How to pray "Thy Kingdom Come"

“Thy Kingdom Come”, an annual international prayer wave between Ascension and Pentecost, promoted by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope, is a time to pray especially for friends, family, colleagues and the wider community, that people may encounter Jesus Christ for themselves. But it raises an interesting question: what do we really mean when we pray “Thy kingdom come” each week in the Lord’s Prayer? I searched my bookshelves and found some challenging answers.



The official Thy Kingdom Come logo 2019

Commentators agree that when Jesus talked about “the Kingdom of God” he didn’t mean a nation-state, church or even heaven. It is rather “the rule of God” which exists wherever and whenever Jesus is honoured and followed, “on earth as it is in heaven”. This Kingdom is ruled by love and powered by truth, expressed by service and characterised by humility. By all accounts, we need to be careful what we pray for when we reel off the familiar words!

When Jesus in Mark 1:15 tells us that “the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” he meant more than that he was beginning an evangelistic tour. Theologian Alan Richardson explains: “In general terms this means that Jesus proclaimed as good news the fact that God was setting about the task of putting straight the evil plight into which the world had fallen, or that he was beginning to bring to its fulfilment his original intention in the Creation”.¹



Jesus’ followers belong to this kingdom by virtue of both their commitment to him as saviour and to their conscious and deliberate reflection of his Lordship in the world. We help to build the kingdom now by bringing Jesus’ standards and purposes to bear on every detail of our lives. But there can be no new “Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land” (or anywhere else) until Jesus returns and fully institutes his kingly rule in a new creation that is beyond our imagining. The New Testament is clear that the whole realm of nature and human endeavour will be caught up in the new creation (see Romans 8:19-21; Colossians 1:19-20; Revelation 21:1-6). The kingdom is both “now” and “not yet”.

“Thy Kingdom come” then is primarily a prayer for God’s Kingship over ourselves. Says commentator William Barclay, “The Kingdom is the most personal thing in the world. It demands the submission of my will, my heart, my life. It is only when each one of us makes the personal decision and submission that the Kingdom comes.”² More recently, American Presbyterian minister Timothy Keller wrote, “It is asking God to extend his royal power over every part of our lives – emotions, desires, thoughts and commitments. … We are asking God to so fully rule us that we want to obey him with all our hearts and with joy.”³


A prayer with world wide scope

On that basis, “Thy Kingdom Come” then becomes a mission prayer, as we gladly long for Jesus’ Kingship to be extended to all around us. According to John Pritchard “It’s not a phrase to trot out in church on Sunday without at least a crash helmet and a first-aid kit. This is serious praying for God’s massive attack on all that frustrates his good and loving purposes.”⁴

And it extends to the whole world of human affairs. Says the founder of the 24/7 Prayer movement, Pete Grieg, in his forthright style, “It’s tragic that the most revolutionary cry in world history, ‘Let your kingdom come’, is so often reduced to a religious catchphrase, mere shorthand for a few less people leaving our churches and a few more homeless people receiving a tuna sandwich on Friday  nights. By contrast early 20^th-century Dutch Prime Minister Abraham Kuyper … wrote ‘There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: Mine!’”⁵

God's Kingdom is far removed from concepts of earthly power
but it envisages a new world order ruled by God's love
and purposes.

It certainly means praying for new disciples, but it also “means seeing the world … with the love of the creator for his spectacularly beautiful creation; and to see it with the deep grief of the creator for the battered and battle-scarred state in which the world now finds itself,” writes theologian Tom Wright. “We are praying for the redemption of the world; for the radical defeat and uprooting of evil; and for heaven and earth to be married at last, for God to be all in all.”⁶

Pete Grieg in his latest book draws attention to the promise in 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” He picks up on the last phrase: the forgiveness of sins and the healing of the land are entirely contingent on the intercession of God’s people. What task could possibly be more important, more urgent for our world today?”⁷

But prayer alone, important as it is (and for some people, especially those largely housebound, the greatest thing they can do) is not for many of us enough. Praying “thy kingdom come” also means committing ourselves to the kinds of Kingdom-building actions that demonstrate our membership of it.

Swiss professor of systematic theology Jan Milič Lochman, recognises the depressing state of the “dark horizons” of the modern world and suggests that “thy kingdom come” sets them in a fresh context and thereby “relativizes them, robbing them of their final validity. Kyrios Christos [Lord Christ]: The Risen Lord is the Lord of the principalities and powers. This liberates us. We are no longer the prisoners of omnipotent fate. … Our world must not remain as it is. Resistance is possible; our hearts and circumstances can change.”

