The Power And Privilege Of Prayer

One of my favorite Old Master drawings of all time by Albrecht Dürer ' Study of an Apostle's Hands (Praying Hands)' ca. 1508

This post is dedicated to my dear friend @ Media Lies.

I am angry. I fell hatred in my heart. My stomach is knotted, and my throat is choked with fury...

But I am not yet as blinded by my rage so as to shut out a quiet voice deep within, reminding me of what I must do.

Go somewhere where I am alone and out of sight; close my eyes and fold my hands and begin to pray:

                    " Our Father which art in heaven,
                          Hallowed be thy name.
                            Thy kingdom come.
                         Thy will be done in earth,
                             as it is in heaven.
                       Give us this day our daily bread
                        And forgive us our trespasses,
                              as we forgive those
                           who trespass against us.
                       And lead us not into temptation,
                            but deliver us from evil:
                           For thine is the kingdom,
                         and the power, and the glory,
                                forever and ever.
                                       Amen."

As I am whispering the words, I immediately feel the easing calm restoring my peace and inner equilibrium. It feels like millions of sun-rays warming my skin after sitting for hours in a damp shady place, body and limbs frozen stiff.

I continue to pray for guidance and reaffirming my surrender to His Will. My pulse is back to normal, stomach soft and throat cleared. I breathe deeply once or twice, stand just a bit taller, and smile.

Ah, what a power it is, what an awesome effect the power of prayer has.

May God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

Let us not forget the awesome privilege of prayer. Prayer has traditionally been perceived by Christians as a necessary, even obligatory, part of our relationship with God. What has been lacking in our perspective on prayer has been the joy, the adventure, and the power in the privilege of prayer!

How privileged we are to feel this inner peace when we pray, and how privileged we are to have the relationship with our dear Lord that allows us this incredible closeness. Prayer is a Gift from God, and one to treasure and hold dear in our hearts, in the knowledge that we are truly blessed this Christmas.

The bright shining light of the Blogosphere Sigmund Carl & Alfred, who we affectionately call Siggy, wrote this post that was truly inspiring to us all:

"Prayer certainly isn't for God. With or without our devotions, His power is constant.

Prayer isn't even necessarily for the object of our prayers, be that ourselves or others. That may sound cruel, but it is true. The universe God created was for all of us, not just one of us. While we are each important in God's eyes, we are part of a community of man, a family. There are times when individual and specific prayers appear to go unanswered, yet in truth, the community is served. The universe is a delicate balance, in which time, events in the present, past and future all factor into that balance.

We are finite creatures, with limited capacity, attempting to connect with the infinite God.
Prayer is our Jacob's ladder, the bottom firmly planted on the ground, while at same time, at the top of that same ladder, angels and other Godly apparitions are found.

It is through prayer and the physical embodiment of prayer, good works, that we ascend the ladder, rung by rung. Through prayer, we connect our small, finite selves, with the infinite. While the base of our ladder may be firmly rooted on the ground, a necessary requirement, it is clear that on our own Jacob's ladder, the higher portions are rooted in a spiritual place. The highest rungs on that ladder reach into the Heavens, the spiritual heights to which we aspire- the Infinite."

Guided by our Angel, the ever warm and loving Anchoress:

"The readings from Scripture for the next seven days will be wondrous as they tell of dreams and visions, angels and prophets, of hopes fulfilled and promises kept. Peoples the world over will respond accordingly with songs of joy, lights on trees and skyscrapers and
homes. Many wondrous things will happen, born of the spirit of Christmas. Hurts will be forgiven. Love will be renewed. People will hold each other close in joy and even in sorrow, for there will be those who will know loss this Christmas. But they, too, will hopefully be given a measure of the love is born of Christmas."

Christmas is approaching, let us feel the good old fashioned joy of the Christmas spirit, and the privilege to know and love our Father through the power of prayer.

Related posts: 'Theology Matters'  Is The Holy Trinity A Doctrine Of Monotheism

Comments

[Brian Parker]

This is a great post. As a Christian I firmly believe in the power and importance of Prayer.
Thank you,
God Bless.

[RG]

Anger Management

Psalm 4:4

In your anger do not sin; lie down on your beds, meditate and be silent.

[Alexandra]

Thank you so much everyone. There will be very light blogging this weekend, my family celebrates Christmas eve which is this evening, so there is much to do. I shall be posting a photograph of our Christmas tree later today, and a Merry Christmas Message to tick off all the politically correct...

Jeff H. thank you so much for sharing this with us. This Old Master drawing is one of my favorites of all time, and I am so happy it was your father's too. That it has such warm memories for you and your family, is so wonderful, and a credit to you all for keeping these memories so much alive.

[Buddy Larsen]

Joyful thread...Merry Christmas to you good people!

