© Rev. Lance Carrithers, all rights reserved.  Permission required to copy any portion of this message by any means. Email for permission: lance@firstchurchdc.com

Questions of Faith #1: "How Do I Pray and Why Aren't Some Prayers Answered?"

Luke 18:1-14

        Jesus offers up two stories, Luke calls them parables, to illustrate both the attitude and the power of prayer.

        Prayer—the first in our “Questions of Faith” series.  More than a few of you asked about prayer.   “Why are some prayers not answered?” was asked by several.  “If God knows everything, why do we need to pray—God already knows what we need?”  This point was shared by a couple of persons.   Another asked, “How do we connect with God and do we know if prayer is answered?”   And finally, one anonymous but very honest soul simply wrote, “I don’t know how to pray!”

        Perhaps I should begin in reverse order.   To the person who wrote “I don’t know how to pray,”  I should like first to say, you are not alone.   Remember, Jesus himself encountered followers who must have also expressed such a frustration, for he took it upon himself to offer his followers instruction by teaching them a simple prayer—“My father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.   Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, and we forgive those who sin against us.  And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”

            It’s a very simple prayer.   First, address God in a familiar way, yet recognize the holiness of God.  Offer our desire for God’s will to be made manifest on earth.  Ask for simple necessities such as bread for the day.   Acknowledge our own need to not only seek forgiveness, but to forgive others.  And finally, seek protection from that which moves us farther away from God, and from evil of every kind.

            The late  UM Theologian Thomas Langford wrote hefty references to United Methodist doctrine and theology and a valuable Wesleyan series called Practical Divinity, each 300 pages or more in length.   But his thin little book,  Prayer and the Common Life,  something less than 100 pages, published by the Upper Room as a devotional aid, has had by far the most impact on me.

            Allow me to read you the brief preface of this book:

“Christians often have an unsatisfied desire to pray.  Yet we do not pray well and we live with a gnawing sense of inadequacy.   We need to learn how to pray.  In a discussion among friends about prayer, one person concluded, “It’s clear that we would all like to pray, but we just don’t know how.”  In the face of such desperate assertion, is it possible to provide direction for a fulfilling prayer life?  Can we learn to pray with meaning?”

            Langford goes on to suggest as the starting point of his conversation about prayer,

            “Christians live where the sacred and the secular meet; the sacred and the secular meet in the Christian.  Our daily rounds are the story of our  spiritual lives.”   

            In this Langford asserts, “Prayer does not lift us out of our everyday life; it reinforces us for actual living.”

             It is suggested that the Christian might find “natural ways of praying.”  Something that is integral to our daily practices, and who we are, and how we function and communicate.   This makes prayer less a formal exercise, and blends holy conversation with our daily living.

            I learned from Langford that “prayer begins where we are capable of beginning.  God makes us capable of prayer.”   And so, “prayer finds its lodging in everyday experience; our ordinary life is the setting for communion with God.”

            This places prayer less in the context of a set aside time to speak to God and plead our needs, and more in the context of our daily routine.  Our waking, our bathing, our dressing and our work.  During times of stress and during moments of play.   When we are alone, and when we are in the midst of the personalities of others—family and friends.  Our eating, drinking, and preparation for rest.  To speak, and more importantly to listen to God throughout the activities of our day.

            Prayer then, becomes the accompanying dialogue that frames each day and it’s many parts: a sentence of praise for wakening to a new day, and the request for a blessing upon it.   Perhaps strength for tasks ahead and wisdom for the journey and its decisions.

            In my morning shower, I sometimes find myself spontaneously giving thanks for my baptism.   The water rushing over my head and reminder of God’s grace at work in my life each day.  The reminder of God’s love pouring out over me.   The scent of soap telling me once again that I am washed and cleansed from my sinfulness through God’s bountiful grace.

            Do you sit down for breakfast or grab a cup of coffee on the go.  Either can be an opportunity for prayer.   What is it coffee gives you....alertness and energy?  The perfect time to breath a small prayer of thanks for the farmers who grow the plants that produce the aromatic hot liquid in your cup.  Or to ask God for nourishment not only for your body this day, but for your soul.  

            Many of us spend much of our day in work.   Before starting our tasks, we might place our work and the result of our work in God’s hands.   Asking God to bless it, asking God to use our work to help and serve others.   At the end of our work, it is just as important to seek God’s help to stop.   To put a halt to our tasks so that we might be available in mind, body and soul to our families, our friends we love. 

            If we are alone much of the day, prayer can become the intersection between our loneliness and the divine friendship of God.   Surely God speaks in the quiet of an empty house.

            Or if our life is filled with the quick pace of family and friends each going separate ways, prayer can be the center we crave in the midst of chaos.   And in our interactions with others, can we find a prayer in a laugh we share with a friend, or in the tears we shed over the hurts we endure with those we love?   Of course.  

            And finally, as we prepare for sleep.   To ask God’s forgiveness for any action that may have caused offense or hurt through the day.   To seek courage and strength to forgive those who have hurt us.   And to offer one’s being into God’s hands for safekeeping for the night.   “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”

            The rhythms of the day, giving occasion for a life of prayer—seeking those points where the sacred and the secular meet. 

