Mark 9:14-29
Dr. Harold Mauney was pastor of First Baptist Church in Taylorsville, Kentucky, back when CB radios were popular. Every once in a while, CB transmissions would interfere with radio or TV signals, and even came through on PA systems. One Sunday, Dr. Mauney had just started his prayer, “Oh, Lord …” Suddenly over the PA system came a voice: “Now that you’ve got me, what do you want?” Needless to say, it took a few minutes for the congregation to get itself under control so that the service could continue!
Prayer is a subject that sometimes makes even Christians uncomfortable. We all have questions about prayer. How should I pray? What words am I supposed to use? Does it matter whether or not I close my eyes? And are there some prayers that are better than others? Heaven help me if the pastor calls on me to pray out loud!
But there are also deeper questions about prayer. Does God intervene in the world only when we ask him to? If God knows what is best for us anyway, why do we need to ask? What are the qualifications for us to receive help from God: merit? intense suffering? persistence? Why does it seem that God answers some prayers, but not others? Does prayer make a difference? Does prayer matter?
Perhaps you are asking if prayer matters in the face of the global pandemic that we are experiencing. Obviously people all around the world are praying – praying that the pandemic will end, praying that their loved ones will not contract the virus, praying that medical supplies will be delivered in time for those who need them, praying for treatments, praying for a vaccine. So why is the pandemic still going on? Have all those prayers just been ignored? Do they matter?
The question of prayer was an important part of this story from Mark 9. Jesus had been in seclusion with Peter, James, and John, and when they returned to the city, they found the other disciples in somewhat of a predicament. A man had brought his son in hopes of getting Jesus to heal him from an evil spirit that had control of him. Apparently, the boy suffered from some sort of epileptic seizures, and the father had heard that Jesus was able to heal the sick. Since Jesus wasn’t there when the man arrived, the disciples tried to handle the situation themselves, but they had not been successful. Jesus told them that this type of spirit could only be driven out through prayer. Then Jesus asked the man if he believed that he could heal his son, to which the man answered, “Lord, I believe; help me to overcome my unbelief!” The disciples tried to drive out the evil spirit, but they couldn’t do it. The man tried to believe in Jesus’ power, but he couldn’t do it. The answer for all of them was the same: the power of prayer. Through prayer, the boy was made well.
In recent years, there has been a lot of interest in the power of prayer in the medical community. Many medical schools now offer courses in spirituality. More and more doctors talk to their patients about the role of faith in their lives, and more and more doctors pray for their patients. Many people feel more confidence in their doctors when they are aware of the doctor’s own personal faith. Much of that interest in prayer came in response to actual clinical studies on the effectiveness of prayer for people who are ill. Larry Dossey published two books that deal extensively with these studies and their ramifications: Healing Words and Prayer is Good Medicine.
One of the most intriguing studies was conducted in a hospital coronary care unit. A group of people was instructed to pray for patients in the unit. The patients had no idea that someone was praying for them. The doctors and nurses did not know about the study. And the people praying did not know the people for whom they prayed. What the researchers found out was absolutely amazing. The patients who were prayed for spent fewer days in the coronary care unit, requested less pain medication, had fewer complications and a lower death rate. It was clear that prayer made a difference in the recovery of these heart patients.
But people of faith have always known that prayer matters. I have heard so many people say things like, “I could feel the support of people’s prayers for me, and it helped me get through;” “If it hadn’t been for prayer, I don’t know what might have happened;” “All I could do was pray.” Prayer is powerful. It has an effect on people who are prayed for, and on the people who do the praying. Samuel Chadwick wrote,
The one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, and prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray.
Prayer is serious business. It matters.
If prayer were easy, we might feel more comfortable and confident about it. But we’re not the only ones who have ever felt inadequate at praying. The only thing the disciples ever asked Jesus to teach them was how to pray. They saw that prayer was a significant part of his life. Jesus often withdrew to lonely places to pray. He prayed before making the important decisions in his life. He prayed in public and in private. He prayed the traditional prayers of Judaism and he prayed spontaneous prayers of the heart. He prayed in the hours before his arrest and he prayed on the cross. Clearly, to be a follower of Jesus, prayer must be a part of life. Billy Graham wrote,
Every man or women whose life has counted for the church and the Kingdom of God has been a person of prayer. You cannot afford to be too busy to pray. Jesus spent many hours in prayer. If he felt he had to pray, how much more do we need to pray?
When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, he gave them the example which we know as the Lord’s Prayer. That is certainly one way to become more comfortable in your own prayers, to pray the Lord’s Prayer. In fact, in many traditions, the Lord’s Prayer is said four times a day at set prayer times. The Lord’s Prayer is also a good prayer to begin teaching children. They will be able to repeat it during Sunday worship. One woman had been teaching this prayer to her young daughter. They said it together every night at bedtime for several weeks, and then the girl said she was ready to try it on her own. She did very well, and her mother was feeling very proud of her, right up until the end, when she said, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us some e-mail.” So close! At least her heart was in the right place.
I can’t tell you exactly how to pray. Prayer is personal, a conversation between you and God. You will have to try various ways of praying until you find one that seems right to you. And you may change the way you pray over the course of your life. But I can offer you a few basic guidelines.