 He asserts that, “It makes a decisive difference to culture and society if there are groups within them that amid the oppressions of time keep their eyes open to the kingdom of God, praying for it and following it in the direction that Christ’s promises indicate, that is, by taking up the cause of the poor, acting on behalf of prisoners and the handicapped, freeing the oppressed, and especially proclaiming the acceptable year of the Lord, the liberating future of God. The state of the world will be renewed.”⁸

We help to build the Kingdom by living as liberated members of it, and by praying for people to come to know Jesus Christ personally. Then they in turn, through their renewed and changed lives and witness, bring God’s rule to bear on their corner of the world. So the shorthand “thy Kingdom come” becomes: “Allow me to be an agent of your kingdom by bringing peace to the anxious, grace to the needy and your love to all whom I touch. May people believe in your reign of goodness because of how I live and speak today.”⁹

Think and talk

Just consider the different ways in which you can make the prayer, “thy kingdom come” become more specific in fact, broader in scope, and deeper in meaning, for you and your friends. And remember that, each time you join in the Lord’s Prayer.

References

1.  Alan Richardson, “Kingdom of God”, A theological word book of the Bible, SCM Press 1962, p.119

2.  William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew volume 1, St Andrew Press 1956, p.212
3.  Timothy Keller, Prayer, Hodder and Stoughton 2016, p.111-112
4.  John Pritchard, How to pray, SPCK 2004, p.17
5.  Pete Grieg, Red moon rising, David C Cook, 2015, p. 36
6.  Tom Wright, The Lord and his Prayer, SPCK 1996, p.31
7.  Pete Grieg, How to pray, Hodder and Stoughton 2019, p.88
8.  Jan Milič Lochman, The Lord’s Prayer, William B Eerdmans, 1990, pp 62-63
9.  Philip Yancey, Prayer, Hodder and Stoughton 2006, p.164, slightly altered

© Derek Williams 2019

God does know what we mean

Prayer is not meant to be said parrot-fashion according to
the Pope - and Jesus. But God understands our halting words

“I know what you mean”: it’s a phrase that we trot out whenever anyone is having difficulty explaining or describing something. Sometimes it’s true; their stumbling words are enough to convey their true meaning. At other times, it’s an empty platitude, meant to encourage but possibly insulting. It’s not worth saying; we can’t enter into someone’s mind, feelings or experience.

It’s a relief, therefore, to discover that God really does know what we mean when we attempt to address him in prayer. Paul wrote to the Roman church, “We do not know what to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God” (Romans 8:26,27).

In other words, the Holy Spirit interprets what we’re trying to say and incorporates it into the language of heaven. He knows what we mean. This removes from us the pressure to choose the “right” words or formulae that we think God needs in order even to hear us, let alone answer us. God doesn’t need words at all, in fact, just the trusting, believing, earnest desire to see his will being done in the situations that concern us.

Interpretation in the realm of human language is an art, not merely a science. It’s not just a matter of finding equivalent words in the second language which match those of the first. The interpreter not only needs to have a strong understanding of the subject matter being spoken about, but also  of the speaker’s intention and underlying meaning. S/he needs to “know what you mean”, not least because the idioms of one language do not always transfer easily into another. One of the fundamental principles of Bible translation is to search for “dynamic equivalents” in the culture of the intended readers; there’s not a lot of point in referring to sheep in an island culture entirely focused on fishing.

One extreme example of how God translates prayer is the bizarre Old Testament story of Balaam. He was a seer or perhaps witchdoctor from the region of modern Iran. He was hired by Balak, the king of Moab, who was a near neighbour of Israel which he feared would over-run his country. Balak asked Balaam to curse Israel for a fat fee, which the “prophet” gladly accepted.

But two things happened. First, he nearly didn’t get to Israel at all. His stubborn donkey refused several times to carry him further. Then, the narrative says, “the Lord opened the donkey’s mouth” and it complained at his rough treatment trying to force it on. In other words, Balaam realised that it wasn’t the donkey’s fault; that God was using the donkey’s behaviour to get through to the even more stubborn prophet and warn him off his plans.

Then, when God failed to deter him and he eventually arrived in Moab, Balaam tried to curse but all that came out was a blessing on the Israelites across the border. Three times. After that he went home without his fee. (See Numbers 22-24.) God had told him how to pray and turned the potential curse into an actual blessing. The divine interpreter knew better than the prophet how to express the will and purposes of God.

