In Tough Times, Pray for Help

This is a time of year that many of us enjoy, and yet it also can be a little stressful with all we feel we’d like to do, want to do, and need to do, to say nothing of how events in the larger world impact us as well.

A few weeks ago, Jill and I enjoyed seeing the film Bridge of Spies a drama set in the late 1950’s and early 60’s during the Cold War and starring Tom Hanks as US attorney James Donovan and Mark Rylance as Russian spy Rudolf Abel. Abel is in big trouble and could be facing execution and at one point Donovan asks, “Don’t you worry?” Abel replies, “Would it help?” This exchange happens again in the film at a critical moment. Abel’s point being, why worry in a stressful situation, it doesn’t help. It doesn’t do any good.

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December 13, 2015
Philippians 4:4-7, In Tough Times, Pray for Help
Pastor Doug Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church

The Apostle Paul was in a stressful situation when he wrote to the Church in Philippi; he was in prison because of his faith. There are many of our Christian brothers and sisters facing stress far greater than we can imagine – as the front page story in today’s Boston Sunday Globe, A New Generation of Christian Martyrs ¹ describes in heart-breaking detail. We all respond to stress differently. Some people get agitated, angry, worried or excited; others get quiet or go for a walk, some pause and pray. Paul’s response was to try and respond in a useful way. Listen to Paul’s advice for tough times.

Philippians 4:4-7, “4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5 Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. 6 Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Some of our earliest memories of prayer may be simple prayers taught to us by a parent, Sunday school teacher, or a grandparent. Prayers like, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep…” A little boy and his brother went to visit their grandma. As the little boy said his evening prayers, he was shouting at the top of his voice, “Please God send me a bicycle, send me an IPhone.” His brother said, “Not so loud. God isn’t deaf.” The little boy replied, “I know, but Grandma is.”

The God we pray to is not deaf, although there are times when it can seem that way when our most earnest prayers are not answered for reasons we don’t know or understand. But we also have seen prayer change people perhaps by seeing them healed or come to faith or strengthened to face adversity. Prayer is something we can learn if we are willing to be taught. Prayer is something we grow in over time; we shouldn’t pray the same way as an adult as when we were children. It’s important not to rush through words in praying, but to truly hear what we are saying. We don’t need to fear our lack of knowledge or experience in prayer, because truly we will always be beginners.

The film It’s A Wonderful Life begins with people praying – can you think of another movie that starts that way? Although we don’t know who the voices are the first time we see the movie – it begins with people praying and asking God to help George Bailey.

The voices we hear are of Mr. Gower, George’s old boss, and Mr. Martini – George helped him buy his first house. George’s friends Bert the Cop and Ernie the taxi driver; George’s mother, wife, and children are all praying for him.

There are various ways to pray. Christians of the 2nd & 3rd centuries spoke of three methods of prayer; verbal prayer like those praying for George Bailey or the type of prayer when we pray out loud. Silent prayer is when we don’t say a word and instead invite God to speak to us. The third type of prayer is contemplation, in which we focus our attention on a brief prayer, scripture, phrase, or word. To nurture prayer in our life we will need to create space or pauses in our days for solitude and silence. Those who probably have the most to gain from this are those who are thinking, “I don’t have enough time in my day as it is and you want me to add something else?” In Matthew 6 Jesus speaks of going into our closet to pray in secret. I don’t know if I could get in my closet, much less pray in it, but most of us over the age of 18 have access to a prayer closet in which we spend many hours a week that could be used for prayer. It is called an automobile. We could even start a movement called Driven to Pray, which encourages people to use their time in their car to pray instead of listening to talk radio which doesn’t seem to produce any noticeable benefit except for making people mad and raising their blood pressure. We can pray to God in the car, but keep your eyes open. We can listen in the silence. We can play songs and express our praise to God. Our prayers may include time to express adoration of God, confession of our sins, praying for others, and praying for our self.

Prayer can be defined in many ways but a simple definition is, “Prayer is a believer’s communication with God.” Prayer involves three major components: God, two-way communication, and a person, usually a believer. However, God also can hear the prayers of those who do not yet possess faith, such as the pagan sailors in the story of Jonah (see Jonah chapter 1).

Prayer involves God because if we don’t believe there is a God who hears and answers prayer, we won’t pray. Our conception of who God is and what God is like will have a tremendous impact on our desire to pray and the nature of our prayers. If we conceive of God as a tyrannical, powerful being who enjoys catching people in sin and punishing them, our approach to prayer will be quite different than someone who conceives of God as powerful and mysterious yet tender, merciful, gracious, and abounding in steadfast love. When George Bailey is at the end of his rope and facing the toughest time in his life, he prays for help. He doesn’t immediately get the answer he’s seeking either.

It can be hard when we’re in a tough time and we pray and we see no positive change, no movement, no hope, or, like George when it seems like things get worse when we pray and life belts us in the mouth and knocks us down even harder. I can’t imagine how our fellow Christians in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and so many other places are coping while they faithfully pray and try to survive in conditions of brutal persecution. In tough times it may be that we need to listen for God’s voice, rather than speaking ourselves. Frank Laubach wrote in his excellent book Prayer The Mightiest Force in the World, “The trouble with nearly everybody who prays is that he says ‘Amen” and runs away before God has a chance to reply. Listening to God is far more important than giving Him your ideas.”

