September/October 2000
Prayer Power
by Wayne Warner
| I don't know how they did it...but I doubt theirs was a faith born overnight in a hospital room or the cabin of a steam ship. |
A kindly vicar walking along a country road happened upon a motorist trying to change a tire. As he approached, he overheard a torrent of curses flowing from the man trying to loosen the last lugnut.
"I say," said the vicar, "please do not use such language. Only by prayer can our wishes be fulfilled."
Temporarily giving up, the motorist said, "Well, I suppose we can try that if you say so. I've certainly tried everything else."
Whereupon they prayed silently together for a while. Then the motorist tried once again to remove the lug. This time it came off with the greatest of ease.
Breaking through the silence came the gentle voice of the vicar, "Well, I'll be a son-of-a-gun."
Eugenia Price noted, "We have all the confidence in radio waves and electronic communications from the moon, but we feel feeble and helpless and rebel when 'all we can do is pray.'"
Yet, when faced with a real need, most of us can get as demanding as the man on the operating table who insisted the doctor wait for the minister to arrive.
"But time is valuable," queried the doctor, "and we haven't time to wait. Why do you insist on having the preacher?"
"I want to be opened with prayer," he insisted.
After several years of meeting together, times which they always opened with prayer, the Church Council of Saint Anne's Catholic Church presented a scroll of appreciation to the congregation with this inscription:
"We, the willing, led by the unknowing, have been doing the impossible for the ungrateful.
We have done so much for so long with so little that we are now qualified to do anything with nothing."
People from all walks of life find prayer important at one time or another. George Meredith believed that one "who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered." Dr. Bob Pierce added this bit of wisdom: "I don't ask God to bless what I do; I pray he will help me to do what he blesses."
Martin Luther found life difficult to face without prayer. On heavily scheduled days he reportedly prayed two hours rather than his usual one hour.
A Prayer Rock
Anyi (people of Africa's Ivory Coast) normally carry heavy loads on their heads. The rock is an image of an especially heavy burden. Thus, it be-comes quite normal for them to tell a friend, "Pray with a rock on your head," when asking someone to pray fervently for a need.
"A heavy rock on one's head" expresses the pur-pose which drove Dr. John Mott to read forty-three books about prayer. Finally, he felt compelled to pray, rather than reading about prayer. Later, he confessed he learned more in one experience of fervent prayer than he learned from all the books he read.
Does it surprise you that Jesus' disciples sought a private audience with him after they heard him pray? "Teach us to pray!", they pleaded, upon seeing the result of prayer in his personal life and within his Spirit (Luke 11:1). He prayed with a rock on his head.
When Jesus prayed, his disciples felt the frailty of their own personal resources. They wanted more than second-hand information from books. Jesus prayed with a rock on his head; differently from the tepid, bland, business-as-usual they knew.
Like the disciples, our attempts at spiritual intensity often run aground on reefs of definition, analysis and categorization. The advice we receive frequently falls short of what we really want to know.
We find ourselves like the man who received a birthday card from a prankster friend. The card offered this teasing wisdom: "How to Live to be a Hundred." Tucked inside was this superbly innocuous gem: "Get to be ninety-nine and be very, very careful."
I need to personally experience the loftiness of day-by-day prayer more than I need to read forty-three books.
Without taking away from the exaltation of prayer by oversimplifying it, is it not true that the essence of real prayer is simply a friendly con-versation between a child of God and the Heavenly Father?
The vitality of the conver-sation comes in direct pro-portion to the strength of the relationship between the two individuals involved. Inner renewal comes through the reality of a life of prayer. It is not enough for me to want to pray or that I have the opportunity to pray. I must pray!
When I do not pray, I be-come more easily warped in my relationship with him. I become like a
thankless child who refuses to admit the earthly father's generosity and refuses to accept his authority.
One solid experience of prayer will give me more lifting power than a whole library of books on prayer. When I expose my innermost being to the far-reaching influences of God's powerful Spirit, I expose myself to the fullest possibility for being transformed internally. I pray with a rock on my head, arising a better man with an answered prayer, whatever my petition.
The disciples saw prayer-power express itself as they watched it control Jesus' behavior. Like them, I yearn for that inner renewal that conforms me more perfectly to the likeness of Christ (Romans 8:29), rather than being shaped by the circumstances surrounding me (Romans 12:2).
Wayne Warner is a retired church pastor.