This hides an important truth. Our prayers usually stem from what we can see, what we feel. They are genuine expressions of need or desire. But they don’t always correlate with God’s wider purposes, which we cannot usually see. The bigger picture is hidden from our view. That doesn’t invalidate our prayer. Each is incorporated into “Thy will be done” even if what we think should be done is not exactly what God proposes. Each prayer is translated into something effective by the Divine Interpreter.

Align with the Spirit

Several times in the New Testament we are urged to avail ourselves of the help of the Holy Spirit as we pray, so that our prayer is better aligned to God’s wider purposes. “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people (Ephesians 6:18). “But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life” (Jude vv. 20-21).

Keeping in step (with the Spirit) requires
discipline and practice

In practice, this means “keeping in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25), listening to God to prompt us with his concerns and submitting ours to his. It means learning to see “reality from God’s point of view”.¹ James Houston explains, “Through the leading of the Spirit in prayer our intercession becomes one with the intercession of Christ, our minds become attuned to his, and his concerns become ours.”²

Or, as the earlier theologian C.H. Dodd put it, “true prayer is the divine in us appealing to the divine above us”.³

For some Christians, including the current Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, praying “in the Spirit” may include “praying in tongues”, a spiritual language given by God which the speaker does not understand.⁴ Many can testify that this usually gentle gift mostly exercised in private aids them in worship and to bring before God the needs of themselves, their church and their world. The Spirit interprets their desire and concern by using his own language.

Helpful as tongues is, it is not portrayed as a necessity in Scripture. To use the words of the poet William Cowper in a slightly different context, “God is his own interpreter, and he will make it plain.”⁵ God knows what we mean, whatever words and language we use.

This also means that no prayer is wasted; it might be a bit off-message as far as God’s purposes are concerned, but if it’s a genuine expression of our concern at the time of uttering it, then it can be interpreted and caught up into the great stream of prayer that flows around the throne of God. He knows what we mean, and he’s not going to waste our breath.

In his story of the 24/7 prayer movement, Pete Grieg reproduces an email he sent after taking part in a meeting of young people in Spain nine years after he had begun to pray for a Spanish “army” of intercessors. At that moment, he realised that God never forgets “a single prayer that his children utter, even if they do.

“The very idea that the living Lord might diligently have treasured up every little prayer I had ever prayed, even all the ones I had forgotten, and that he might still be weaving their fulfilments, was almost too much to take in. It means that there must be answered prayers most days that I never even recognise as such, and casual requests I have uttered that continue to marshal the very hosts of heaven.”⁶

There is, of course, an inevitable caveat.

Silence the parrot

“When you pray,” said Jesus, “do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:7,8). Such divine knowledge doesn’t remove the need to pray – it’s one of the laws of the spiritual universe that if we don’t ask, we don’t often get; our prayer is an expression of a two-way relationship.

(The paradox that God knows what we want before we ask is dealt with beautifully in the novel The Shack, and the film based on it. It pictures its main character, Mack, in conversation about his family with the three persons of the Trinity. “You already know everything I’m telling you, don’t you? You’re acting like it’s the first time you heard it,” he says. And Sarayu (the Holy Spirit) responds, “As we are listening to you, it is as if this is the first time we have known about them, and we take great delight in seeing them through your eyes.”⁷)

Pope Francis suggested early in 2019 that many Christians “speak to God as if they were a parrot”, reciting words such as the Lord’s Prayer that they mistakenly believe have some inherent power to endear God to them.⁸ Readers of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale may recall the shop with prayer machines. “There are five different prayers: for health, wealth, a death, a birth, a sin. You pick the one you want, punch in the number, then punch in your own number so your account will be debited, and punch in the number of times you want the prayer repeated.”⁹ If only it was that simple!

“No, praying is done from the heart, from within,” the Pope added. Harry Emerson Fosdick, an American Baptist minister in the first half of the 20^th century, wrote “Our prayers are often unreal because they do not represent what in our inward hearts we sincerely crave.”¹⁰ Note that word crave. Cravings aren’t expressed in nice polite words. They don’t even need words. But they do represent what we most want.

So we find the Psalmist craving God: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Where can I go and meet with God?” And this craving isn’t articulated in clear words but in deep, emotional cries: “My tears have been my food day and night … I pour out my soul” (Psalm 42:1-4).

