The Power of Prayer
Scripture: Romans 8:11-17,26-27
Rev. Richard H. Thompson, May 30, 2010
Earlier this month many in our community gathered at the CLU gym for the National Day of Prayer. It's a good thing to pray for our country and its leaders, for public servants, places of worship, for those who work with families, for our military service members. We'll be praying especially for them tomorrow. It's what we're called to do in Scripture.
The key note speaker at the breakfast was the "Jesus Guy" who has a call-in talk show on KFI. He said something I suspect caught many off guard. He said, "There is no power in prayer!" You could almost hear an audible, "What?" Because that's not what we've been told. That's not what we believe. No power in prayer?
His point of course was that there is no power in the words we use, or how eloquent our language, whether we use "thees" and "thous". Contrary to what some believe, there are no experts, clergy notwithstanding. It's not whether we stand or sit, raise our hands or lay prostrate on the floor, whether we sing, shout, or whisper, whether we speak in unknown tongues or chant like a monk, ring bells, light candles or wear robes or strange hats, whether we say memorized words or come up with our own words.
Just think about this a second. What if the power of prayer were in these things? Then we'd had better get it right, hadn't we? Prayer would be a pretty intimidating thing to attempt. Then you would need the professionals.
But, thank God the power of prayer is not in prayer. The Jesus Guy reminded us that the power of prayer in in the One to Whom we pray!
So simply true.
The apostle Paul would shout a loud "Amen!" to that. In his letter to his friends at Rome he described how futile our efforts are to try to please God. It's like trying to offer up the perfect prayer. Because even with our best efforts we can never get it right. But the devil of it is we keep telling ourselves we can. So we get ruthless with ourselves, and with the people we care about more than anything, to get it right, with the result that we wreck the very thing we are trying to accomplish~There's something about us that sabotages our own high hopes. Sooner or later, says the apostle, all we can do is face the truth about ourselves. If we have to be perfect to have God accept us, we are in trouble. Truth is, he concluded, we are all members of sinners anonymous.
HI. My name is Dick, and I'm a sinner
So no, there isn't any power in the techniques we use to pray.
Thank God the power of prayer is in the One to Whom we pray. But this leads to another question. Who is this One? This One created us and knows us down to the last follicle. This One did a deep dive to rescue us. This One, in Jesus, living, dying, and rising for us, like a life guard pulls our breathless bodies from the Deep End and presses Pentecost Holy Spirit air into our lungs, and makes us alive, not just physically alive, but Alive, beginning now and forever in Christ.
Here is the power of prayer: Romans 8: 11-17
If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God,and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ-if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
The power of prayer is God's love for us. I know I've heard this my whole life, "God loves you." We hear this so often it can become a cliche. I wonder if we even take it in any more. Or maybe we don't believe it. Maybe that's when we start to work on our technique in prayer. Several months ago in a Bible study with some friends here at church we were talking about this passage-that we are children of God. That we are adopted unconditionally and totally. I was thinking about this all during the rest of that week after our study. "What did this really mean?", I wondered.
An answer to my question came in the form of an image. Sometimes He likes to use images. This needs a little set up. We have a daughter, Julia whom we love to teeny little pieces. We've watched her grow. We've laughed and wept, worried and dreamed with her as she matured into the 27 year old young woman she is today. I've marveled at the mother-daughter connection. There's just nothing like it. Suzanne and Julia communicate by phone, text or email almost every day. But as Julia has gotten older, after she moved out on her own sometimes there are gaps in the communication. Sometimes days go by without hearing from her. We have learned to do what every parent of a young adult child does-we wonder what's going on. We speculate. Maybe we start to worry. One more thing to set this image up. The three of us have cell phones with unique ring tones.
So here's the image. After several days of hearing nothing from our daughter Suzanne's phone rings. It's Julia's ring tone. But Suzanne's phone is in her cavernous purse. In an instant she desperately plunges her hand into her purse it seems up to her elbow, groping frantically for her phone. Where is it? Two rings. Maybe it's in this little zipper compartment, what about in this outside flap in that buttoned pocket? Three rings. Finally there's no other way. Suzanne dumps her purse out on the couch and her phone tumbles out from some dark corner. Just as the fourth ring sounds Suzanne opens her phone, hits the "receive" button just in time and she says, calmly, "Hi honey". But I know what's going on inside my wife. There's no other word for it - it's pure joy. Because she loves our kid beyond words.
That's how God is the moment we say, "Dear God."
God knows our ring tone. God loves it when we call. God loves it when we come to Him. Because, by God's grace, and unconditional love, we are His children.