            We have dealt with learning how to pray, but not with the questions concerning if and how prayers are answered.   These questions have to do with the nature of God and the nature of humanity, and of course, the relationship between the two.  

            When we move to the question of answered prayers, there is much folk wisdom to counsel us.   “Thank God for unanswered prayer,” suggesting that sometimes our greatest blessings come in the form of not getting what we desire.   Or, “God answers every prayer, sometimes the answer is no,” suggesting that we don’t want to hear answers that are contrary to our own desires.   Maybe you’ve heard or even said, “Not my will but Thy will be done,” offered to remind us that ultimately, every prayer is in God’s hands.  And there is perhaps my favorite, “God is not a vending machine.”  It helps to know that God is not a robotic dispenser of all that I want or think I need.

            I think there is wisdom in these folk sayings.   The wisdom of prayer being a part of the mystery that is God.   And that for all that we pray for, for all that we ask, there are times when God seems distant, uncaring, or even cruel.

            Next week, we’ll tackle the issue of suffering, and “where is God when it hurts,” which is directly related to the problem of unanswered prayer.   “Why doesn’t God heal all who are prayed over?”   “Why are our prayers unanswered?”

            I think we get ourselves into a crevice, the proverbial rock and hard-place spot when we begin to think of prayer something that we do and to which God responds.   First, we pray, then, God answers.  Or not.  

            Eugene Peterson, the same fellow who gave us the imaginative paraphrase of the Scriptures called “the Message” has been very helpful for me in this area.

            Peterson, in his earlier work called “Working the Angles,” speaks of prayer as being “answering speech.”  “Prayer is not something we think up to get God’s attention or enlist God’s favor,” Peterson says.  “The first word is God’s word.

Prayer is the human word and is never the first word, never the primary word, never the initiating and shaping word simply because we are never the first, never primary.”

            After all, Peterson goes on to point out, “in creation God has the first word.”   Genesis, we all remember, describes God’s creative work over the first 6 days by repeating over and over, “God said…God said….God said….and all that is, came to be.   The word that God says creates, shapes, orders and even blesses all things.  Everything we see and feel and deal with originates by means of this Divine word.  Psalm 33 tells us “For God spoke and it came to be, he commanded and it stood forth.”

            And as all things created fell into a state of sin, breaking its relationship with the Creator, the redemptive work comes again as God’s word.  Remember?   The Gospel of John tells us “The word became flesh,” describing the person of Jesus Christ who comes to speak the word of salvation into being.

            Let me turn to Peterson again.  “This massive, overwhelming previous-ness of God’s speech to our prayers, however obvious it is in Scripture is not immediately obvious to us simply because we are so much more aware of ourselves that we are of God.   We are far more self-conscious than God-conscious and so when we pray, what we are ordinarily conscious of is that we are getting in the first word with God.  But our consciousness lies.”  

            Peterson goes on to describe that all human speech is in response to speech that comes before it.   As a baby, we gradually come to the awareness that some of the sounds our parents and others make are being directed at us—some of the sounds are repeated, connected with pictures, and acts of comfort and love.   Slowly, syllable by syllable, we develop the ability to answer:  ma-ma, pa-pa, no.

            “But not one of these was the first word,” Peterson reminds us.   “Hundreds of thousands of words, for months, were spoken to us before we began to answer, to speak our own words.  All speech is answering speech.”

            At some point, we find ourselves answering God; in response to something that we have felt, done, said, or seen.   When we do, we have begun our prayers, in response to God’s first word.  

            And so, to pray, and to understand our prayer as an answer or response to God’s word, rather than God’s answer or response to our word, requires great effort.   And a return to the very place, Holy Scripture, where we are told over and over that God’s word precedes all of our own.   That we are God’s.  Created by God.   Redeemed by God.   Always at God’s initiation.   Never at our own.

            Peterson wisely suggests that the Psalms are the primary place a Christian can go to dwell and learn the language of prayer as it answers God.  “Praying the Psalms, we find fragments of soul and body, our own and all those with whom we have to do, spoken into adoration and love and faith.”   Every expression of human emotion exists in the Psalms.  The great heights of praise and adoration side by side with the deepest valleys of suffering, pain and grief.   There is laughter and joyous dance and music.   There is the solemn utterances of those who have sinned and are penitent before God.  And anger.  Oh yes…even anger and a lust for revenge.   All of the Psalms, representing human speech, in response to God and God’s word. 

            “If God knows everything, why do we pray?”   Because prayer is not for the benefit of bringing something to the attention of God.  It is for the benefit of bringing something to our own attention.     “Why doesn’t God answer every prayer?”   God has.  Long before the prayer was uttered.  In the first word.  The word of Creation, the word of Love, the word of redemption through Jesus Christ.   Read the Psalms and be reminded of the previous-ness to God to our every need.

            At the table of our Lord, we come….prayerfully.   That is in response.   Remember?  The invitation is our Lord’s.   We come in response to Christ’s invitation.   Acknowledging that we who follow and profess Jesus as Lord and Savior do so in the context of God’s holy word.

Thanks be to God.