What is prayer?
Matthew 7. 7-12
Question: What to your is the key Bible verse on Prayer?
Ole Hallesby, a Norwegian pastor and teacher, chooses Rev 3. 20: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me." Prayer, he says, is simply “Letting God into our lives " our situations… In Matthew 5-7, the “Sermon on the Mount” Jesus teaches very practical lessons about everyday life – anger, sex, money, getting even, judging others. And he breaks this up by teaching about prayer… because he knows we need to bring God into all of life. However hard we find prayer, it’s going to be impossible to do life in the Kingdom without prayer. So what is prayer
It is requesting & receiving.
"Ask, and you shall receive... Everyone who asks receives". That is God's plan and intention. This is “Prayer 101”. Richard Foster, author of a number of wonderful books on the things we do to help us follow Jesus (the stuff we sometimes call spirituality) calls this “Simple Prayer” and says that asking God is the most basic and essential kind of prayer. The Jesus who is knocking our doors wants us to knock his door.
Ask for something that you need; or ask on behalf of someone else. Seek. What is missing in your life right now? Look for it with God. What seems locked away from you today – knock God’s door. It is a principle that Jesus lays out for us. Those who ask, receive. Those who seek, find. Those who knock get the door answered. That is what God wants to do. He is knocking our doors, wanting us to let him into our difficult and painful situations; into our church’s struggles; into our world’s darkest places.
You want to be in a relationship with God, to know Him? You want peace? You want to know you are forgiven for all the wrong stuff in your life? You want a new start in life. Ask for it! Look for it.
You want wisdom in a given difficult situation. Ask for it. You need an answer to a difficult problem. You need truth to guide you in decisions you make? Look for it.
You need power to follow Jesus. You want God’s Holy Spirit to be at work in you. Ask for it.
You need healing? You want to see God’s healing at work in other people? Ask for it.
You want to see justice, peace, food for the hungry and comfort for those who have lost everything? Ask for it.
Now, we all know the elephant in the room here is those times when we “don’t get what we ask for.” We need to take that reality seriously. We will need to wrestle with that experience and with what it does to our hearts. We need to hear what the bible says about prayers that don't get answered (and the Bible has things to say about the subject.) But we don’t start there. We start with these words of Jesus.: “Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened to you.”
We begin by requesting. Ask God. Don’t calculate what will be nice and easy for poor ol’ God to do. Do you remember bringing the shopping in when your children were small and wanted to help. You would give them something they could handle. A big – lightweight – box of cornflakes. Not the eggs, not the heavy bag with all the tins in. God doesn’t need us to make sure we give him something nice and light to carry so he can feel as if he is still helping out! He made the universe.
And in requesting we will find that we begin to receive. Not instantly (though that sometimes happens). Not exactly as we asked (though that sometimes happens too). But bringing God into every situation. And seeing what he will do with it.
It is a real relationship.
We call God "Father". And that defines prayer as a matter of relationship, and makes Christian prayer utterly different and distinct from the prayers and rituals of other religions.
We trust him as a "good, good Father''. A "no tricks" Father -- one who is generous, reliable, in his dealings with us. From Airntully in Perthshire, you can look north-east and see Birnam Hill. Look South-east and you can see Dunsinane Hill... and I often think of MacBeth, who was promised he would be secure -- "until Birnam Wood come to High Dunsinane." He thought that would never happen... but it did. The English army chopped branches off the trees at Birnam to use as camouflage. The witches in Shakespeare's story played a trick on MacBeth. Our God doesn't play tricks. A God who plays tricks is a pagan god, a less-that-the god-of-the-Bible god.
Ask for a loaf – you won’t get a stone. Ask for a fish – you won't get a snake. Your Heavenly Father loves you and wants to bless you. He wants to come into these situations you tell him about. Sometimes he knows better than you what you need – so ask for a loaf and if you’re supposed to be losing weight – he may not give it to you.
We call God Father. Prayer is a relationship with our Heavenly Father. Jesus taught us to pray to God as “Father.” To pray is to respect as well as trust who God is. The Aramaic “Abba” is the infant’s word for Daddy, the word a tiny child uses when he wants an ice-cream. But it is also the mature son’s or daughter’s word for “Dad” – the word a grown up daughter will use when she wants advice. My boys call me “Pops”: it’s an expression of friendship they might use when they want to talk an idea over with me. They now know that our relationship is about more than just ice-cream. They respect my opinions (some of the time!) and want to be in touch. They may ask for a favour, but they do so within a mature relationship. So to pray to God as Father is to pray to a “No tricks” God – but it is to pray to a person whom we love and whose wishes we want to respect. He’s not a slot machine. In fact the “slot machine God” is as much a pagan deity as the God who plays tricks on us. We have a word for the kind of religion that uses a form of words to get an automatic result from a spiritual power: it’s magic, sorcery, witchcraft.
In the Lord’s Prayer we say “Our Father”. The relationship God calls us into, is one that affects our relationships with one another. God is the father of Jesus and together they give us the Holy Spirit. The image is of Father, Son and Spirit in relationship with one another. So it’s no surprise that as we are related to God as father, we are called to experience his relatedness and love, in our relationships with one another.
It is radical re-alignment of our lives.
Jesus says “Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.” But why is this tagged on to the Prayer teaching? At first glance it seems to belong more with the next verse -- the "Narrow way"? But verse 12 begins with “So” or “therefore” clearly linking it with the previous verses. To pray on the basis of Father's character without copying that character is trickery, exploitation... it's robbery. To pray "In my Name" means to pray in line with "my values " my character". Jesus challenges us, “Be like your Father.” (Matt 5. 45, 48)
Jesus calls us to “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” To include this in the way we pray, transforms how we pray. As we pray, do to others as you would have them do to you. At Easter time, some of us began praying for five people who, we want to see trusting in Jesus. Some of us are still praying for these people, right? And for some of us, our five has becomea bit more than five! When I read this passage a few weeks ago, I was very challenged, about those people, and as I pray for them, Doing to them what I would like them to do for me.
Pray blessing into their lives, not just control. I wondered, “Do these people want me to be praying that they will come to faith in Jesus?” Or put it another way, how would I feel if I found out that one of my friends was praying for me to become a New Ager or whatever. As a general rule, “Control” is a symptom of sorcery not true faith. So pray blessing. (And maybe that includes the blessing of knowing Jesus.)
Pray with humility. The Spirit reminded me as I prayed, of some of the ways in which I have hurt and been a bad witness to some of these people… Sometimes as we pray we need to do some deep repentance about ways in which our actions have worked against the very thing we are praying for.
Pray and do. When Jesus said to his friends, “Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest field.” gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and heal, and sent them out. So as I pray for these people, I’m listening for god’s prompting me how to bless and how to share Jesus with the people I’m praying for. And James 2. 16 says it’s no good saying to someone who is destitute “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body. Faith – and faith-prayers – lead to action.
So when we pray, in our place in the real world we open the door and let God in – to our real world. We expect him to be at work, in the real world; we trust and co-operate with his character, and we allow ourselves as well as our world to be transformed.
© Gilmour Lilly October 2017