The apostle is telling us that if we ever doubt this is true, that we are God's children, just remember the time we prayed for help.
"When we cry, 'Abba! Father!' it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God..." When we cried, "Dear God, help!", that cry was His Spirit in us helping us to pray.
This word "cry" in the Greek text, when you say it, makes the sound of a cry-KRAZO-literally, "I cry out". It has a guttural, raucous feel. It's the word Isaiah uses to express a woman in labor. It's used to express distress. It's the word that translates what Jesus said the very stones would do if the people were silent-they would "KRAZO", they would shout out. But this is not just a cry, it's a prayer directed to God. I asked who is this One to whom we pray? Jesus called him ABBA. AB in Aramaic means "father". Children across the world like to double consonants. Mom becomes "mommy". Dad becomes "daddy" and I AB becomes "ABBA". Jesus was the only one to address God this way. It's the Spirit of the Risen Jesus who helps us to pray this same way. Like a child, we cry out to our Abba.
Ever notice what happens when a child stumbles and bangs her knee on something hard? That really hurts. At first there is a look of disbelief on her face. She is wide eyed, silent. She looks around. Who is she looking for? For her mom or dad. And when she sees them what does she do? She lets loose. Out comes the pain and fear. She doesn't have to hold this in any longer, because she knows mom or dad are there to help her, to comfort her through the pain.
So e cry out to God.we have our proof that the Holy Spirit is within us bearing witness, reassuring us, that we are God's adopted children.
Adoption is a powerful image. Many here have adopted children. Many here are adopted themselves. There are no conditions to adoption. To adopt a child is an act of pure grace. An act of love. We don't make children pass tests or do performance reviews before we adopt them, do we? We make them members of the family, warts and all. They are not employees, or volunteers. It doesn't matter how they look, who they know. When a child is adopted they get a new name. A new identity. They get an inheritance, and a future. On the other hand not anything goes. Some old habits that will need to be dropped, and some new ones learned. The family has its ways.
One other thing. Adoption is not cheap. Our adoption was very, very expensive.
Thanks be to God that the power of prayer is not in us, because God knows we have issues.
A little further on the apostle says more about the kind of help the Spirit gives us in prayer.
continuing at verse 26:
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
We are so fragile, so human, so unaware. We are sinners. We take hits, and we deliver them too. Our bodies fall apart. Sometimes so do our relationships. And then there's this world. Sometimes we can feel its weight. Most of the time we are just overwhelmed by it all. We don't even know how to begin to pray. What's really needed? Do we really know? Will I tell God what to do? Will I give God my list of things God needs to attend to so that things turn out the way I think they should go?
I used to do some study and personal retreat with some Anglican brothers up behind Santa Barbara before the fires destroyed the retreat house. They'd gather us up to worship four times a day. I noticed when it came time to pray for people and situations, they'd pray like this,
"Dear God, here's Mary."
"Here's Jack and Becky."
Simple.
And sometimes all we can do is sigh. That's prayer too. The apostle teaches that the Spirit intervenes for us with "sighs too deep for words." At Pentecost we breathe in the power of God's Spirit. In prayer we let out a sigh.
Because sometimes words escape us.
-Maybe you see your son or daughter walk across that stage to receive his or her diploma and all you can do is... sigh.
-Or you listen as the news brings yet more stories of devastation as the oil slick spreads and sinks destroying habitat and livelihoods and creatures, and all that comes out of your mouth as you listen is a deep sigh...
Sometimes our prayers are just this. A sigh. It dawns on us in a new way, the One to Whom we are speaking. That we are in the presence of God, of All of This, and all that comes out is the sound of our breath. We cannot find words. Anything in English falls short, leaves too much out, because in that moment we are aware that we are utterly at His mercy, that there's really nothing we can say except to sigh.
And there are times when we begin, "Dear God..." and faces, names, situations and struggles come to mind-hard, tough ones, fear of dying, of losses, or rejection, of closed-mindedness, of people we care about, or even just heard about, of war and threat of war, and what war does to people and whole societies, and what we must never forget this Memorial Day, and sometimes all that comes out is... a sigh.
What is this? Sigh.
We are praying with the Spirit. "God searches the heart and knows the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God." We are being drawn into the will and heart of God. The Spirit of Christ in us praying for all that is unfinished, the unresolved conflicts, the spaces between things that ought not to be there, the falling apart of things and the messes, of waiting between promise and fulfillment.
We are praying with the Holy Spirit. We feel what God feels. We are having an intimate conversation with God.
This is what makes our prayers powerful.
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Westminster Presbyterian Church |