We find Jacob clinging with all his strength to God despite his physical pain and injury and refusing to let go, craving God’s blessing (Genesis 32:22-32). And in a rare example of silent prayer in the Bible (it was treated with suspicion in the ancient world) we find the childless Hannah pouring out her heart in tears to God, craving the child without which she was regarded by her neighbours as cursed (1 Samuel 1).

Fosdick takes this thought further, which helps, perhaps, to illuminate further the story of Balaam and Balak. “We are hunger points in the universe; the elemental fact in every human life is desire. To the man who disclaims any act of prayer we may retort, ‘Your life is an organized prayer. Your body craves food, your mind craves knowledge, your affection craves friendship, your spirit craves peace and hope.’” So here, perhaps, is a reason why fasting is sometimes advocated as an adjunct to prayer; it elevates the craving for God above the craving for food or anything else.

However, Fosdick goes on to suggest that “prayer may be either heavenly or devilish”. Balak’s was devilish; Balaam’s was translated into something heavenly. He highlight’s Gehazi’s craving for money (2 Kings 5), David’s lust for Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11), and the prodigal son’s hunger for wealth and the freedom it could bring (Luke 15) as examples of craving that are really self-centred prayers.¹¹ Jesus’ condemned Pharisees who craved the attention of others by practising their piety ostentatiously in public: “They have received their reward in full” (Matthew 6:5). That is, their desire to be seen by people was granted; but their prayers weren’t heard by God.

Parrot owners know that to silence a chattering bird they must cover the cage with a dark cloth. Perhaps some of our prayers need to be silenced, while we align ourselves afresh with God, and refrain from bursting into his presence with a list of demands. Instead, like the four apparently wordless friends who lowered a paralysed man to the feet of Jesus and left him there (Mark 2:1-12), it might be better to lay the real desires of our hearts before God and let him work out what needs to be done.

Don’t worry about the words; God knows what we mean. But if we don’t mean it, there’s not much point saying it. Unless we’re parrots.

Think and talk

1.  Look up the Bible references quoted in the text and consider what you can learn from them.

2.  Think about what people (including yourself) really crave. Why do we let such cravings control us?
3.  Put in your own words what “keeping in step with the Spirit” might mean, and how this might be practised.
4.  Many people find written prayers helpful. Discuss how you can make such prayers, with their often well-chosen words, your own so that you are not merely reading or hearing them, but actually praying them.
5.  What do you think about when reciting the Lord’s Prayer?

References

1.  Philip Yancey, Prayer, Hodder & Stoughton, 2008, p.21
2.  James Houston, The transforming friendship, Lion Publishing 1991, p.157
3.  C.H. Dodd, no source referenced, quoted by Houston, op. cit. p.127
4.  Justin Welby has stated this on more than one occasion, including in a media interview in January 2019.
5.  These are the final words of the hymn which begins “God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform”.
6.  Pete Grieg, Dave Roberts, Red moon rising, David C Cook, Third edition 2015, p. 151
7.  William Paul Young, The Shack, Hodder 2007, p.106
8.  Reported in The Times, 5 January 2019
9.  Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, Vintage 2016, p.257. In the same story, the Bible is kept locked up so that the girls cannot read it for themselves.
10.  Harry Emerson Fosdick, The meaning of prayer, Association Press 1917, p.133
11.  Op. cit., p.143

© Derek Williams 2019

Prayer lets the Spirit flow

The Prefects' Fountain in the Harry Potter films,
on display at Warner Brothers Studios, Watford.
Each tap releases a stream of coloured water. 

Not long before you began reading this, you turned on a tap. Water flowed from it. It quenched your thirst or cleansed your hands. Now scale up that image. Think of a dam or a weir. It has a sluice gate, like a tap. Open the sluice, and water flows out to irrigate the land, drive a turbine, or serve our homes. Close the sluice, and the crops wither, the lights fail, and we die of thirst.