[Jeff H]

Thanks for the reminder: that prayer is necessary and powerful.

My father loved the image of the praying hands. We put it on his headstone and in his casket, when he passed away in September 1998.

[Kenny Pierce]

Alexandra has asked me to link to Requiem for Galína Ivánovna, which raises at the end the mysterious question of whether, and when, God communicates to us in dreams. (Also a point addressed by Patrick's friend Loy in the link Patrick generously provided above -- thanks, Patrick.) I should make it clear, though, that the Requiem only winds up at the question of prayer; it's mostly an attempt to tell a true story about a woman I never knew. It is, I warn you, a heartbreaking story, which comes with two endings: one for the atheists and one for the Christians.

My daughters Anya and Kristina were supposed to be adopted last year at about Christmastime, and the adoption fell through because of bureaucratic complications. Anya told me the other day that when they told her that the other couple were not going to be allowed to adopt her, she started praying desperately every day "that God would help me and give me a family." And against all odds, He did, beating her 18th birthday by a week even though as late as a month before her birthday all hope seemed utterly lost. So Anya has, at this point, a very simple and uneducated faith (she has a very great deal to learn about how to live daily in grace), but a very robust one.

Those two paragraphs are actually related, but I'll let the Requiem speak for itself.

[Alexandra]

Darrell,

I am taking the digital pictures this evening, and will be posting tomorrow. I didn't forget....LOL

[Kenny Pierce]

Darrell, anybody capable of finding any excuse to imply that FEMA is God-like, instantly makes my day. I'm dyin' here...that was hilarious.

[Darrell]

Another great post, Alexandra! What a great time to reflect on our Beliefs and our relationship with God--something we should try to do daily.

I am patiently awaiting that peek at your Christmas tree--even if you choose to show your favorite from the past. I understand if you don't. My tree is filled with ornaments that have meaning to me and my family alone--many that have seen better days. I wouldn't think of not including them in this year's remembrance! You share so much with us as it is, and we are grateful!

I see no conflict with doing our best to solve a problem and asking for God's help simultaneously. A pretty good parallel to the differences in approaches between Leftists and Conservatives, isn't it? God, like FEMA, is not intended to be a 'first reponder'.

[antimedia]

You know those bumper stickers that say, "God is my co-pilot"? I always figured He was the navigator. My problem is, sometimes I'm so focused on my driving, I forget to ask for directions — or don't listen when He gives them — or disagree with Him once He has.

[jess1dering]

NbyN, I figure it this way : I've gotta row the boat, God's got the rudder . Oh, and He has the wind and the water and the sky, too. Kenny, Bless you. In a way , you have MORE than eight children. Some of them are quite a bit older than you are :)

[Liquid]

Lovely post on prayer! God bless you all! thank you for sharing this picture with all of us! Merry Christmas to Alexandra and all her faithful readers!

[Patrick O"Hannigan]

Wonderful thread, Alexandra, and my friend Loy has also said some good things about prayer for guidance that may be of interest to people here.

I wish for you and everyone who visits this blog a blessed Christmas.

[Kenny Pierce]

Jess,

The thing is, it's a huge subject, and it's all tied in with the virtues of wisdom and prudence. It also goes to NxN's point about God helping those who help themselves

Just some very brief bullet points, off the top of my head and in no coherent order:

1. God created us for intimacy with Him and prayer is the conversation that we have with our Lover.

2. No matter how smart you are, there are situations where if you're missing some critical piece of information, you'll make the wrong decision. In fact, the smarter you are, the more certain it becomes that you'll make the wrong decision, because the information you have available is fundamentally misleading.

3. God has all the information, including the parts we don't have. This is particularly true when it comes to the future.

4. From time to time God does the same thing every parent does (and I speak as a father of eight): He tells us, "Look, I know you don't understand why I'm telling you to do this, but just trust me on this one. You'll understand later."

5. Wisdom and prudence are absolutely moral virtues that Christians are expected to practice. We are supposed to love the Lord our God with all our mind as well as with all our heart. So you do your very best to make good decisions...but you always need to be praying for guidance so that God can have the option of saying, "Listen, I know something you don't know, and this is what you need to do even though it looks crazy." But without specific and clear instructions from God to the contrary, you have the responsibility to act wisely and prudently based on the information available to you. This is hard work, but then Christianity is not for lazy people. I might add that this is the ordinary mode in which God asks Christians to live (situations in which He says, "I want you do something that seems senseless," are relatively infrequent), and so while this is the only situation in which "God helps those who help themselves," applies, it is the situation in which most of us usually find ourselves. Hence that proverb is generally valid, even though God is always free to step in and say, "Step back and watch Me work on this one."

