Hopelessly Devoted to Prayer

       Professor, writer and preacher Tony Campolo writes: “Several years ago I was invited to speak at a small Pentecostal college located near Eastern College , where I teach

       Before the chapel service, several of the faculty members took me into a side room to pray with me.  I got down on my knees and the six of them put their hands on my head and prayed.  These men prayed long, and the longer they prayed the more they leaned on my head.  They prayed on and on and leaned harder and harder.  One of them kept whispering, “Do you feel the Spirit?  Do you feel the Spirit?”  To tell the truth, I felt something right at the base of my neck, but I wasn’t sure it was the Spirit.

       One of the faculty members prayed at length about a particular man named Charlie Stoltzfus.   That kind of ticked me off, and I thought to myself, if you’re going to lean on my head, the least you can do is pray for me.  He prayed on and on for this guy who was about to abandon his wife and three children.  I can still hear him calling out, “Lord! Lord! Don’t let that man leave his wife and children!  Send an angel to bring that man back to his family.  Don’t let that family be destroyed!  You know who I’m talking about, Lord…You know who I’m talking about…Charlie Stoltzfus.  He lives down the road about a mile on the right-hand side in a silver house trailer!”

       I thought to myself, with some degree of exasperation, God knows where he lives…what do you think God’s doing, sitting up there in heaven saying, “Give me that address again”?

       Following the chapel talk, I got in my car and headed home.  I was getting on the Pennsylvania turnpike when I saw a young man hitchhiking on the side of the road.  I picked him up.  (I know you’re not supposed to, but I’m a Baptist preacher and whenever I can get someone locked in to where I can preach to him, I do it.)  As we pulled back onto the highway I introduced myself. I said, “Hi, my name’s Tony Campolo.  What’s your name?”

       He said, “My name’s Charlie Stoltzfus…”!

       I didn’t say a word.  I drove down the turnpike, got off at the next exit, turned around, and headed back.  When I did that, he looked at me and said, “Hey, mister!  Where are you taking me?!”

       I said, “I’m taking you HOME!”

       He said, “Why?”

       And I said, “Because you just left your wife and three children!  RIGHT?”

       He said, “RIGHT! RIGHT!”

       He leaned against the passenger door the rest of the way, staring at me.  I drove off the turnpike and onto a side road – straight to his silver house trailer.  When I pulled into the drive, he looked at me with astonishment and said, “How did you know I lived here?”

       I said, “God told me!”

       Well, I believe that God did tell me.  I think God may set up things like that, just for fun.  I mean, if you’re God, you’re probably having a pretty sad time of it looking down on all the things that are going on in the world.  I can just imagine God nudging Peter and saying, “Hey, Pete, Watch this!”

       I told Charlie, “You get in that house trailer because I want to talk to you and I want to talk to your wife.”

       He ran into that mobile home ahead of me.  I don’t know what he said to his wife, but when I got in the house trailer her eyes were as wide as saucers.  I sat them down and said, “I’m going to talk and you’re going to listen.”

       Man, did they listen!  And during the next hour I led both of them into a personal relationship with Jesus.  Today that guy is a Pentecostal preacher down South.

       How did this happen?  It happened because someone prayed for God to send an angel to intervene.  And God, in His wonderful humor, decided that Campolo could be that angel.

       Prayer changes things.  Prayer makes a difference in our own lives in the lives of others.   

So it is no wonder that the letters of Paul are filled with calls to prayer and instructions in prayer.     

       For example, in Ephesians 6:18, Paul says that we are to be prayerful at all times. This does not mean every waking moment -- the Greek word chronos -- but in every season -- the word kairos. We are to pray in every incident, every phase of our lives, in every time of crisis, at every important decision and in every hour of need. We are always to remember that we are not alone and that our God stands beside us to help us.

       But we are also called to pray at all chronos times.  This is what Paul, in 1 Thessalonians 5:17, calls prayer without ceasing. 

      What does prayer without ceasing look like?