Jesus likened the Holy Spirit to flowing water (John 7:38-39). A number of Christian writers picture prayer as a means of opening a channel, tap, sluice, or door, through which God can work in our world. “Prayer lets God loose,” says Philip Yancey¹. Adds Robert Llewelyn, “Prayer may open a channel through which it becomes morally possible for God to work … not changing God’s purpose but releasing it.”²

This is potentially life-changing, even world-changing. Bishop Stephen Cottrell claims that “We are not puppets being controlled or manipulated by God. We can influence events. Intercession is not a technique for changing God’s mind, but it is a releasing of power as we place ourselves in a relationship of co-operation with God. When we pray we are in communion with God, we seek his will and the channels of communication are open.”³

There is a profound reason for this. God has taken voluntary limitation. He did it in Jesus, accepting all the acute limitations of human life and relinquishing, temporarily, the awesome limitless realms of eternity (Philippians 2:6-8), celebrated in the Christmas story of Jesus’ birth. God again limited his influence on earth when he commissioned his followers to be the builders and messengers of his kingdom (eg Matthew 28:19-20; Luke 10:3-11; Acts 1:8). He does not shout at the world through a heavenly megaphone. He does not bombard individuals with spiritual spam messages. He does not wave a Harry-Potter style magic wand to banish the evil and lay out the good. Instead, God waits for his people to speak and act on his behalf; we are his hands, his mouthpiece.

Prayer before action

Above all, God has voluntarily limited himself to working through prayer. Norwegian pastor Ole Hallesby wrote, “God has voluntarily made himself dependent upon our prayer.”⁴ Prayer is the chief means by which God’s presence and power connects with this world. This is, in the 21^st century, totally counter-intuitive. Prayer seems passive, even passing the buck, an excuse not to get stuck in to the messy chaos of human affairs, a way of distancing ourselves from getting too uncomfortably involved. Yet in God’s economy, prayer is the priority.

Pointing our that the monastic movement and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount set themselves against the common attitudes and desires of society, theologian James Houston asserts that “Prayer belongs to this counter-culture and our prayers are frustrated whenever we compromise between our praying and living. Prayer should determine the spirit in which we live our lives. Too often we turn this upside down, turning the agenda of our everyday needs into shopping lists for prayer.”⁵

Anglican minister Magdalen Smith suggests that the common inversion of priorities, putting needs before prayer, is symptomatic of a lack of faith. “In our secular society action can be an easier option than dreaming or praying because we simply do not believe that God is able to act in the world. We cannot cope with the intangibility of either dream or prayer. But action is no substitute, for without the dream and the sustaining power or prayer, our actions quickly feel empty.”⁶

Prayer can change the world

There is a profound mystery and a massive challenge here. Historian Richard Lovelace suggests that if church members “were to intercede daily simply for the most obvious spiritual concerns visible in their homes, their workplaces, their local churches and denominations, their nations, and the world and the total mission of the body of Christ within it, the transformation which would result would be incalculable. Not only would God certainly change those situations in response to prayer – we have Christ’s word that if we ask in his name he will do more than we ask or think – but the church’s comprehension of its task would attain an unprecedented sharpness of focus.”⁷

Hallesby agreed. “The church is always the little flock. But if it would unite on its knees, it would dominate world politics – from the prayer room. And the result would be one of two things, either a world-wide revival or the appearance of the Antichrist.”⁸

So the disciples failed in their mission when they tried to do God’s difficult work without soaking it in prayer (Mark 9:28-29). “Pray continually,” charged Paul, who knew a lot about fruitful mission and faithful discipleship (1 Thessalonians 5:17). “Without me, you can do nothing,” Jesus warned (John 15:5). Prayer keeps us sensitive to God’s subtle nudges, and to his even more subtle responses to our praying, which may be different to our stated concerns.

“Unanswered prayer” is another topic, but Pete Grieg, the accidental founder of the 24/7 Prayer movement, was once staggered by a revelation from God that “‘I never forget a single prayer my children ever utter, even if they do.’ The very idea that the living Lord might diligently have treasured up every little prayer I had ever prayed, even the ones I had forgotten, and that he might still be weaving their fulfilments, was almost too much to take in. It means that there must be answered prayers most days that I never even recognise as such, and casual requests I have uttered that continue to marshal the very hosts of heaven.”⁹

And that, perhaps, is one reason why Jesus told his disciples to be persistent in prayer (Luke 18:1-8). It shows that we really mean what we’re asking, that we’re not being casual about prayer and saying in effect, “it would be nice if you do this Lord, but if not, well, I guess it doesn’t matter.” Persistent prayer refuses to take no for an answer but looks for any sign of God’s activity even if it isn’t presenting us with the exact gift we had on our wish list. And persistence also recognises that God never forces his will on others, and that it takes time for attitudes and circumstances to change or be changed.

So if we want to see change in our world, our churches, in people around us and ourselves, perhaps our prayer now should be for God to pour out a spirit of prayer and supplication into our hearts. Every period of renewal and revival in history has been preceded by people crying to God for him to visit them and their world. “Units of prayer combined, like drops of water, makes an ocean which defies resistance.”¹⁰ Remember that, the next time you turn on a tap.

