1 John 5:14
This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
James 5:16
Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
Several years ago, Christian writer Cory Copeland wrote of the death at 55 years of age of his father’s best friend, stricken by a heart attack standing on his own driveway.
Over the next few days as the news of the event spread, I began to see
Facebook posts and tweets asking for prayers of comfort and healing for the
family. As a close‑knit Church often does, our congregation was rallying around
this crestfallen clan and asking everyone to seek God’s love and mercy so that
He might prop them up in grace throughout their difficult time. Yet, as I read
the numerous statuses and 140‑character messages of caring devotion, one
question began to run rampant through my still‑reeling mind: Why?
It wasn’t that I didn’t care about the grieving family this great man
had left behind. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I hurt for them and with
them, and I shared in their sudden and brutal loss.
No, I was haunted by this question because I wondered what good it might do to ask God to comfort this family. After all, He’s a benevolent God, and there was no doubt He was already surrounding these hurting people with His love and grace and mercy without my instructing or requesting Him to do so. He didn’t need me pointing Him in their direction. ...
Prayer is a paradox. We take it for
granted that God already knows the things we are praying about, and that God
knows whether those things are good or bad. God’s knowledge and goodness are a
given. People mostly pray to get God to do something, to get God to
exercise divine power.
We do believe God has the power to intervene in human affairs. If we thought God could not act in our lives, we would not ask God to do so. But we don’t take God’s power for granted: The very fact that we ask God to act means we are uncertain he will. Prayer sometimes seems like a roll of the dice. We can find ourselves praying with no real expectation that it will accomplish anything. Yet, says James, “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
It’s baseball season. A player stands
at the plate. He raises the bat. The umpire calls out, “Play ball!” The catcher
signals the pitcher for a fast ball. The pitcher winds up and throws. The
hitter sees the ball and predicts where it will go. He has to decide whether to
swing. Just think how many happenings are all coming together into the one
single moment at which the ball passes over the plate. So many happenings are
related together to make that moment that we couldn’t name them all if we
tried. Before the players even arrived, the grounds crew mowed the grass and
raked the infield. The custodial staff cleaned the locker rooms. A bank
approved a new loan to keep the stadium afloat for another year. The visiting
team traveled into town. We could go on like this all the way back to Abner
Doubleday, who invented baseball in the first place.
All these prior events come together
in the first pitch, coming in waist high over the plate. The batter doesn’t
swing. “Strike!” yells the umpire. Many things had to work to make this one
moment, but the batter was free to swing or not. No swing.
In every moment there are countless
prior events, some good and some bad. But in every event, no matter how
enormous or small it seems to us, there is the will of God toward the good. We
call it grace. The grace of God is everywhere, in all times, in all places, and
in all circumstances. In the dedication of a church building, there is grace.
In the birth of a child, there is grace, in the vote of the U.S. Senate there
is grace. There is grace even in the veins of a heroin addict, grace all the
way down to where his blood cells rub together. God’s grace is everywhere, even
in the most desperate times and places, even when it is not apparent or much
perceivable. God’s grace is custom-fitted for each situation, nestling within
all the other events that make up every moment.
In every moment, God’s will is toward the good. Every moment is made up of many influences, and one of those influences is God’s grace pushing toward the good. But like Casey at the Bat who decided not to swing on a perfectly good pitch, God’s grace can be resisted. God’s grace is not coercive. Some level of self determination is built into creation. In human beings, we call it free will. God’s grace influences but does not crush our freedom.
Prayer is a grace multiplier and
grace magnifier. Prayer is raw material for God’s grace. In prayer we connect
through faith our weakness with God’s strength, and God connects our faith with
the things or persons prayed for. By praying we participate in God’s work. In
prayer we seek to influence events to conform to God’s good will. God receives
our prayers and fits them into all the influences working within each moment.
Our prayers during worship services
are mostly for medical-related reasons. I’ve heard it called it the organ
recital – Aunt Edna’s kidneys, Uncle
Albert’s heart. Beginning in the 1980s, medical science began to pay attention
to whether praying for the ill or injured actually does any good. Studies
continue today, including by the National Institutes of Health, which
beforehand refused even to publich an article that had the word “prayer” in it.
Studies at Duke, Dartmouth, and Yale universities show, for example:
- Hospitalized people who never attended church have an average stay of three times longer than people who attended regularly.