First, you learn to pray by praying. It will take time. It will seem awkward at first. But try to schedule a time for praying every day, a time that you can expect to have for prayer every day. The routine of it will make it a habit. Don’t let your busy schedule be an excuse for avoiding prayer time. The great church reformer Martin Luther said, “I have so much to do today that I must set apart more time than usual to pray.” Prayer can actually help the rest of your busy day go better than usual. W. Graham Scroggie wrote, “Without time for prayer, nothing can be accomplished.”
Second, begin to think of your life as being lived in a constant state of prayer. The Bible says that we should pray without ceasing. That doesn’t mean sitting quietly, hands folded, eyes closed. It means maintaining an ongoing conversation with God wherever you are, whatever you are doing, whenever you can. One of the great saints of our day, Mother Teresa, advised,
You can pray while you work. Work doesn’t stop prayer, and prayer doesn’t stop work. It requires only that small raising of mind to Him. ‘I love you, God, I trust you, I believe in you, I need you now.’ Small things like that. They are wonderful prayers.
Third, you absolutely must be honest in prayer. God sees your heart and your mind, and he already knows what is there. He cannot possibly help you unless you are open and honest about what you need. C. S. Lewis wrote in his book, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, “We must lay before him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.” And the German theologian Walter Rauschenbush said, “Do not express any want that you do not feel. Do not confess any fault that you do not mean to forsake. Do not keep anything back. Remember that it is He that searcheth the heart to whom you are speaking.” I love the story about Edward Everett Hale, who served as chaplain of the U.S. Senate. Someone asked him, “Do you pray for the senators, Dr. Hale?” He replied, “No, I look at the senators and pray for the country.” Clearly an honest answer!
Fourth, be simple and direct in your prayers. There are many people who are scared to pray because they think that they have to make it sound good, maybe use a lot of “thees” and “thous.” But I think that we ought to talk to God as we talk to one another. If you’re more comfortable using more formal language, then that is fine. But if that intimidates you, or keeps you from trying to pray, or seems phony, then do something different. The words don’t matter so much as the intent and the sincerity of the prayer. One little girl was having trouble finding the right words for her prayer. Her grandmother walked past her room one night and heard her saying the alphabet as she knelt by her bed. The grandmother asked her what in the world she was up to. The little girl answered, “I’m saying my prayers. I can’t think of the right words, so I’m just saying all the letters. God will put them together for me, because he knows what I’m thinking.”
Fifth, make your prayers specific. There is nothing too big or too small to share with God. If you have specific needs, then pray about them. Don’t beat around the bush. Rauschenbush says, “Pray always with special reference to the needs of the day and the hour – the warfare to be waged, the temptations to be resisted, the work to be done, the sorrow to be borne; put your life into your prayer; and let it be the most real and the most immediate business of your life.”
Always keep in mind that God’s answer to your prayer may not be the answer you are hoping for. Sometimes God’s answer is, “No.” Sometimes it is, “Wait.” And sometimes God’s answer will blow you away. There is an old story about an elderly woman who had no money to buy food. She prayed, “Dear Lord, please send me a sides of bacon and a sack of corn meal.” Over and over again she prayed the same prayer out loud. One of her neighbors heard her and decided to play a trick on her. HE dropped a side of bacon and a sack of corn meal down her chimney. It landed right in front of where she was sitting. She jumped up and shouted, “Oh, Lord! You’ve answered my prayer!” Then she went all over town telling people the good news. Finally her neighbor couldn’t stand it anymore, and he confronted her in public and told her what he had done. “God didn’t answer your prayer, I did,” he said. The woman replied, “Well, the devil may have brought it, but it was the Lord who sent it!”
I believe that prayer matters to God and I believe that prayer matters to you and me. Sometimes the greatest benefit of prayer is the deepening of our faith as we pray. Oswald Chambers, the author of several devotional books including My Utmost for His Highest, commented, “The whole meaning of prayer is that we know God.” And Sir Isaac Newton wrote, “I can take my telescope and look millions of miles into space, but I can go away to my room and in prayer get nearer to God in heaven than I can see when assisted by all the telescopes of earth.”
In the 1990s, the movie “Shadowlands” came out, starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger. It told the story of the marriage of C. S. Lewis and Joy Gresham, who died of cancer only a few years after they married. After Joy had been undergoing treatment for a long time, she improved enough to go home from the hospital. When Lewis’ colleagues at the university heard about it, they all expressed their happiness for him. The college chaplain said to Lewis, “I know how hard you’ve been praying, Jack. And now God is answering your prayer.” Lewis replied, “That’s not why I pray, Harry. I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.”
A man named George Adam Smith climbed the Weisserhorn above the Zermatt Valley in Switzerland, along with two guides. When he finally reached the top, he was exhilarated by the thought of the view that was before him. He shot up to the top of the peak and was almost blown off by the strong gusts of wind. One of the guides caught hold of him and pulled him down, saying, “On your knees, sir! You are safe here only on your knees!” I think we all need to hear that message. In this world, at this time and place, we are safe only on our knees. Prayer matters. It matters to us. And it matters to God.
