20/07/2016
PRAY THIS WAY!
Often we pray with ridiculous specificity! "Dear Lord, I need you to help poor Aunt Godiya, who is sick with a kidney infection. She is in General Hospital, Floor 4, Room 12, and, oh yes, Bed A. Bring her health and healing. Amen." We pray this way out of our concern for Aunt Godiya. However, it is quite doubtful that God needs a "Google maps" description of how to find Aunt Godiya in the hospital. He certainly doesn't need a medical description of our aunt's ailments either. We have to admit that there is a kind of piety here that is certain that God will hear our prayers, even if it is misguided by the desire to give step-by-step instructions to God on how to fulfill our aunt's need and how to find her hospital bed.
Jesus is perfectly clear in His instructions about prayer that our heavenly Father knows our need before a word is even formed in our mouths asking for His rescue (Mt 6:8). Similarly, when I was learning to ride a bike and ran into the house in tears my dad already knew that I'd fallen off my bike and skinned my knee or an elbow or the ham of my hand. He knew exactly what comfort he would offer and what encouragement to get me back on the bike to ride. Our heavenly Father does not just know our need in this general way, but He knows us better than we do ourselves and is intimately familiar with the crisis of life that we are suffering now and how it will all come out. He knows what we need even before we ask for it.
Our heavenly Father doesn't need a long, gassy explanation in our prayers, because he's not swayed by their length. A child's simple bedtime breath to her heavenly Father is as powerful as a well-constructed collect written by a professional theologian, as elegant as that collect might be. In fact, as a professional theologian, I'm often quite confident that the child's prayer is far superior to my own. But even I have it wrong, don't I? Neither the collect nor the simple child's prayer is better or worse than the other, they are all heard by our Father who is in heaven, because He has commanded us to pray and has promised to hear us. Simplicity is no better than elegance in the sight of God.
The question is what is the piety of the prayer. Are we praying because we believe that our Lord will hear and fulfill our desires and needs; desires and needs which He Himself has planted in us by the power of his own Word. Are we praying because He has given us access to His throne of grace for the sake of His only begotten Son? If so, He hears eagerly. We hunger and thirst for all that we request in prayer, because the Word of God has promised exactly those things to us. We are eager to receive from our gracious heavenly Father and He is even more eager to give what we request.
Rev. Dr. Scott R. Murray
Memorial Lutheran Church, Houston.
