St. Timothy's

These are questions that each of us has to answer for ourselves. My answer for myself is “YES” to all of them. I remember well a sermon that the Rev. George Foxworth preached on the sowing of the seeds. He related his prayer life to the seeds that were distributed by the sower in the parable. For my purposes, I’ll call them prayer seeds. Sometimes his prayer seeds fell on fertile ground, and he was in a wonderful place with God. Other times his seeds fell on semi-fertile soil, and his prayer life was OK, but somewhat forced and distant, as in “oops, forgot to pray today.” In other times, his prayer seeds fell on barren, rocky ground, and he felt distance and alienation from God. The important thing to remember, though, is that God is there for us, waiting.

As Christians, we want to have a rewarding prayer life. Sometimes, aside from the time it takes to pray, we have feelings and thoughts that keep us from praying as Jesus taught us. Some of us may even have hang-ups about prayer that get in the way of our experiencing the richness of intimate communication with God.

The Rev. Richard Fairchild, an Anglican priest in Canada, describes five common hang-ups in our prayer lives that keep us from making the connection that Jesus wants us to have with God.

The first is the NOT GOOD ENOUGH hang-up.  God is all-powerful, and we are mere humans. At best, we are sinners, and at worst, we are terrible sinners. I am not worthy of talking to God. This hang-up, Fairchild responds, is answered by the cross of Jesus. He died for us sinners so that we might be put right with God—his sacrifice for us makes us good enough in God’s eyes. He wants all of us to come to him, in particular those who have strayed.

The second hang-up that some people have about prayer is the BUT GOD IS BUSY WITH MUCH MORE IMPORTANT THINGS.  How do I dare ask God, say, to heal my knee when he has terrorism, famine, war, and pestilence on a global scale to deal with? The problem here is that we often don’t have a big enough view of God. After all, he created heaven and earth—can’t he multitask? Of course he can—and there is nothing too small to bring to God. There is also no time than the present to talk to him. In today’s reading from Luke, Jesus teaches the disciples that even if God is busy doing something else—even if he, like the man in the parable who’s in bed after midnight with all his children safely tucked in, will get up and answer the door if we continue to bang on it—if only to stop pestering him!

The GIMME hang-up is third on Rev. Fairchild’s list. Some people have very diligent prayer lives, but they pray only for the needs of others and almost never for themselves. They may not feel like they are important enough to deserve God’s attention (as in the first hang-up), or they may feel that it’s selfish to ask for themselves when so many people have far greater needs. All we need to do in answer to this one is to look to our Gospel lesson today when Jesus teaches the disciples to pray saying things like “Give us this day our daily bread, “ Forgive us our sins,” “Do not bring us to the time of trial.” When we say these words, we are praying for ourselves and for others.

Of course, we can and should pray for others. But we should also pray for ourselves. We should ask for God’s guidance to be revealed in our lives, and for our own concerns and needs. If I have a good friend whom I trust and admire and whose guidance I value, I’m not giving of myself when I talk to her only about herself or others.

The fourth hang-up in prayer is the ONCE SHOULD BE ENOUGH hang-up. If I ask God for something once, then I shouldn’t bother him again with it. We know that there are certain global issues that we pray for continually—justice and mercy in every nation, peace on earth, healing the sick, for the oppressed, and so forth. But is it really OK to keep asking God day after day to heal a particular loved one—or ourselves? The parable in today’s Gospel clearly tells us to be persistent, to keep at it. Persistent like Abraham, persistent like Hannah. God wants us to keep bringing him what keeps being brought to us.

And finally, Rev. Fairchild’s fifth hang-up in many people’s practice of prayer is WHAT IF I ASK FOR THE WRONG THING? Sometimes we just don’t know what to pray for, or how to pray for it. We may be confused and frightened, or in such crisis that the words don’t come.

The Apostle Paul understood that we often don’t know what to pray for  and says as much in the 8^th chapter of his letter to the Romans, “ but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.”  Sometimes all we can do is groan to God in the midst of our anguish, and God will understand.

The magic of prayer, if we can call it that, is not in the particular words we use in our prayer, nor where we pray, nor the physical position of our bodies, nor even the particular things we pray about—but the relationship we enter when we have frequent communication with God and constantly feel his presence in our lives.

So, finally. . . how do we pray? Often! In ways that seem most natural to us. As Jesus taught us, and with the persistence of Abraham and the man visiting his friend at midnight. AND, we will sow more and more of our prayer seeds on fertile ground if we follow Paul’s advice in our second lesson today:  As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.