All heaven waits with bated breath,

For saints on earth to pray;
Majestic angels ready stand
With swords of fiery blade.
Astounding power awaits a word
From God’s resplendent throne;
But God awaits our prayer of faith
That cries, ‘Your will be done’.¹¹

Think and talk

1. Look up the Bible references quoted above. Spend time thinking (and discussing) their meaning and implications for daily life.

2. When you pray about big issues in the world, to what extent do you distance yourself from them (praying for “them”) and to what extent do you identify with the problems and needs (praying for “us”)? See Ezra’s example in Ezra 9:1 – 10:16. What might you learn from this?
3.  What might you be able to do locally to encourage people to pray together for each other and for the church, community and wider world?

References

1.  Philip Yancey, Prayer, Hodder 2008, p.140

2.  Robert Llewelyn, Prayer and contemplation, Oxford: SLG Press, 1985, p.6
3.  Stephen Cottrell, Praying through life, Church House Publishing 2003, p.28
4.  O. Hallesby, Prayer, Inter Varsity Fellowship 1963, p.127
5.  James Houston, The transforming friendship, Lion Publishing 1991, p.64
6.  Magdalen Smith, Fragile mystics, SPCK 2015, p.145
7.  Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of spiritual life, Paternoster Press 1979, p.160
8.  O. Hallesby, op.cit., p.128
9.  Pete Grieg, Red moon rising, David C Cook 2015, p. 151
10. E.M. Bounds, Power through prayer, Moody Press n.d., p.83, quoted by Richard Foster, Celebration of discipline, Hodder & Stoughton 1980, p.39
11. The first verse of the hymn “All heaven waits” by Graham Kendrick and Chris Rolinson, © 1986 Thankyou Music.

© Derek Williams 2018

 

 

Prayer is relating, not begging

Lovelocks in Bakewell, Derbyshire: couples use them to
affirm their commitment and symbolise their relationship

Prayer is always on the agenda. Many people pray, probably most often when conscious of some personal need or confronted by news of a major national or international tragedy. It’s a kind of natural, spiritual reflex. But a frequent and provocative question is “Does prayer work?” The answer is either yes or no, depending on what you mean by “work”.

There have been unconvincing experiments comparing the recovery rates of people who were, or were not, prayed for. But prayer can't be tested in a lab. It isn’t another kind of treatment for human ills. It doesn’t “work” like that.

It certainly doesn’t work (at least, not consistently) if it is a shopping list of me-related requests, however laudable they are. Christians are regularly disappointed when their prayers are not answered as they hope they will be. A desired outcome to prayer is never guaranteed. Prayer is not a force we can learn to manipulate in order to get what we want. God is not our personal butler whose sole purpose is to make us comfortable and handle the difficult logistics of daily life.

But prayer does work, in a different way, if we regard it as aligning ourselves with the living God as we deal with those logistics. Prayer is consciously including God in all we do, think and say. It is making space for God to speak, act, lead, support, heal, empower, deliver, encourage and yes, rebuke. Prayer is nothing more or less than relationship. Joanna Trollope, in her novel The Choir has a bishop declare, “There’s no need to say anything when you pray. Just take time to look at God. And let him look at you.”¹

That’s how friends and lovers behave, whatever circumstances they face. So Bishop Stephen Cottrell suggests that “Prayer is the lover coming into the presence of the beloved and saying, ‘I love you’.” He adds that in that kind of prayer God also comes into our presence and says the same to us.² Prayer is “keeping company with God”, as a fourth-century writer Clement of Alexandria put it.

Prayer at its essence is “remaining”, or “abiding”, in Jesus’ love, which in turn determines what we shall ask him for (John 15:7). Such requests will be more to do with his long-term activity in the world than with our transitory wants. This kind of prayer doesn’t come easily to western Christians; we prefer the more business-like immediate transactions of requests and responses, after which we give God relatively little thought as we get on with “our” lives. But they’re not ours, of course. “You are not your own; you were bought at a price” (1 Corinthians 6:19,20).

