A Sermon by Pastor Tom Lacey . . .

Prayer’s power

John 17:20-26, Preached at Congregational Church of Boca Raton, May 24, 2009

A 4-year-old boy was asked to return thanks before Thanksgiving dinner. His family bowed their heads in expectation. He began his prayer, thanking God for all his friends, naming them one by one. Then he thanked God for Mommy, Daddy, brother, sister, Grandma, Grandpa, and all his aunts and uncles. Then he began to thank God for the food. He gave thanks for the turkey, the dressing, the fruit salad, the cranberry sauce, the pies, the cakes, even the Cool Whip. Then he paused, and everyone waited--and waited. After a long silence, the young fellow looked up at his mother and asked, "If I thank God for the broccoli, won't he know that I'm lying?"

The story is told of a farmer who went into town for a little breakfast. As his meal was set before him, he bowed his head and offered a silent prayer. The man at the next table derided him, "Hey, does everybody do that where you come from?" "No," said the farmer. "The pigs don't."

Jesus prayed; and if he prayed so should we. Of course we could ask the chicken/egg question: Which came first, Jesus praying or Jesus’ proximity to his Father? What I mean is did he pray in order to get close and stay close or did he pray because he was close? Perhaps both are true, in which case we could ask this: Do we forget to pray because we are not close to God, and are we not close to God because we do not pray? Rather circular, isn’t it? When are you going to jump into the circle of prayer?

There is something within each of us that pulls us in the direction of God. There is a God-shaped empty place in us that will not be satisfied with anything less than God. Often we look for life in all the wrong places, only to discover that what Augustine said is true, “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless ‘til they find their rest in you.” The truth is God has given us the gift of prayer as the primary means by which we make connection. Let me give you a definition of prayer: Prayer is anything you do with a conscious awareness of God. It is what a person named Brother Lawrence described as “practicing the presence of God.” What this says is you are praying when whatever you are doing you are aware of God and open to His guidance and His strength. So lift up your heart to God. Give thanks. Let down your guard and let God in. Breathe in the Spirit and not just oxygen. God is closer than we think.

When we pray we hope to experience God. It doesn’t always happen and that’s why many people quit praying. They don’t get the immediate result they seek. But it’s certainly alright to come at prayer with that hope in mind and heart. The heart of prayer is communion with God—a fancy way of saying experience God. Communion means being with, in union, sharing. Persons say that they do not pray because God is not real to them. A truer statement would be that God is not real because they do not pray. Prayer is necessary to make God not merely an idea held in the mind but a Presence recognized in life. In an exclamation that came from the heart of personal religion, the psalmist cried, “O God, thou art my God.” Ps 63:1 To stand afar off and say “O God” is neither difficult nor is it seizing the power of prayer. We have to say, “O God” and “thou are my God.” The first is theology, the second is religion; the first involves opinion, the second involves experience; the first can be reached by thought, the second must be reached by prayer, and then God becomes real.

To be sure, all Christian service where we consciously ally ourselves with God’s purpose, and all insight into history where we see God’s providence at work, help to make God real to us; but there is an inward certainty of God that can come only from personal communication with God. This is why I always counsel reading the psalms, praying with the psalms, experiencing God through the psalms as the first step to a personal faith in God. To grow a heart for the Lord take to the psalms. To find your Christian spirit once again, to resurrect your spiritual being, open the Bible to the psalms, and read therein. Does it take a little more than this to find the power of faith in your soul? Yes, of course. But by doing this you will have opened the door and the pathway will be set assuredly before you. To invest this prayer practice with intention, hope, and attachment is all the more that is required.

I heard about two fishermen who were caught one day in the middle of a big lake in a small boat when a violent thunderstorm struck. As the waves rose higher and the boat threatened to capsize, drastic measures were in order. So, the men decided to pray. In the teeth of the gale one of the men shouted, “O God, you know that I haven’t bothered you for the past fifteen years, and if you’ll just get us out of this mess, I promise that I won’t bother you again for another fifteen years.” Many Christians regard prayer as their “spiritual airbag.” What do I mean by that? In the owner’s manual of many cars is this information: “Frontal airbags for the driver and right front passenger are designed to deploy in moderate to severe crashes.” Many Christians believe that prayer is like an airbag, to be deployed only in emergencies.

