A Sunday School teacher was struggling to open a combination lock on the supply cabinet. She had been told the combination, but couldn’t quite remember it. Exasperated, she went to the pastor’s study and asked for help.
The pastor came into the room and began to turn the dial. After the first two numbers he paused and stared blankly for a moment. Finally he said, “You know, I can’t remember the combination either.”
Then he folded his hands and looked serenely heavenward and his lips moved silently. Then he looked back at the lock, and quickly turned to the final number, and opened the lock.
The teacher was amazed. "Pastor, I can’t believe you prayed and God gave you the combination," she said.
"It’s really nothing," he answered. "The combination is written on a piece of paper taped to the ceiling."
Well, I think we sometimes appear to be a people of prayer, but we’re not really. As a church, we don’t know quite what to do about prayer, or how to go about prayer, or even whether we should have any expectation of prayer working.
Are we a people of prayer? And how do we become a people of prayer?
Prayer is a major element of our New Testament lesson.
This is a strange text from the Book of Acts. The lesson begins like a tragedy.
The church is being persecuted. Herod puts a Christian leader to death. He finds that people like this and it helps increase Herods popularity, so he has Peter arrested and he has him scheduled to be executed.
Then the tragedy turns very dramatic as an angel appears and wakes Peter from his sleep and leads him out of the prison. It is a mystical sort of event as even Peter doesn’t know if it is real, or a vision, or just a dream. The angel and Peter walk up to the gates of the prison and the iron gates open by themselves.
But then the event turns begins to feel like a comedy.
The whole church is praying for Peter’s release, and the church’s response when they see Peter is to think, “That can’t be Peter – he’s in jail. We’re here praying for his freedom, so he can’t be free.”
This business of prayer can be a complicated and confusing thing.
Sometimes prayers seem to go unanswered so often, we find ourselves expecting God to do nothing when we pray. Sometimes we don’t know what to pray for, or how to pray.
Looking at the Book of Acts, this chapter can teach us some important lessons about prayer.
The first is, the church should pray!
Very simple, very logical. Of course the church should pray.
But I have to say that I wonder if we pray enough in our church or in our lives.
Paul says in his New Testament book, First Thessalonians, “Pray without ceasing.”
Many of us will pray for a few moments, and then stop.
When I was a child, I was taught by my Sunday School teacher to never use the word “Amen” in a private, personal prayer. She said that “Amen” meant “I agree,” or “Make it so.” Why would you pray a private prayer and then say, “Amen.” It’s like saying “I agree with what I just said.”
More than that, my Sunday School teacher said that using the word “Amen” was like saying “Good-bye” to God. Like hanging up the telephone, “Bye, see you later,” the word “Amen” has become for some people a way of hanging up on God. Disconnecting from God.
Paul told us to pray without ceasing, and by that he didn’t mean that we should on our knees all the time, or living like Monks in a monestary. He meant that we should be in an attitude of prayer, so that even as we talk with others, part of our mind is in communion with God. When drive down the road, part of our mind should be in quiet relationship with God.
But for many of us, prayer is a rare action. It is something we do infrequently.
How many times have we been in conversation with others and they tell us about how they are in the middle of a divorce, or they are waiting to hear back from the doctors and the news might not be good, or they are struggling to find a job – and we will say, “You are my prayers.”
But they aren’t in our prayers. We say we will pray for them, but we don’t.
One of the things we see in this passage from Acts is that the Church prayed.
We need to pray as a church.
Praying is the most powerful thing that we can do as a church.
Secondly, we discover in this New Testament lesson that the church should pray as a community!
Prayer is often a private thing. It is for me. I like to take long walks at night, alone. It is my prayer time in which I am alone with God. During the work week, I often come to the Sanctuary alone for prayer.
Hopefully, personal and private prayer is something we all do, but we also need to pray in community.
Sometimes, you face something tremendous in your life. You pray in private, but you know there is something within you that needs to call upon others to join you in prayer.
There is something powerful to be found and experienced in the community of prayer. “Pray for me,” is something that everyone needs to say to someone from time to time.
Our bulletin has a prayer list in it every week. These are people who want to call upon the church to pray for them. Are you doing that? Do you take your bulletin home and pray for these people?
It doesn’t have to be the entire church – it could be your small group, or your Sunday School Class, or a few church members you contact via email.
The church finds strength in praying as a community for one another.
Peter finds the church gathered together in prayer for him. The strange thing is that even though the church is gathered in prayer for him, there is that comic moment when the church is caught off guard when it faces the fact that God has heard the church’s prayers.
