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Great Themes of the Bible Series

#5 Prayer

(John 16:23-24 NIV)  In that day you will no longer ask me anything. I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. {24} Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.

 
When John F. Kennedy Jr. died in a tragic plane crash last year, many of us were reminded of — and many more of you saw for the first time — scenes from his father's presidency that involved a two- or three-year-old little boy who, with his sister Caroline, had free run of the Oval Office.

Cabinet officers or important visitors from other countries might be in conference with the President of the United States. But a little boy and girl would come bounding down the hall, burst into the room that was at the center of power for the free world, and set their course not for the president but for their daddy.

The Secret Service would stand back. Startled foreigners would stare in disbelief at such a breach of protocol. And members of the cabinet and inner circle would just smile at a family moment playing itself out against the backdrop of government and politics.

Don't you think something on that order constitutes a faithful interpretation of Jesus' solemn promise (i.e., "I tell you the truth") about asking things of his Father in his name? Can't you just visualize it through the eyes of faith?

Mighty angels and archangels stand back when Christians pray. Saints of ages past are a bit stunned at such unblushing boldness in Jesus' name, for they had no such nerve in their time of altars, tents, and priests. But the Son and Holy Spirit rejoice that saved people are willing to claim the access we have been given.

Access to God in Jesus' Name

Dare we believe that our access to God is so personal? So immediate? Can God's children just waltz into the throne room of the universe whenever we take the notion?

In his book The Prayer-Centered Life, Dudley Delffs devises an interesting analogy to help us understand what it means to have this sort of direct access to God in prayer. He suggests that you imagine having a remote business relationship with the CEO of a conglomerate corporation worth billions of dollars. For our purposes, let's make it the CEO of the Honda Corporation in Japan.

You're having a problem with the dome light of your six-year-old Civic that has 160,000 miles on it. When you open the door at night, the light doesn't come on like it's supposed to. So you write a letter addressed to "CEO / Honda Corporation" and post it to the company's office in Japan. You explain how frustrated you are with the problem, give an account of the trips you've made to a local dealer in Tennessee, and explain that you just want to know what to do next. Can he suggest something you've overlooked in trying to get it fixed?

In response to your letter, the CEO shows up on your doorstep. He calls you by your name, introduces himself, and pulls your letter out of his pocket. "I'm here to set things right with the car you bought from my company," he says. "I've brought these two expert mechanics with me. So if you will just show us where your car is, they'll get to work immediately." While they work, the company's head man sits with you over coffee and learns about your family, your job, your hobbies.

It isn't long until the smiling mechanics reappear and take the two of you to see their finished work. As they prepare to leave, their boss shakes your hand and says, "We have a personal relationship now. You're not just a nameless customer with a car my company manufactured. I know you now, and you have direct access both to my office and home. I've written down my phone numbers for you on the back of this card. And my e-mail address is there too, just in case that's more convenient."

The problem is that the analogy is flawed. God is greater than a CEO. You have less claim on him than a customer with some years-old and out-of-warranty product. You have less reason to expect his personal, direct intervention on your behalf than someone you've paid for a product. But maybe the analogy helps you — as it did me — to grasp how startling it must have been to Jesus' disciples to hear his words about immediate access to and favor with God on the basis of his name.

The commonest complaint I hear from my fellow-believers about their spiritual lives is that they pray so little, that they are so easily distracted from prayer, that prayer is such "hard work" for them. If we are as prayer-bereft as some believers say, I would have to agree with R.A. Torrey's comment: "When I stop to think how little time the average Christian today puts into secret prayer, the thing that astonishes me is not that we are so little like the Lord, but that we are as much like the Lord as we are."

The HOW of Prayer

When some of us lament our lack of prayer, though, I suspect we are confessing a lack of formal, structured thanksgiving, confession, and intercession before the Lord of the Universe. And, true enough, Jesus gave us a model for prayer that we commonly call "The Lord's Prayer" at Matthew 6:9-13.

It is a prayer that begins with praise and adoration, moves to a pledge of personal submission to his will, and acknowledges dependence on him for such routine necessities as daily bread. It both pleads for forgiveness and a forgiving spirit. And it further grants that, apart from God's sustaining grace against temptation, we would be hopeless before our enemy, Satan. So Jesus taught us to pray:

Our Father in heaven,  hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.  And lead us not into temptation, 

but deliver us from the evil one.