6. When you think God is telling you to do something apparently insane, you need to make sure it's not somebody else pretending to be God, and that means you have to go to other godly people and ask them to pray for confirmation that you're hearing God properly. That's a necessary control on the prayer for guidance.

7. If somebody tells you that they believe God is telling them to do something, and you proceed to lay out all the logical reasons that God can't really be telling them to do that because it's stupid, then you need to go back and think about point #2 until it sinks in properly. If the right decision could always be figured out logically based on the available evidence, there would be no need for the gift of discernment. The help they need from you is, they need you to pray and ask God, "Are they hearing you properly?" In which case you will either hear, "Yes, they are," or, "No, they're not," or no answer. And you tell the other person what you got in your prayers.

8. The gift of discernment is, among other things, the ability to hear God clearly. If you think God is telling you to do something that doesn't make sense, then you don't want to go get help from a smart person (like me) -- you want to go get help from a person with the gift of discernment (like my wife). That means you need to know which of your friends is so gifted and which aren't. Start paying attention now, so that when the time comes and you need this sort of help, you'll know whom to go to.

9. The most important decisions, and the most rewarding decisions, that I have ever made in my life, were decisions that made no logical sense at the time and that my wife and I took because we were clearly told to do so in prayer. Faith never really gets stretched and nurtured until God calls you to take a step out into the unpredictable and the unimaginable, and you obey, and worlds you could never have imagined open up to your astonished eyes. But there have been very few such decisions that God has called us to make; the overwhelming majority of day-to-day decisions are opportunities for the exercise of wisdom and prudence rather than of dramatic faith. And you can't force God to do a miracle in your life just because you want to get on with it or you feel like your life is boring and could use some more drama or whatever: you do your job and you act wisely and prudently until He decides that it's time to leave the comfort zone. (Trying to force God to take dramatic action in order to liven things up is one of the besetting sin of Pentecostalism, just as insisting that God would never take any action that couldn't be rationalized beforehand in a vestry meeting composed entirely of hard-headed calculator-equipped businessmen, is one of the many besetting sins of traditional Episcopalianism.)

10. The prayer for guidance needs to be part of a complete and healthy prayer life that includes praise and worship and intercession and oblation.

11. Evangelicals especially need to understand this last part: lots of times, if you ask God, "Which of these three options do You want me to take?" His answer will be, "I'd be happy with any of them -- pick whichever one you want."

One other point. There's a trick question you can ask any group of randomly selected Christians, that runs like this: "Jesus said the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. So what did He say we should do about it?"

The answer you will generally get is, "Get out there and go to work." But that is not the right answer. The correct answer is, "Pray that the Lord of the harvest will send laborers."

What this means, I firmly believe, is that every Christian has to grasp that just because something needs to be done, that doesn't mean you're the one who needs to do it. "Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it." The single most important key to successful ministry is to make sure you know what your assignment is, and do that. And you can't really know what is your assignment, your vocation, without much prayer for guidance. Of course when you're praying that the Lord will send laborers, you have to be prepared to hear Him say, "Fine, I think I will -- get your butt out there and get to work." And if that's what He says, then you'd better hustle on out there and get to work. But...and this is a very difficult thing for many Christians to accept...God doesn't just need people who are willing to work. He also needs people who are willing to be told not to work. Every church needs people who are willing to step up and take on important roles...but they also need to be willing to let somebody else do those roles. That's because the important thing isn't to get the best person for the job; it's to get the person God has assigned to the job. And it's hard to get that right if you aren't listening to God in the first place.

So I think I'll close this disorganized and rambling comment with Milton's sonnet "On His Blindness":

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or His own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."

[jess1dering]

KENNY: More on prayers for guidance would be AWESOME.

[jess1dering]

I do love you ,dear hearts, and treasure this site. Joyful, Joyful Christmas to each of you and to each and every soul you love.

[jess1dering]

Ah, I hope I am not being too forward when I say that I have grown to love you , dear souls, who meet here and share sacred gifts with me. I am blessed indeed. I believe that you know that my precious son, my Johnny, is an army medic in Kuwait. I raised him alone, just Johnny and me. It is his first Christmas away. I can only marvel at the great , enveloping grace that I feel now. I see our son ( that's God and me ) surrounded by angels and held up in spirit by the most Loving Father a young man could ever know. I may have told you about God's gentle reprimand when first I learned that he'd be heading toward Iraq. I was in so much pain and fear and , so gently He said, Ah...... so you think it was YOU keeping him safe all those years. What Comfort that was, and how humbling. It amazes me that since the Savior made it possible for the Spirit of God to reside within me, it is like someone finally plugged in the beautiful lights on the Christmas tree.

[RC]

Amen.