- Heart patients were 14 times more likely to die following surgery if they did not participate in a religion.
- Elderly people who never or rarely attended church had a stroke rate double that of people who attended regularly.
A journal published by Harvard University in 1998 included this tidbit:
In a 1987 study, cardiologist Randolph Byrd at San Francisco General Hospital asked intercessory prayer groups from across the United States to pray for roughly half of the 393 individuals admitted to the coronary care unit with either heart attacks or severe chest pain. This was a scientific experiment in which none of the patients, physicians, or nurses knew which individuals were receiving prayer. Those who were prayed for showed dramatic improvement: fewer deaths, fewer complications, and fewer medical interventions.
To be fair, other studies have not
shown a positive link between prayer and healing. So while the body of research
is compelling, it is not necessarily convincing in a scientific sense. That’s
okay. Science cannot provide every answer for every question. Persons pray from
faith rather than research.
So why does prayer work? Methodist
theologian Marjorie Suchocki put it this way:
Prayer changes the world. God works
with what is, in order to lead the world toward what can be. To pray is
to change the way the world is by adding that prayer to the reality of
the world.
Prayer changes what is possible for the future. There is a future possible with prayer that is not possible without it. There are “redemptive possibilities” for the world that are not reached without prayer.
Not every prayer is useful to God.
James wrote that if we pray selfishly, God does not respond (James 4:3). God’s
will is only for the good. If we pray for something not good, then that prayer
is useless to God for influencing events. It’s like handing a lawnmower to a
brick mason. A brick mason can’t use a lawnmower to build a wall, and God does
not use prayers for bad to accomplish his will for good.
Isaiah said that sin separates us
from God and makes God ignore our prayers. “Your iniquities have separated you
from your God,” Isaiah wrote, “your sins have hidden his face from you, so that
he will not hear” (Isa 59:2). Since we all have sin in our lives, how will God
hear our prayers?
Jesus said that we should try to have
faith at least the size of a mustard seed. Just the tiny amount of faith that
leads us to say, “Thy will be done” – and mean it – is enough to break through
our sin in prayer. Faith enough to begin is faith enough for God to hear.
Prayer is intimate communication with
God. As we continue to pray we open ourselves to God’s grace. We give God
permission to change us in our deepest places. God leads us to renounce the
reign of sin in our lives. As we grow in faith we become more godly. We gain
greater understanding of God’s will. We grow in compassion for other people. As
our own character becomes more like God’s, our prayers become more powerful.
Righteous people pray powerful prayers.
The Apostle John tells us to be confident that God hears us when we pray according to his will. We can and should pray for specific things. After all, on the night Jesus was arrested, Jesus prayed very specifically about what he wanted. But at the end, Jesus said that what he wanted most of all was what God wanted. That’s the place to end up in our prayers: turning our own desires, as heartfelt as they may be, over to God.
The world consists of events, of
things that happen and affect other things. Prayer is something that we make
happen that God uses to affect other things.
We count on God to hear and respond when we pray. God counts on us to
pray. Our prayers become tools in God’s hands to shape the world for the
Kingdom of God. We’re all in this world together, you and I and God. God uses
our prayers to work his grace fully. So prayer is not empty speech. Prayer is
as fundamental to the makeup of the universe as atoms. Our prayers help God
bring the full potential of grace into each moment.
John Wesley put it this way:
God's command to "pray without ceasing" is founded on the
necessity we have of his grace to preserve the life of God in the soul, which
can no more subsist one moment without it, than the body can without air.
Whether we think of, or speak to, God, whether we act or suffer for him,
all is prayer, when we have no other object than his love, and the desire of
pleasing him.
All that a Christian does, even in eating and sleeping, is prayer, when
it is done in simplicity, according to the order of God, without either adding
to or diminishing from it by his own choice.
Prayer continues in the desire of the heart, though the understanding be
employed on outward things.
In souls filled with love, the desire to please God is a continual
prayer.
As the furious hate which the devil bears us is termed the roaring of a
lion, so our vehement love may be termed crying after God.
God only requires of his adult children, that their hearts be truly
purified, and that they offer him continually the wishes and vows that
naturally spring from perfect love. For these desires, being the genuine fruits
of love, are the most perfect prayers that can spring from it.
“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”