But there is another type of praying that God honors as well. It is one that I suspect most of us don't even acknowledge as prayer. Perhaps God accepts it as prayer for the simple reason that he knew how difficult and foreign so spiritual an exercise would be for us in our carnal existence. That he honors this alternative method of pleading with him as legitimate prayer stands as another evidence that his grace is the basis for all his dealings with us.

Here is the verse I have in mind about what I've called "alternative" prayer: "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express" (Rom. 8:26). I do not understand this verse — as some do — of praying in tongues or via a private language of prayer. Neither do I think it refers to groans that come from the Holy Spirit, for I cannot conceive of a divine being who is inarticulate. To the contrary, I think Paul is referring to the groans, sighs, and stammerings that come from believers when we are confused and incoherent in our spiritual lives.

These are the angry complaints of teenagers and the disconcerted laments of their parents. They are the sobs of single mothers or betrayed and abandoned wives. They are the whimpers of a car wreck victim. They are the private anguish of a man who has just lost his job and doesn't know how he will support his family. They are the groans of someone dealing with cancer's pain or enduring the side effects of her chemotherapy.

They are the sobs of a young widow and the wounded-animal cries of grieving parents. On the authority of Paul's apostolic interpretation of their meaning, I can assure you that the Holy Spirit transforms such inarticulate sounds into intercession on behalf of God's people. Isn't that comforting? Doesn't it reassure you? More than that, it affirms that most of us are not nearly so prayerless as we sometimes think.

The WHEN of Prayer

As to planned and proper prayers of the first sort, we should all strive for more rather than less of them. Whether you are a minister or a mother, a businessman or an electrician, in school or in real estate, you would do well to reserve a time on your calendar each day for prayer. Book an "appointment" for prayer! If you aren't in a situation where that is either practical or inviting to you, then realize that prayer isn't a prescribed posture or a ritualistic form.

C.S. Lewis once wrote: "No one in his senses would reserve his chief prayers for bedtime — obviously the worst possible hour for any action which needs concentration. My own plan, when hard-pressed, is to seize any time and place, however unsuitable, in preference to the last waking moment. On a day of traveling . . . I'd rather pray sitting in a crowded train than put it off till midnight. On other and slightly less crowded days a bench in a park or a back street where one can pace up and down will do."

I Can Ask for Anything? Anything?

"But what are we to make of Jesus' words about getting ‘whatever you ask in my name'?" someone asks. "Can we take that seriously? Can I just get anything I want from God — by asking in the name of Jesus?"

I suspect questions of this sort are generated by our tendency to treat every proverb and wisdom saying of Scripture as a law. Obviously there are some limitations on what we can ask for and expect to receive from God. Otherwise we would be reducing God to a "genie in a bottle" who grants three (or unlimited!) wishes to anyone who says the magic word. And that is superstition, not faith. It is the name-it-and-claim-it gospel rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ.

God grants the things we ask in Jesus' name, provided they are consistent with his will. That much is said explicitly at 1 John 5:14. And James pointed out that first-century believers sometimes asked for things but didn't receive them because they asked from "wrong motives" and for the sake of their selfish pleasure (Jas. 4:3). The same sort of requests today will get the same sort of answer.

God grants the things we ask in Jesus' name, but he does so out of his wisdom rather than according to our folly. Do you remember the country song from a few years back about thanking God for unanswered prayers? The first time I heard it, I thought, "Now that's good theology on the country music station!"

Would you have been blessed by getting all the things you've asked for? Can't you look back in your life at things you wanted desperately and prayed to have — that would have destroyed you, if you had gotten them? Paul prayed for his thorn in the flesh to be removed, but God told him that his long-term spiritual interests would be better served by letting that affliction teach him to depend on his all-sufficient grace (2 Cor. 12:7-9).

And Paul's experience leads to a third observation about our prayers that seem to go unanswered. We must trust God to answer our prayers in his own way and not by the method we expected. God answers every believer's prayer for healing, for example, but not always in the way we had in mind.

If we don't get our healing from cancer here, we will certainly get it in the morning of the resurrection. In the words of another recent song, this one a contemporary Christian piece, God sometimes "stills the storm" and sometimes "stills his child" who is frightened by the storm's thunder and lightning.

