“Do You Have A Prayer?”

Luke 11:1-13

July 25, 2004

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Fleming

Let’s try this on for size this morning. Let’s see if any of these words sound familiar. “God is great. God is good. And we thank Him for our food. Amen.” That is the prayer that our daughter, Annie Grace, says when we gather at mealtimes. You have heard that prayer, haven’t you? What about this one, “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Angels watch me through the night and wake me with the morning light. Amen.” They have changed that prayer since I was a child. Before I went to sleep, I prayed this with my mother, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake. I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.” I guess the powers that be, the ones who oversee children’s prayers came to understand that praying, “...if I should die before I wake” might be a scary thing for children. Let’s try another prayer. This next one is a blessing for a meal. Emma Adams sometimes prays it at meal times, “God bless the sun and make food for everyone. Amen.” Isn’t that a sweet prayer?

You have heard prayers like these before, haven’t you? These prayers, by and large, are ones that our children pray. But praying, of course, is not reserved for children. Prayer is for everyone. The prayers of our children sometimes are standard, like the ones I have just mentioned. The ones that us adults pray are anything but standard. Try this next prayer on for size to see how it fits. “Dear Lord, you know the problems that I am having. You know my struggles. I think that I’m losing my teenager. He won’t listen to me at all. He just stays in his room. My job is about as bad as it can be. The bills are piling up. I can’t pay but the minimum on most of them. My father is sick again. I need to go and see him, but I just can’t get the time off from work. Lord, I am just about at the end of my rope. Please help me. Please! Amen.” You have prayed prayers like that before, haven’t you?

I heard of a preacher who was nearing retirement who wrote a book about his experiences. A big part of his book was dedicated to the idea that there are things, barriers, obstacles, that keep people from a life of faith. He mentioned the barriers in his book. One by one he listed the typical problems that hinder, disturb, and burden the people he pastored. At the end of his list was this, unanswered prayers. In a wonderful country music song, Garth Brooks, sang about the power of an unanswered prayer. Some of his words even say, “Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.” Some would argue that there aren’t unanswered prayers, but prayers that are answered in a way different than we had hoped. But still, says this pastor, looking back over a lifetime of ministry, unanswered prayers were a spiritual challenge to some. There are a lot of people, it seems to me, who struggle with prayer. “How does it work?” they want to know. “How do you pray? Why pray at all? When do you pray? Am I supposed to do it a certain way? Should I use particular words? Is there something that I’m doing or not doing right?”

I am a big fan of Charlie Brown and the Peanuts cartoon strip. Charles Shultz was a great theologian who went to seminary. In one of his strips, he shows Charlie Brown kneeling beside his bed praying. In the next frame he suddenly stops and looks up at his sister, Lucy, and says, “Lucy, I think that I have made a new theological discovery, a real breakthrough.” Lucy looks over at her brother waiting for this wonderful truth. Charlie Brown then says, “If you hold your hands upside down, you get the opposite of what you are praying for.” Poor Charlie Brown. He never wins a baseball game. He cannot seem to get the red haired girl to notice him, and his prayer life is lacking.

How do you pray? Why do you pray? We are not the first ones to ask such questions. In our scripture lesson for this morning, the disciples of Jesus are gathered near him as he prays. When his prayer is finished, one of the twelve turns to Jesus and says, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” The John here, of course, is John the Baptist. He, too, had disciples. John, evidently, had given them a prayer to use at important times. When we were first married, I wrote a prayer out for Susie. She kept it with her, usually in her purse, just in case she was asked to pray in public. The thought of doing that once terrified her. Teach us to pray, this disciple says. Give us a prayer that will help us and that will make a difference.

Now I want you to notice something here. This disciple does not ask Jesus for a prayer after he had taught the multitudes about prayer. He doesn’t ask for a model prayer after attending a workshop whose title might be, “Developing a Power Packed Prayer Life.” He does not even ask Jesus for this prayer after hearing a great sermon on the subject of prayer. Luke puts it this way. Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he was finished, he said, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Please notice this. The disciples saw Jesus praying. These disciples are sometimes slow. They often miss the mark. Frequently they did not understand important things. But here, they see Jesus praying and think to themselves, “If prayer is important to Jesus, then maybe we ought to pay attention to it.” Prayer is important to Jesus. In Luke’s gospel, more than Matthew, Mark, or John, Jesus prays. He prays at the important moments in his ministry. He goes to be by himself and he prays. He prays before his baptism and his transfiguration. He prays before he chooses disciples and he prays before he radically teaches about his arrest and passion. The disciples saw him praying and perhaps thought that in him they could find the answer to the questions, “How do we pray? Why do we pray?”