      It may be helpful for you to think of yourself on a hike with Jesus. As you go through your day, it is like you’re walking down the road together.  Sometimes you’re engrossed in deep theological discussions. Other times you’re just commenting on the landscape.  Suddenly a rattlesnake slithers into your path and you’re nearly screaming to him.  Then there’s the moment when you stand together admiring the sunset.  No words. No comments, but real communication. Sometimes you’re on your knees.  Sometimes you’re talking in the car.  Sometimes you’re simply rejoicing before Him as you gaze on a flowerbed.  It’s only when you step out of that fellowship by disobedience or defiance that the communication is broken.  Otherwise, the prayer never ends. It is prayer without ceasing.

      In today’s text, Colossians 4:2, Paul writes that we are to “devote ourselves” to prayer.  This word, proskartereite, is built on a root meaning “to be strong.”  Devotion means an earnest adherence to a person or action. 

     We are also called to be watchful.  Our prayer must be alive.  It must not be careless, mechanical, dull or heavy.  It is never to be in thoughtless repetition.  As we pray, we must know that we are playing with live ammunition and stay alert.  Annie Dillard suggests that we should wear crash helmets when we pray -- just in case God acts in power.        

      So we are told that we must pray at all the crucial times and all the regular times.   We must pray alertly. 

      But why must we devote ourselves to prayer?  

      I know at least five reasons.

      First and foremost, we must devote ourselves to prayer because we know that God wants us to pray.  There is one thing that each individual Christian can do that nobody else can.  God can raise up plenty of evangelists, teachers, writers, and witnesses, but only I can give my personal love and affection to God.  Our spouses, pastors, and coworkers can’t do this for us – only we can give God this personal love, a love that He wants very much – a love that is expressed in prayer.

       Second, we must we must devote ourselves to prayer because prayer makes a difference.  Prayer is actually a way in which God allows us to help shape the course of events. 

       In an essay on The Efficacy of Prayer, C.S. Lewis sums up the drama of human history as one "in which the scene and the general outline of the story is fixed by the author, but certain minor details are left for the actors to improvise.”  Part of that improvisation is our payers, and God’s response to our prayers.

       Lewis asks:  “Can we believe that God ever really modifies His action in response to the suggestions of men? For infinite wisdom does not need telling what is best, and infinite goodness needs no urging to do it.”

        The answer seems to be that God chooses to allow us as His children to have a voice through prayer in how He runs the universe – and the affairs of our own lives.  If this isn’t true, then there is no real point to intercessory prayer at all.  If God had already decided all that is going to happen and if nothing can alter that plan, then why should we pray for the ill, the lost, the confused or the endangered? 

      A quarter of a century ago, my parents were in a very severe head-on accident the day after Christmas.  It didn’t look like my dad was going to make it.  At one point he was given only a five percent chance of living through surgery.   It may have been God’s will for my father to go home there and then.  But the prayers of many people were for him to stay and he stayed with us for another twenty plus years.  

      No, prayer doesn’t change God’s ultimate purpose for our lives or for the world.  But it may affect the path God chooses to the working out of that will.  God didn’t change his ultimate will for my father – who has since died and gone home.  But it may well have impacted the road God chose to take in working out His will in my dad’s life. 

      Now prayer isn’t magic.  It won’t always change what happens.  God isn’t a vending machine where we put in a dollars worth of prayer, pull the lever and get the answer we are looking for.   God is perfectly free to say “no” to our prayers.  But other times, as was the case with my dad, He will say “yes.”

       Lewis writes that it is true that God doesn’t need our prayers. But he points out that that God also doesn’t need anything else we do.   God could, if He chose, Lewis continues, “repair our bodies miraculously without food; or give us food without the aid of farmers, bakers, and butchers, or knowledge without the aid of learned men; or convert the heathen without missionaries. Instead, He allows soils and weather and animals and the muscles, minds, and wills of men to cooperate in the execution of His will.  It is not really stranger, nor less strange, that my prayers should affect the course of events than that my other actions should do so. They have not advised or changed God' s mind -- that is, His overall purpose. But that purpose will be realized in different ways according to the actions, including the prayers, of His creatures.”

      Paul knows that prayer makes a difference. 

      This leads us to the third reason we must be devoted to prayer – that prayer connects us to each other.  Paul writes that we are to be "on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints." We are not alone. We are not to pray only for ourselves. We are joined together as a body of Christ and it is as a body that we live.   So in Colossians 4:3, the verse we looked at two weeks ago, Paul asks the Colossian believers to pray for him.  Paul knows that their prayers will make a difference.

