April 1, 2001
A sermon by Rev. Dr. John K. Luoma
I want to
share with you the two most important things that I have learned about prayer.
The first thing I’ve learned is that there is no one right way to pray. There
is no manual on prayer that everybody has to follow. I don’t know who said it,
but I think it is one of the best statements that I have ever read about prayer:
“Pray as you can, not as you can’t.” In other words, find out what works for
you and keep at it.
There is a humorous little poem that drives this point home:
As the poem states, there is no one right way to pray. Pray in the way that works for you. “Pray as you can, not as you can’t.” That being said, let me share with you a few of the things that work for me. Maybe they will work for you. The first two were important to Martin Luther’s prayer life and can easily be incorporated into ours.
1. Pray whenever something good happens to you. Take a moment then and there to say thanks to God for blessing you in that way.
2. Pray whenever something bad happens to you. Again, pray at the moment it happens. Ask that God protect you and provide the resources and people that you will need to endure. Some people call these first two kinds of prayers “arrow prayers.” When we do them, they often lead us into deeper prayer.
3. Another kind of prayer that has become increasingly important to me is to let others pray for me. Sometimes my own prayers seem to bounce off of heaven ,whereas the prayers of others seem to break through. This is why I think the opportunity for healing prayer on Sunday mornings is so important. It is an opportunity to share my struggles with others and allow someone else to intervene.
4. Another lesson I’ve learned about prayer is to use the times that are given to me. You may think I’m crazy, but my best times for prayer are when I go to bed at night and just after I’ve awakened.
a) You are may be a sounder sleeper than I am. I don’t drop off to sleep quickly ,and so I use the time to review the day. I give thanks for those moments when I felt especially close to God. I think about the moments when I felt distant from God and ask for his help in dealing with those situations.
b) In the morning, just before I get up, I review the day ahead and thank God for the things I look forward to and ask for help in the areas that I think will be challenging.
c) I also find those moments when I awaken at night to be prime times for prayer. Otherwise I tend to sit around anxiously or use the time unproductively.
d) Lately, I have found it useful to offer up my dreams and my sleep to God, asking him to use them to make me a better servant. I think we tend to think of our sleep and our dreams as useless to God. The truth is that while we may be dead to the world, we remain alive to God. When I awaken in the morning, I often awaken with some of my most creative and productive ideas.
5. A fifth thing I’ve found helpful to my prayer life is to find a prayer partner. Here we operate with a powerful promise of God: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” A prayer partner provides us with someone who will not only pray with us but for us. A prayer partner also keeps us on track in our prayers, because we covenant to meet at a regular time.
6. Finally, find a technique that allows you to use the Bible for prayer. The simpler the technique the better. This is why I find the TRIP method so helpful.
The basic point in all this is: Find what works for you and keep at it! “Pray as you can, not as you can’t.”
The second major thing I’ve learned about prayer is that the attitude that we assume in prayer is critical. Jesus talks about this in the story we read for today, the story of the father who is awakened at night by a neighbor in need. No one really knows the sources from which Jesus draws his wonderful stories. Personally, I would guess that a lot of them come from his family experiences. I think that is especially true of the story we hear today. I would guess that Jesus is recounting something that happened to his family. It was probably one of those stories that the family recalled again and again.
Imagine him as a child in Nazareth. After dark his father gathers the entire family and the animals and settles them down to sleep. Scripture tells us that there were at least nine members in the family. He gathers them together in the one room home. The only opening is closed and bolted. It is very dark. At best there is the flickering glow of a little oil lamp. Somehow, piled on top of each other, they manage to go to sleep.
Then the father hears the “knock, knock, knock.” He rolls over choosing to believe that no one could possibly be knocking at his door at this hour of the night. Then, it happens again only a little louder, “knock, knock , knock.” Again, he chooses to ignore it. Perhaps the person will go away. Then, comes the yelling, “A friend has come to visit me. I have no food to give him. Would you please share three loaves of bread. I will repay you.” And his father answers with a litany of excuses and he must be perturbed because there is no formal address. In such a small little village surely he recognizes the voice. Yelling at the guy who is yelling at him, he says, “Don’t bother me! The door is shut and bolted! My children are with me in bed! How can I give you anything?!”
But Joseph does get up. He upsets his whole family in order to give what his neighbor needs. Why does Joseph do it? Jesus makes it clear that he doesn’t do it out of love for his neighbor. Jesus says that in this instance his father was “shameless.” It is not love that moves him. What does? He knows that if he gets in a similar predicament his neighbors will not help him. That was the way life in a small village worked.
What’s Jesus' point? I think that it is this: if even a disgruntled human being will respond to the need of a neighbor, how ready is an infinitely loving God to respond to those who turn to him? Jesus says, “If you who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the gift of the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”
What is to be our attitude in prayer? We are to ask, seek , and knock, because we have this infinitely loving Father who wants a relationship with us and is eager to respond. How will he respond? He will give his Holy Spirit. It does not say precisely how God will respond to our requests. It says that God will give us the greatest gift of all. God will give the gift of himself.
In his wonderful book, Healing of Memories, David Seamands has this to say about our attitude in prayer. He says that often people understand exactly who God is. He is an infinitely loving Father who desires a relationship with us and will respond to our requests. Seamands says that our theology is great; it is our “knee-ology” that is the problem. When we get on our knees we somehow forget the nature of the God we are praying to. We say to ourselves, “Why would God respond to a loser like me?” Or “what have I done for God that God would do anything for me?” Or “God is too busy to pay attention to my requests.”
EThe truth is that God loves us beyond all reason. We need to hang onto that truth with every shred of energy that we have. Because that’s the truth, we need to find the methods that help us to pray. We need to pray as we can, not as we can’t.
copyright 2001 by Rev. Dr. John K. Luoma