As in any love-relationship, prayer is primarily an attitude, not merely an action. Jesus called his disciples friends, not servants (John 15:15), and the 20^th-century American Baptist minister and prolific writer Harry Emerson Fosdick made much of this. In The meaning of prayer (originally published in 1915 and still available) he wrote of “an overweening desire to beg things from God, and a corresponding failure to desire above all else the friendship of God himself.” He continued, “friendship is…a life to be lived, habitually, persistently – and its results are cumulative with the years. So prayer is a cumulative life of friendship with God.”³

And that does not sit comfortably with the contemporary rush to find quick answers to a rolling programme of needs. Friendship cannot even begin if one party is always begging from the other and sees them as a soft touch or a means to an end. Friendship depends on recognising the other party’s intrinsic worth and not on the exchange of goods and services.

When Jesus confronted Peter after the resurrection, he didn’t rebuke the apostle for having denied him. Nor did he ask him if he was sorry for his failure. They were friends. Their friendship could handle Peter’s failure. So Jesus just asked, “Simon, do you love me?” And when he received an affirmative answer, he gave Peter more work to do (John 21:15-19).

That’s why the many promises of answered prayer in Scripture are almost always in the context of spiritual enrichment and church growth: of developing the relationship. “You may ask for anything in my name, and I will do it,” said Jesus (John 14:14). “In my name” is not a mantra, but a condition: it means, “in accordance with my character and purposes.” So, for example, prayer “worked” in the early church when Christians threw off the straightjacket of personal desires and material possessiveness and focused on the bigger picture of building God’s Kingdom. Then, as they prayed, “the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:42-47).

Some of the Psalms capture this God-focused attitude within daily life that many of us find hard to adopt. When one writer felt downcast, rejected and oppressed by circumstances he (or she) developed a passionate longing for God himself, not just a restoration of good fortune: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God” (42:1). Prayer is thirsting for God himself, not for what he can do. It is an active component of building a closer relationship whatever our circumstances: “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him” (Job 13:15).

This sort of prayer changes us before it changes other people or circumstances. “To pray is to let Jesus come into our hearts,” is how the Norwegian pastor Ole Hallesby opened his classic book on prayer.⁴ When we do that we begin to discern what he wants to do in the world and therefore how we should act, how we should intercede and what we should ask for.

Then we can become Kingdom-focused, as was the early church, so that our immediate personal concerns for comfort and success become less significant in our minds. So when setbacks occur, our faith doesn’t crumble; God hasn’t abandoned us, but is just doing or allowing something we didn’t expect.

This is not to say that the details of daily life are of no interest to God. They are; he loves us where we are and how we are. But it is to say that these should not be the main focus of our “prayers”, but that prayer-as-relationship should be our way of life. When it is, we start to pray more for others than for ourselves. And when we do that, in some mysterious way prayer seems to enable the “wind” of the Spirit to blow his renewing grace into both our lives and the lives of others more effectively. That is when things “happen”. That is how prayer “works”.

Think and talk

1.  What can you do to turn your prayer life into more of a relationship of love and trust than a series of transactions?

2.  Paul tells us to “pray constantly” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). What steps can you take to de-clutter your mind in such a way that God isn’t crowded out and you remain aware of his unceasing presence?
3.  Read James 4:1-8. What can you learn from it about attitudes to God, the world, and to prayer?
4.  Look at these promises of answered prayer. What are the conditions attached to them which prevent them from being guarantees that we’ll always get what we want? Matthew 7:7-12; John 14:13,14; 15:7-8, 16-17; 16:23-24; James 5:13-16.

References

1.  Joanna Trollope, The Choir, Bloomsbury 1988, p.76.
2.  Stephen Cottrell, I thirst, Zondervan 2003, p.131.
3.  Harry Emerson Fosdick, The meaning of prayer, Association Press 1917, pp. 23,27, his italics.
4.  O. Hallesby, Prayer, Inter-Varsity Fellowship 1963, p.9.
 

Weather watch: we all can pray

In mid-February 2014 the UK seems to have woken up to the fact that the effects of ongoing extreme weather events amount to a national emergency and are not just a small local crisis. Floods and coastal storms have destroyed homes, devastated livelihoods, and decimated the infrastructure.

Those of us less affected watch the TV footage with a sense of helplessness. A few volunteers have travelled to assist with the rescue and rebuilding work. But there is no Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for funds; the government has promised its own funding although how adequate that is remains to be seen. So we can’t even donate cash.

But there is one thing everyone can do: pray. It sounds trivial, impractical. It’s certainly not meant to minimise the trauma experienced by many people. They deserve the wholehearted support, care – and prayer – of the rest of us.

There is enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that prayer can make a difference. People facing difficulty who know that others are praying for them will sometimes say that they have felt carried through and supported in their crises. It’s something all can offer.