PRAYER: THREE LEVELS OF CONCERN

Your five year old daughter comes to you three separate times with three separate requests on the same day. Each time, that request is a specific request. These are the three:

"Please play with me!"
"I am hungry! Please give me something to eat."
"I am sorry you need money! Please take my piggy bank!"

None of these request were whinny attempts to gain attention.

All three requests were genuine and sincere. All three requests came from her heart. But, did you regard all three as equal? All three may be equal to her, but all three are not equal to you.

Her desire for you to be a playmate is deep, genuine, and earnest. When she made that request, she felt the need to play. At that moment, playing was extremely important, and it needed to happen right then. You were honored that she asked you to play, but you also understood that playing was not the highest priority for her well being. As important as playing was to her, other things were more important for her right then.

Her request to be fed (if it was meal time) was more important to you than her play request. If she was really hungry, if it was time for her to be really hungry, and if her hunger caused her genuine discomfort, her hunger was very important. You listened to her request to play, but you listen to her request for food differently.

If she overheard you talking confidentially to your husband or wife about a troublesome bill, if she understood your concern, if she understood that you had serious difficulty paying that bill, to her it is just a question of money. She had some money in her piggy bank. Money was money. If you cannot pay the bill by yourself, she will help you pay the bill. She will give you her money to pay that troublesome bill. And her offer deeply touches you. You are moved by her awareness. You are moved by her unselfish concern. You are moved by her desire to help you.

Three very different requests. Three levels of concern.

Our prayers often are requests. While God is attentive to every prayer, the nature of our awareness influences His level of concern. Never is God unconcerned when sincere requests come from hearts that belong to Him. Yet, some concerns are higher than others.

Luke 18 records two parables Jesus gave concerning prayer. I call your attention to both of them.

The first of the two parables is given in verses 1-8.

When Jesus gave the parable, its context needed no explanation. Jesus used a common situation everyone understood. What they understood about an everyday situation, we need explained because we do not live in their circumstances.

We must begin with a clear understanding about the two principle people. A widow was a defenseless, vulnerable individual in their society. She had no husband to defend her, and she lived in a man's world. Many considered widows "fair game" and took advantage of them in unjust, horrible ways.

The Israelite town judge was responsible to see that injustices were properly and fairly corrected. He was the person you went to see if someone wronged you and refused to correct the wrong. But this judge felt no responsibility or accountability to God--God was not a factor in his decisions or the cases he heard. He also did not care what other people said about him. The foundation of his actions was, "What is in my best interests?" That is all that really mattered to him.

The situation: Someone continued to take advantage of the widow. Of herself, she was powerless to stop this unjust person. Her only hope for protection was to have this judge grant her legal protection.

But the judge was completely unconcerned about what continued to happen. Her suffering because of the injustice did not adversely affect him. It the situation did not affect him, he had no reason for concern. But the widow was persistent.

She came back again and again with the same request for protection. The widows persistence made her problem the judge's problem. Finally, the judge gave her the protection she requested. He did not act on concern for her. He acted on concern for himself. "If I do not do something, she will keep coming back to me, and I am tired of seeing her."

The point of the parable must not be misunderstood. Jesus was not saying the God is disinterested  when we wrongfully suffer hardships. He was not saying that God acts only in self interest. He said if an ungodly man can be moved to action by persistence, a godly person should understand that God will respond to our injustices quickly.

The issue is not God's willingness to respond, but our confidence in Him. Level one of our prayers I would call prayers offered because we are distressed by the trials of life. That is likely the most common prayers prayed. Those are "what is happening to me physically" prayers.

The second parable is given in verses 9-14.

Again, the context of the situation needed no explanation to the first century Jews. But the context needs to be explained to us because none of the elements of the situation are common, everyday realities to us. To us, a temple experience is strange. Jewish people in or near Jerusalem commonly went to the temple to pray. While there were designated times to go pray, a person could go to the temple to pray at any time. Only priests actually went in the structure we would call the temple. People prayed in what we would call temple courtyards. A common stance: face looking upward and hands reaching upward--to them a stance of humility and dependence. With some, private prayers might be also audible prayers.