This morning, I want to quickly say two things to you about prayer and your prayer lives. Here is the first one. Jesus prayed regularly, and so should we. Jesus took the time to pray. He made it a vital part of his schedule. He disciplined himself to pray habitually, regularly, and repeatedly. I know that from reading my Bible. I know something else, too. I know that we are busy and that we have cluttered schedules. Bill Hybels is one of the pastors at Willow Creek, a great church near Chicago. Bill has written a wonderful book. At least I think that it is wonderful. I own it, but I have not had time to read it. It’s title is, “Too Busy Not To Pray.” Hum!

I know about busy schedules. I know about deadlines. I live with deadlines. I know about time pressures and hectic lifestyle. Some of us, most of us live this kind of life. We can relate to the country music song performed by Alabama. The words are these, “I’m in a hurry to get things done. I rush and rush until life’s no fun. All I do is live and die. I’m in a hurry and I don’t know why.” I know that we are busy, that our schedules are tight, that competition is fierce, and that times are tough. Because they are, we cannot afford not to take the time to pray. I have not met anyone who would say that prayer is not an important, powerful, and moving thing. In my line of work (if you want to call it that), I have met few people who would admit that they do not pray. I have met people who reluctantly have confessed that they wished that they prayed more. Still, people tell me that they do pray. Let me give you some statistics on prayer. In a survey done by the Barna Group in 2001, eighty-nine percent of those polled said that they believed in a God who watches over them and hears their prayers. Eighty-two percent of them said that they prayed at least once a week. Now, I do not want to be strong on just my second Sunday back from vacation, but I need to say this. Praying once a week (probably at a worship service like this) is hardly a strong endorsement for the power of prayer. If we really believe that God answers our prayers. If we really believe that prayer unleashes the power of God, then we should be praying more than once a week. Right? I want you to try this. It might change your life. I want you to give God fifteen minutes a day for thirty days. In those fifteen minutes, fifteen minutes in a row, I want you to pray. Pray when it is convenient for you, when you can set the world aside, and when you are not too tired. If you will pray for fifteen minutes a day for thirty days, the habit of praying will be so strong that you will not want to do without it. I know that you do not have fifteen minutes, so let me tell you what I have discovered. If you will do this, God will give you back the time in effectiveness during the day. Jesus prayed regularly. We, too, need to pray regularly. That is the first thing that I want you to hear.

Here is the second. We need to be persistent in the things that we pray for. When Jesus was asked to teach his disciples to pray, he gave them the words to what we have come to call the Lord’s Prayer. For two thousand years, this prayer has been our model. It teaches us to pray for God’s kingdom to come, for daily bread, for forgiveness, and for the power to stay away from temptation. Jesus gave us this prayer, but he did more than that. He also gave us a powerful parable that goes something like this: There was a man who received a guest late at night, around midnight, we are told. Hospitality was important in the days of Jesus. So, when the homeowner realized that there was no bread in the house, he rushes next door and bangs on his neighbors door, in hopes that he will have come bread. Did I mention that all of this happened at midnight? Some folks have called this parable The Friend at Midnight. I will tell you what I know, a friend who bangs on your door at midnight, usually is not a friend for very long!

Let’s put a spin on this to help us understand it. If this were to happen in our day, if someone were to come to our house tonight, at midnight, asking for bread, we might call out, “Do you know what time it is? I’ve been asleep for over an hour. The burglar alarm is set. I’m so tired that I don’t think that I can remember our code. My daughter is in the bed with me. She has been restless tonight. I cold not convince her to sleep in her own bed. She has just gotten to sleep. If I get out of this bed and it wakes her, we will be up for another hour. I am tired. Go away!” The neighbor in both versions didn’t have the first inclination to help. But, says Jesus, the neighbor helps, not because they are friends, but because of the persistent neighbor. If you fast forward in this gospel, Jesus will tell another story about persistence in prayer. This time the tale is told about a widow who goes to a judge so many times that she is wearing him out. The judge grants what she wants not because her cause is just (Jesus does not tell us what the cause was), but because she is bothering him. Two stories in seven chapters about the importance of persistent prayers. We should pay attention to that.

What you are supposed to get out of both of those stories is that God is not like the grumpy neighbor who wants to stay in his house, in his bed. And God is not like the judge, who grants a widow her request, because she is wearing him out. God is not like that. To reinforce the point, Jesus tells that God wants to give us good gifts. This passage tells us that the greatest gift that he will give us is the Spirit. Go home with this, these two things. We need to pray regularly and honestly. Jesus needed prayer in his life and we need prayer in our lives. Prayers change things, but beyond that, prayer has the potential of changing us. And then this, do not give up on what you pray for. Be persistent. Do not lose hear. There are three answers to the things that we pray for. First, the answer is “yes.” A second answer to prayer is “no.” What I have discovered is that most often, the answer to prayer is the third one, “wait a while.” Do not give up on what you pray for. Be persistent. Do not lose heart. Let us pray.