Prayer is one of God’s greatest gifts to us. We have been given the high and holy privilege of channeling some of God’s power to needed places, giving God an added chance to do what he wants to do when we pray. You see, prayer is not persuading God to do something. True prayer is laying hold of God’s willingness to work in our lives. So what if there are some things God either cannot or will not do until and unless people pray? You may think that I'm beginning to challenge the sovereignty and power of God, but stay with me. It's commonplace for us to affirm that God acts through persons, we do that all the time, don't we? Deeds of mercy, acts of reconciliation, expressions of loving kindness, deliberate righteous activity, performance that makes for peace, cups of cold water given in the name of Jesus. We see all these things as God's work through persons. God's will is accomplished through us we say, and on earth his will and his work must be our own. Now why is it such a long leap in our mind to think that God may be as dependent upon our praying as he is upon our acting? What if there are some things God either cannot or will not do until people pray? Even a casual review of great biblical words confirms that fact that the promise of God to act in our personal lives and to act in history is often connected with a condition that we are to meet. Conditions are laid down that we are to meet in order for God to act effectively in our lives and in the world. The classic example of it is a verse in the Old Testament. "If my people who are called by name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways.” Those are the conditions. Next God says, "Then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their land." If we don’t stay connected to God, how does God stay connected to us and to his world?  

Some years back in Britain the national lottery inspired so many Brits to pray that the BBC in its coverage at one stage included what it called "The Lottery prayer": "Lord, I know I'm a sinner, but make me a winner." That's pretty catchy, come to think about it. "Lord, I know I'm a sinner, but make me a winner." It's catchy, but that's not what prayer is about. Prayer is about opening ourselves to the purposes of God. So many people lack a sense of purpose. They may be extraordinarily successful by society's standards, but inwardly they know themselves to be empty vessels, rudderless ships tossed and turned by every wave.

Barbara Brown Taylor sought a purpose for her life at a young age. She was a seminary student at Yale. She was by her own admission lonely, afraid, and desperate for some answers. Next door to the divinity school, on the highest hill in town, stood an old deserted Victorian mansion. The sagging porch was overcome with weeds, the slate shingles were crumbling off the roof, and all the doors and windows were boarded up. A metal fire escape ran up one side for a full three stories and ended in a little metal platform outside an attic dormer window. The whole place was plastered with No Trespassing signs and the campus police patrolled it regularly.

One night, at the end of her rope, young Barbara decided that if she braved all her fears—including a considerable fear of heights—and climbed up to the top of that mansion, perhaps she would be able to pray a prayer that would give her some direction for her life. So she did. She climbed to the top, one shaky step at a time. Her heart was in her throat, but once she calmed herself, she began to pray—asking God to reveal His purpose for her life; asking God to point her in the right direction, to give her a sign. At first, there was nothing but silence. This made her angry. What good was God if he would not even answer a simple prayer? But she kept praying. She prayed until her words ran out, and she was reduced to wordless moans. It was not until she came to the end of those moans that she had her answer. It was nothing specific, but the answer she got was the deep conviction that she was loved, and what she was called to do was to love back in whatever way she could. God spelled out no specific plan, but she left her perch on that platform with the knowledge that God was with her and with the courage to live as God's person. And Barbara has made the most of this conviction. That would be a beautiful thing to happen to any of us.

For the early church, purpose and the power to live it came from prayer. After Christ's Ascension, the disciples returned to Jerusalem. There they gathered in the upper room. The writer of Acts tells us they engaged in one practice and one practice only: They were "continually devoting themselves to prayer, along with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers." The secret of the early church's dynamism and purposeful life was prayer.

Don’t hesitate to pray. Find some time away every day, if only for a couple of moments, to reorient yourself to your heart, to the Lord, to others’ lives. Receive the power to be the purpose God has designed for you.

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