     Fourth, prayer reminds us of our need for God.

     A pastor named Ben Patterson writes about a time when he was doomed to ineffectiveness as a pastor.  He writes:  “It came by way of two ruptured discs in the lumbar region of my back.  The doctor had prescribed six weeks of total rest, just to determine whether surgery would be needed.  My first thought was Ok, I guess I’ll get a lot of reading done.  But due to the pain, the painkillers, the muscle relaxants, and lying on my back, my eyes didn’t focus well.  I read one book in six weeks.  I was of no use to the church, so I thought.  I couldn’t preach, I couldn’t lead meetings, I couldn’t make calls.  I couldn’t do anything but pray. 

       “So I asked my wife to bring me the new church directory with the pictures of all the church members in it.  I decided I would pray for every member every day I was on the floor.  It took nearly two hours for me to do this.  Don’t misunderstand; this wasn’t great piety.  Mainly I was bored and frustrated.  But very quickly these times of prayer became sweet.

       “Toward the end of my convalescence, I had taken a walk and was back on the floor resting and thinking about going back to work. I said to the Lord, ‘You know, these times of prayer have been sweet.  It’s too bad I don’t have time to do this when I’m at work.’  Then the Lord spoke.  He addressed me: ‘Stupid.’  That was His word. He said it in a pleasant tone of voice, though.  He said, ‘Stupid, you have the same twenty-four hours each day when you’re sick as when you’re well.  The trouble with you, Ben, is when you’re well, you think you’re in charge; when you’re sick, you know you’re not.’”

       As J.I. Packer writes in Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God:  “When we are on our knees, we know that it is not we who control the world…The very fact that a Christian prays is thus proof positive that he believes in the Lordship of his God.”

      Fifth, and finally, we must be devoted to prayer because the very act of praying will make us larger. 

       I saw a bumper sticker once that read, “My Australian Shepherd is smarter than your honor student.”   I can relate.  As some of you know, we have an Australian Shepherd named Katie.  She is smart as a whip. 

       Katie’s everything I like about dogs.  She’s always glad to see me, even if I’ve been gone for only five minutes.  She tirelessly forgives my faults.

         But smart as she is, she’s still only a dog.  Her world is a world of sounds and smells -- especially smells.  Her favorite organ is her nose.  So if I were to try to read her a chapter of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, her first response would be to sniff the book to see whether it was edible and then lose all interest in it. 

       But what would it mean if, as I read Steinbeck, she suddenly sat up, perked up her ears, and barked her approval?  Suppose she growled when Cal shot a rabbit with an arrow.  Suppose she wagged her tail as Adam talked with Samuel Hamilton about the Book of Genesis. 

       It could mean but one thing: something miraculous had happened in her central nervous system, and she had been marvelously expanded in her capacity to appreciate the book that saved Oprah’s Book Club..

       Would Steinbeck be any better because my dog Katie likes him?  No.  But would she be any better?  Yes!

       That is what prayer does for us.  It causes a change in our central nervous systems.  As we practice in prayer – even if we are not yet fully devoted to it -- we develop our ability to really appreciate the actions of a God who is way far beyond what we are.  The experience of prayer makes us larger and larger and larger.

       The last thing Paul writes about prayer in Colossians 4:2 is that it is to be done with an attitude of thanksgiving. 

       Thankfulness in prayer shouldn’t really be to hard.  For we have a God who wants to hear or prayers.  In fact, He delights in them.  We can be thankful for that.

      We also have a God who listens to our prayers.  We have a God who has built into the very fabric of the universe the possibility that we can make a difference simply by getting down on our knees.  We can be thankful for that.

      We have a God who gives us the gift of others and connects us to those we love, even at a distance, through prayer. We can be thankful for that. 

      We also have a God who loves us enough to remind us who we are.  He loves us enough to remind us that we need Him.  We can be thankful for that.

      Finally we have a God who wants us to grow bigger and bigger – finally, Scripture says, until we are actually conformed to the image of Jesus Christ Himself.  One of the ways He makes us bigger is as we come into His presence in our prayer.  We can be thankful for that.

      We have a lot to be very thankful for.  So let us devote ourselves even more firmly to prayer.