
