[Kenny Pierce]

Alexandra, I thought some last night about what Redneck post it could be that you wanted me to revisit but couldn't find...I finally realized that it's the post from our adoption saga that I had to delete because of legal and political concerns. (You know, the one which, with deep albeit unconscious irony, I had originally entitled "Now It Can Be Told.")

Unfortunately I still can't tell publicly that part of the adoption saga, which you, having read, know was a year-long exercise in faith and prayer. But I can pull out the part on intercessory prayer that you were interested in back in September, and post it here, which I now proceed to do.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the Pierce family, we are about to celebrate our first Christmas with the most recently acquired of our eight children, Anna and Kristina, whom we adopted from Kazakhstan in a mad race to beat the deadline of Anna's 18th birthday, having to overcome a great many obstacles in the process. Among those obstacles was the fact the persons who did not want Anna to be adopted, had told her that if we adopted her we would not be allowed to adopt her sister; and so she initially refused to be adopted because she didn't want to deprive her sister of the chance to have a family. Here in part is my description of going back to Anna once we discovered what she had been told. But I emphasize that this is a thread about intercessory prayer, not adoption; so if you want to respond, focus on that part. (If you want to talk about the adoption, then it's probably more appropriate to comment over on my blog where you can find the whole adoption saga.)

One of the keys to powerful intercessory prayer is simply this: before you tell God what you want, you ask Him what He wants. When God tells you, "I want to do this and I want you to pray for it to happen," that's when you can pray in full faith and power. (I realize that, if you aren't a religious person with a strong feel for intercessory prayer, this seems a patently absurd way for God to go about giving Himself permission to do what He wants to do all along anyway, but you'll just have to trust me on this one.) For six months, every time I asked God whether to pray that we would be allowed to adopt Anna and Kristina, I had met with silence: He had no objection to my asking, if I wanted, but the call wasn't there and neither was any promise. Now I sat in the front passenger seat talking the situation over with Aylona as the miles rolled by... Five miles to go. I stopped talking to Aylona and composed myself for a last prayer, a last chance to ask God to show me what to say and to help me make the final call as to whether to adopt the girl or not.

And suddenly the door was open. I knew, beyond doubt, that I was supposed to offer the child adoption, unreservedly. I knew that she was free to make her own choice, but suddenly I was free to pray for what, for the first time in six months of uncertainty, I knew was what God wanted. For those last five miles I begged Him to do whatever it took to break Anna free... That's always a dangerous prayer because God's view of "whatever it takes" seems to tolerate more pain than our version does; but I was free to pray it now, and pray it I did, like mad.

...

...I watched Anna's face, and that fear was still in her eyes, but you could see hope slowly dawning as well. "Give her time, give her time," I thought desperately, and when Aylona paused for breath I held up my hand.

"Anna," I said, "you don't have to decide this right now. You can come--"

"Ya xhochu." "I want to."

I stammered, "Ti xhochesh...?" "You want...?"

Sunshine burst over her face in a glorious rush. "Ya ni ponyila..." "I didn't understand, but now I do understand. I want to go to America with you."

After all we had gone through, it was that easy in the end.

To sum up: until you have learned the form of listening prayer that seeks guidance, your intercessory prayer will be a very hit-or-miss kind of thing. But intercessory prayer that starts in listening rather than asking...that can be a very powerful thing indeed.

I should add that we got involved in adopting these girls only because God had, in our prayers, made it clear that we were to proceed with the attempt, though as you can see from the narration He had not ever promised that the attempt would succeed or even intimated to me that He intended for it to succeed. (Sometimes God takes us through failure for the sake of the process, you know; I doubt that Paul's ministry in Corinth would have been nearly so successful if he first hadn't gone through an educational failure in Athens.) It seemed like a very stupid thing to do, and our more plain-spoken friends told us flat-out that we were crazy, but there was just never any doubt that we were supposed to keep taking the next step. And I can tell you that, having now had them home for two months, their presence has tremendously improved life for every last person in our family -- I don't like to think about how easy it would have been to give up, oy, not to be thought about.

But if we're going to get into the subject of prayer for guidance, that's a very complicated topic indeed; and this is already too long a comment, I think.

[North by Northwest]

I am deeply moved by this post, by what our beloved Anchoress has shared with us as well as by SCA's musings.

Please do not misunderstand me, I deeply believe in the power of prayer, yet I am strangly reminded of the Italian proverb:

Chi s'aiuta, Dio l'aiuta

The English equivalent is "God helps those who help themselves".

This Italian proverb holds a lot of weight amongst contemporary Italians, and has been firmly rooted in their culture for a long time. Yet Italy is of course staunchly Catholic and I am wondering how to consolidate this apparent dichotomy with Jesus' teachings Ask, and Ye Shall Receive.