The Great Prayer Of Power

Saturday of the First Week in Lent 2023

The command to “be perfect as your heavenly Father” can be very scary, especially to a young person. As kids, we constantly push the boundaries of conduct that is unacceptable to mom and dad. And they constantly reiterate the boundaries, unless they wimp out and let us pass over those limits they set. In which case, of course, our conduct gets even more unacceptable. Boundaries are critical for youngsters to make them fit for society. Those who don’t get clear boundaries often get prison sentences instead. That’s just sad.

So we see Moses telling the people of Israel what God’s statutes and ordinances–His boundaries–are for them to be complete, to be a holy people dedicated to His worship and service. Their perfection or completion would be recognized by the renown and glory they would attain in the eyes of all other nations. That would be God’s way of telling them that they had made it, and they would thereby be truly perfect, truly holy. They would be blessed because they would have walked in the law of the Lord–love God above all things and neighbor as themselves.

Now history tells us that, again and again, they broke this covenant with the Lord, so they never truly attained holiness, perfection, and happiness. In fact, it took a couple of exiles and loss of their national sovereignty to get them to the situation in which Jesus, Son of God, found them in the first century. And they still weren’t perfect and happy, not because of Roman rule, but because they were not loving God above all things and their neighbor as themselves.

So when Jesus purposed to establish the Kingdom of God, a truly holy people, He first had to teach a kind of new way to live, and then suffer, die and rise again to win forgiveness and grace that were necessary for us to live that new way. One component was to be very specific about loving neighbor as ourselves. He singled out the hardest corollary for His Sermon on the Mount: “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” That’s hard, even if the persecution is just some ignorant person calling you names or writing falsehoods on Facebook ® (under an assumed name, of course.)

In discussing just how to do this with a counselee, I learned that the prayer the Christian used was “give this guy what he deserves, Lord.” Well, thinking back over all the wrong-headed and frankly evil things I have done over the decades, I immediately realized that if God ever gives me what I truly deserved, there would be nothing of me left. All the gifts God gives, all His forgiveness, is unearned by us. We don’t deserve any of it, do we?

So we arrived at what I call the prayer of power, and I encourage you to adopt it for yourself. Think of your worst enemy, the person who has injured you the most. Call him Jack. And pray this prayer:

“Lord, thank you for your merciful love to me and my family. Please give Jack everything he needs to grow closer to you, and obey your Law of love.”

Since Our Lord has taught us to do this, the prayer for enemies must be the most effective prayer we can ever raise to God. And then share with each other the positive results you become aware of.