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“Dangerous Prayer”
Last week I wrote about the hard part of prayer--Jesus' exhortation to his followers to pray for their enemies. The spirituality of Jesus is no namby pamby, sentimental thing. I'm the sentimentalist, not Jesus. No, Jesus is tough as nails about things that really matter. So, I want to say a few more things about prayer. I'm hammering on about this because it's important. It is the only thing reported in the Bible that his disciples ever asked him to teach them how to do--pray. He responded by giving them a simple template for communicating with God.
When you pray, he said, establish to whom you are praying and express praise to that person. Endorse that person's agenda. Tell the person to whom you are praying what you need. Level with the one to whom you are praying about your disobediences. Offer to treat the sins of others in the same way you want God to treat yours. Ask to be spared the temptation to sin and ask to be rescued from all evil. Finish off by affirming who is ultimately in charge here. That's how to pray, according to Jesus. Then, presumably, God will take all of this under advisement. God will give thumbs up to some of what you say. Or maybe, sometimes, thumbs down to what you say. You'll find out in time whether you are on God's wave length or not. The truth is that when you are getting engaged with God, there is potential for extraordinary things to happen. So, don't be surprised if you get what you ask for.
A pastor once asked Methodist Bishop Mack Stokes to react to an incident he had experienced with a parishioner. She was very, very ill. He went to see her in her hospital room. As he approached her room, he saw a group of her relatives huddled outside her door. Some were wiping tears. Her son said to him, “Pastor, Mama is dying. We know she cannot recover from this illness and she is suffering greatly. We cannot bear to watch her suffer. We have discussed this among ourselves and we are in agreement about it. We want you, when you go in to visit her, to pray that God will end her suffering and take her now.”
The pastor said he entered the room and greeted the suffering woman. He kissed her on the cheek and spoke an encouraging, hopeful word to her. He held her hand and spoke tenderly to her for a few moments. Then he asked her if he could offer a prayer. She invited him to pray. He gave thanks for her life and witness. Then he commended her to God forever, and he asked God to receive her into eternal life where her suffering would be no more. When he said, “Amen,” he said he felt her grasp of his hand relax and he realized that she had died. “Bishop,” the pastor said, “In that precise moment, she died! Now, what do you say about that?” The Bishop paused thoughtfully and replied, “I say, Sir, you are a dangerous man.”
It takes a courageous person to pray. Why? Because his or her prayers might be answered. In that prayer that Jesus taught as kind of a model prayer, he says “Ask for the Father's will to be done on earth like it is in heaven.” Just think how inconvenient it might be if suddenly it became impossible to lie, cheat and steal! What if your plans for Saturday night had to be cancelled because they were--shall we say--questionable? What if you had to fair and just and loving and gracious and sweet to everyone? Why, it would make some folk I know downright miserable if heaven were to drop into their world on Monday morning. Yep, some folk just ought not to pray. It is too dangerous to their habits, personalities and lifestyles. Of course, I could be wrong about all of this. Maybe Jesus meant something else entirely. But that's how I see it for now.
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