The good that prayer does

The Bible is clear that prayer does not immunise us against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Trouble can hit anyone, of faith or no faith. The weather is no respecter of persons. Nor does prayer offer an instant or easy way out of difficulty. It won’t dry soaked carpets or restore damaged railway tracks. So what good does it do?

Fundamentally, prayer seems to dredge the channels through which God’s Spirit flows to work in the world. In the current circumstances, this is what is needed. Victims need God’s help to keep going; agencies need God’s wisdom to tackle complex issues. There’s a prayer below if you find it hard to know quite what to say to God.

“Intercession is not a technique for changing God’s mind, but it is a releasing of power as we place ourselves in a relationship of co-operation with God…Prayer is action, because God’s energy is released into a situation. Prayer leads to action because we cannot with integrity pray for something which we are not also prepared to do something about.”¹ 

We’ll come back to that last sentence later. But prayer can have other effects too. It aligns us with God’s purposes and opens us to discover them more clearly; you can’t pray “your will be done” and then not respond to some fresh understanding of God’s will.

Prayer transfers our anxieties and concerns to one who is better placed to discern the wood from the trees. It makes us more receptive to his help as we negotiate the path ahead.

It is also an expression of our human frailty and limited abilities. We’re all control freaks at heart but we can’t control everything. Stuff happens. Confessing our weakness (especially in the face of the elements) can lead to a greater respect for, trust in, and dependence on, God. Currently, our corporate pride has been punctured. Spiritual health is often improved by a dose of humility.

And finally, we can ask God to bring an end to the battering. There are biblical examples of prayer related to weather extremes. He is, after all, the creator and sustainer of all that is. Part of that prayer, of course, is to seek forgiveness for the part the human race has played in exacerbating the fury of natural forces and our casual approach to minimising their effects.

A time to ask questions

Not “why does God allow suffering?” – it’s endemic in life as we now know it – but rather “is God trying to tell us something?” through recent events. You can’t link floods and tempest to specific actions, as one foolish politician tried to do by saying they’re God’s punishment for allowing gay marriage. He seems to have overlooked the fact that extreme weather events this winter have not been restricted to the UK; in January there was the polar vortex which crippled the US while intense heat suffocated Australia.

But you can link extreme weather to three wider actions. One is our unrelenting contribution to global warming which has been known for decades to disturb weather patterns and trigger extreme events. Governments have been tardy, to say the least, in committing to and legislating for a reduction in greenhouse gases.

Another is our management of land, especially as we pave over natural rainfall catchment areas so that there is greater or faster run-off into rivers. And a third is the short-termism of modern government which rarely looks beyond the next election, and of modern commerce which rarely looks beyond next year’s profits. Flood and coastal defences should have had, and indeed now must have, the sort of long-term investment that goes into (say) the armed forces whose government-sponsored selective sorties into foreign lands don’t always seem to be in the best interests of ordinary people.

But that too is a matter for prayer. “I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving be made for everyone – for kings and all those in authority, that we may lead peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness” (1 Timothy 2:1-2).

A prayer

Almighty God, we bring to you those people whose lives, homes and jobs have been devastated by recent weather. We ask that you will help them not to lose heart, to keep faith, and to draw on the power and guidance of your Spirit as they deal with the aftermath. May they know even in their darkest moments that your love has not deserted them. Fill with compassion and wisdom those who are in a position to help: the staff of insurance companies, banks, shops and suppliers, the statutory and voluntary agencies, emergency services, military teams, commercial businesses, churches and community groups as they each lend resources and personnel to deal with the short term alleviation of suffering and the long-term rebuilding of homes, livelihoods, and infrastructures. Grant all of us a spirit of generosity and care, a willingness to give and not to count the cost, as we seek to serve you and your Kingdom by serving others who are in need. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.

Think and talk

1.  Just pray for people suffering from the latest calamities. Imagine yourself in their shoes and ask God to do what you would want in that situation. And pray for all the agencies and groups trying to help them: they need energy, stamina, wisdom and compassion.

2.  Look at the thoughts in “A time to ask questions” above. What can you do personally, and how should we be urging government to act, to deal with the long-term issues?

3.  Look at James 5:17,18; 1 Kings 8:35-40. We can pray for God to alter the weather. But what are the conditions for such prayer being responded to positively?

Reference

1.  Stephen Cottrell, Praying through life, Church House Publishing 2003, p.28