Which brings us to a third lesson to be learned about prayer from the Book of Acts.
When we pray, we should expect God to respond.
Look at the Bible and you will find many times when prayers were answered. We remember these stories so well.
Abraham’s servant prayed for God’s direction in finding a wife for Isaac, and God led him to Rebekah.
Moses, standing before the Red Sea, prayed for Israel to cross over on dry land.
David prayed for strength, and was able to defeat Goliath.
We tend to forget, however, that there are many times in the Bible that prayer was left unanswered.
Moses begged God to let him lead his people into the Promised Land. Moses died on Mt. Nebo, his prayer refused.
Paul prayed three times for the removal of that "thorn in the flesh." He never tells us exactly what that meant, but whatever it was, he prayed earnestly that it would be removed from his life. But it wasn’t. Instead, he was compelled to make the best of it for the rest of his life.
Even Jesus prayed a prayer that was left unanswered. Jesus cried out in the garden, “take this cup of suffering from me.” He prayed that he would not have to suffer death on the cross. Instead he had to suffer the pain of it.
The Bible is full of unanswered prayers.
And our lives are full of unanswered prayers.
So much so, that we begin to live in expectation of prayer being left unanswered.
And like Rhoda and the church in our New Testament lesson, we reach the point where we are shocked and unbelieving when God answers prayers.
Why do some prayers seem to go unanswered?
That is a complex question and it is not a one size fits all sort of question. There are different reasons for different situations.
Sometimes, our prayers are not answered because our hearts are not right with God.
James, in his New Testament book, says, “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” (James 5:16)
In Proverbs 15:29, we read, “The LORD is far from the wicked but he hears the prayer of the righteous.”
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus warned us that if we go to the altar and in the middle of our worship remember that we are in conflict with another person, we should interrupt our worship in order to repair the broken relationship. (Matthew 5:22-24)
Sometimes, the problem with unanswered prayer is that our time is not God’s time. And what we often interpret as unanswered prayer is simply a matter of an answer that is delayed.
In Jeremiah, chapter 42, the people ask the prophet to speak to God and to provide them with direction for their lives. The people tell Jeremiah, “Please hear our petition and pray to the LORD your God for this entire remnant. For as you now see, though we were once many, now only a few are left. Pray that the LORD your God will tell us where we should go and what we should do.”
The prophet prays, and it is not until ten days later than an answer comes.
Sometimes the answer comes far longer than simply ten days later. It might be years later.
In the 40th Psalm, verse one, we read these comforting words, “I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry.”
Sometimes we misunderstand prayer.
We pray out of selfish motives.
True prayer is God-centered.
But we often turn prayer into a self-centered activity.
In the New Testament book of James, we are told (James 4:3), “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”
The object of prayer is that God might be glorified.
At times we think of prayer as an Aladdin’s lamp which we use to glorify self. We often think of God as a genie who is at our bidding and command.
A theologian once said, “Our prayers often reduce God to nothing more than a Cosmic Bellboy, who is neither very bright, nor very reliable.”
Can we not pray for ourselves? Of course, but we should pray for ourselves unselfishly. Unselfish prayer for self is prayer which seeks not self-centered comfort but Christ-centered conformity to the will of God. Prayer is not an end in itself but a means to a greater end which is to glorify God.
The Bible promises that God will hear our prayers.
It never says that God will obey our orders – and sometimes that is the way we treat prayer. So of course, God may not answer such self-centered prayers.
In the Book of Acts, you don’t see Peter praying self-centered prayers. He isn’t begging for his freedom.
He is resting in the comfort of God. Literally. He trusts God so much that on the eve of his execution, he falls asleep and he sleeps so soundly that when the angel comes to wake him up, a gentle nudge won’t do.
When I was a child, my mother would come into my room and wake me up for school. She was a gentle soul. And she would quietly come to my bedside and very gently rock my shoulder and say, “Maynard, Maynard time to get up and go to school.”
No – that was not the way the angel woke up Peter. The angel acted like my father. When my Dad would wake me up he would come into the room and shout in my ear, “Maynard. Get out of that bed right now and get to school!”
Acts even says the angel had to hit Peter in the side to wake him up!
And you know, that in itself is really the best answer to prayer – not that God would do this or that God would do that, but that he would give us such trust in him that we could rest comfortably and calmly in his loving presence.
....
Written by Maynard Pittendreigh
This material is copyrighted, but Dr. Pittendreigh encourages the free use of this material for the glory of God.
For more sermons and worship materials, visit www.pittendreigh.com