The Pharisee was the symbol of a deeply religious person. He represented the common image of the devoutly religious. In that day, if anyone was concerned about God's commands and scripture, it was the Pharisee. The tax collector symbolized the wicked Jew. Because he collected taxes that benefitted the Roman government, many Jews regarded him to be an enemy of the nation of Israel. Since the Romans took away Jewish independence, collecting taxes to benefit them was regarded as an act of disloyalty to Jewish people. The tax collector had the power to assess how much you owed and the power to make you pay his assessment.

The whole system was an invitation to corruption. Tax collectors often abused people, often took advantage of their opportunity and power. The contrast was immediately evident to Jesus' audience: a contrast between the symbol of the devoutly religious and the symbol of the truly evil.

The situation:  A Pharisee and a tax collector were at the temple at the same time praying. Jesus said the Pharisee prayed to himself (not to God). He thought that he told God what a godly person he was.

He was so grateful he was not a wicked person. Two times a week he fasted (a declaration of humility). He gave God ten per cent of everything he acquired. He considered himself to be good and the tax collector to be evil. Though it does not say, he probably was as physically close to the temple as he could get to pray.

The tax collector was consumed with his unworthiness and evil. Not only did he refuse to look up, but he stood far away from the temple structure and in grief for his wickedness beat on his chest in a sense of unworthiness. In nothing did he commend himself to God. He asked, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner." He knew who and what he was. The Pharisee's confidence was in his goodness; the tax collector appealed to God's goodness. The tax collector, not the Pharisee, left with God's justification.

God completely destroyed the tax collector's evil. Jesus said quite simply that the person who exalts himself will be humbled and the person who humbles himself will be exalted. Level two of our prayers I would call prayers offered because we have reached the awareness of our own evil.

Commonly, a Christian has to grow to the awareness of internal evil to pray such prayers. Awareness of God's incredible goodness. Awareness of how evil we truly are. It is much too easy to be blinded by our sense of goodness and rightness.

For the third level, I simply want to read the prayer Paul prayed for the Ephesian Christians.

Ephesians 1:15-20 For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you and your love for all the saints, do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers; that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places.

To me, some things in this prayer leap out in Paul's prayerful requests for them. May God give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in knowing Him. May the eyes of your heart be enlightened so you will know the hope of God's calling, the richness of the glory of His inheritance, and the great power He makes available to believers.

May you understand the incredible things God did because the strength of His might was at work in Christ's resurrection. Level three of our prayers I would call the awareness of God's purposes. At this level we stop focusing on our desires and focus on God's objectives. We stand in silent awe at the realization that God can find anything to use from us to help achieve His eternal purposes. Pray for your physical needs. Pray for your sinfulness. Pray for God's purposes to be reality. On every level with confidence, pray to God who hears. May the level of our prayers constantly mature, always rising to higher levels. May you always stand in awe of the fact that you can say anything that impresses God. Never forget that humble honesty moves God, but arrogant self-righteousness offends God.

Conclusion

Mrs. Oswald Chambers gave an account of an event in her husband's life that serves well to end this lesson on prayer. At the close of a public meeting he had conducted, a woman came to him and said, "Oh, Mr. Chambers, I feel I must tell you about myself." So the preacher's wife resigned herself for a long wait. But he was back in a matter of only a few minutes.

As the two went home that night, she said something about the speed with which he was able to deal with the woman's request. So he told his wife, "I just asked her if she had ever told God all about herself. When she said she hadn't, I advised her to go home and pour out before him as honestly as she could all her troubles, then see if she still needed or wanted to relate them to me."

Chambers knew the importance of encouraging people to take their troubles, heartaches, and doubts directly to the Lord himself in prayer. Done in sincerity and faith, the result he would have expected would be either a change in the person's circumstances or a change in the person's ability to deal with a perplexing situation — and sometimes both.

In either case, the Lord would fulfill his word to supply the needs of his people. He will give his answer out of wisdom that is infinite and resolve that is redemptive always. I claim that promise for myself today, and I encourage you to do the same in your situation.

(Plantation is a suburb of Fort Lauderdale...just 10 minutes north of Miami-Dade County, in the heart of college and pro sports country,  and 20 minutes from the Atlantic Ocean). Last modified: April 18, 2006