Prayer was a regular experience for Jesus, he prayed at the decisive moments in his life. His prayers are brief and appear to be spontaneous. He spoke to his Father and he listened to God’s voice. In Luke 13 Jesus suggests when communicating with God in prayer – keep it short, keep it simple, and keep it up.

If we have an appointment with someone else, we do our best to keep it because we wouldn’t want to be disrespectful or waste another person’s time. In the same way, we can make appointments for ourselves with God that we keep with regularity. Henri Nouwen observed, “We do not take the spiritual life seriously if we do not set aside some time to be with God and listen to him…The amount of time will vary for each person according to temperament, age, job, lifestyle, and maturity…The more we train ourselves to spend time with God and him alone, the more we will discover that God is with us at all times and in all places. Then we will be able to recognize him even in the midst of a busy and active life.” It’s important that we not project our style or commitment to prayer onto others, as Nouwen said, but we will need some time to be alone with God in prayer.

James 5:13-16 shares the example of Elijah as an encouragement to us in our praying. Elijah is persistent in prayer – seven times he prays and tells his servant to go back and look to see if there is any sign of rain. Six times the answer he gets is, “There is nothing there,” that is how we often feel about prayer. We pray and look and there is nothing there. Sometimes we may give up to soon. Elijah perseveres in praying. He is not discouraged or dissuaded. He keeps at it and doesn’t quit. So even though he is praying faithfully and he is seeing nothing, and he’s hearing, “There is nothing there,” he keeps at it. That is what we need to do as well.

The seventh time, the servant says, “A cloud as small as a man’s hand is rising from the sea.” Often times the answer to our prayers may appear very small and insignificant. Like a small cloud on the horizon – it might look like something the wind will just dissipate. But the answer to prayer can start small and gradually grow, it takes time and faith to watch and wait for it.

This can be especially true in praying for people who have gone astray. Prayer involves God, two-way communication, and a believer and James tells us, “Whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.” Tony Campolo tells a story about being at a worship service in Pennsylvania where a man prayed aloud for a friend. “Dear Lord,” he said, “you know Charlie Stoltzfus. He lives in that silver trailer down the road a mile. He’s leaving his wife and kids. Please do something to bring the family together.” The man prayed again, repeating the location: “the silver trailer down the road a mile.” Annoyed, Tony wanted to say, “Enough already. Do you think God’s asking, ‘What’s that address again?’”

After the service ended, Tony was driving home on the PA turnpike when he noticed a hitchhiker. He decided to give him a ride. “My name’s Tony,” Campolo said. “What’s yours?” “Charlie Stoltzfus,” the hitchhiker said. Campolo was dumbfounded. It was the man for whom the prayer had been offered. Campolo got off at the next exit. “Hey where are you taking me?” asked the hitchhiker. “Home,” Campolo said. The hitchhiker stared in amazement as Tony drove right to the young man’s silver trailer. That afternoon that man and his wife gave themselves to each other and to God.

Finally, in tough times we need to remember the importance of faithfulness, persistence, and perseverance in prayer. In My Grandfather’s Blessings, Rachel Naomi Remen tells of her grandfather who brought presents when he came to visit her. One day, when she was four years old and living on the sixth floor of an apartment building in New York City, he came with a little paper cup filled with dirt. They went into the nursery together where he found a teapot from her dollhouse set. Her grandfather filled the teapot with water and showed her how to put a few drops of water in the cup, saying: “If you promise to put some water in it every day, you may see something happen.” She promised her grandfather she would do this, and then he placed the cup of dirt on the windowsill.

At first, the little girl was interested in seeing what might happen, but as the days went by and nothing changed in the cup of dirt, she found it harder and harder to put water in it. After a week she asked her grandfather if it was time to stop. He told her “no” and added reassuringly, “Keep watering it every day.” The second week was even more difficult for the little girl to put water in the cup, and she started to resent it. She even tried to return the cup to her grandfather. He simply smiled and said, “Every day, every day.” By the third week, she sometimes forgot and would have to get out of bed at night to do the watering, but she never missed a single day. Each time she told her grandfather that she wanted to stop, he smiled lovingly and encouraged her with the same words, “Every day.”

One morning when she went to put water in the cup, she was astonished to see two little green leaves above the dirt. Each day the leaves grew bigger. She couldn’t wait to tell her grandfather about the wondrous thing that had happened. When he came to visit, he shared her joy at the green leaves and explained to her, “Life is everywhere, hidden in the most ordinary and unlikely places.” She was delighted and asked him, “And all it needs is water?” Gently, her grandfather touched her on the top of the head and said, “No, all it needs is your faithfulness.”

Like Rachel who watered the seemingly dead soil in the little cup, we must be willing to faithfully tend our relationship with God each day so it can grow. Faithful prayer is a great way to help us do that and our relationship with God will sustain us and give us strength and courage to endure the toughest of times. Like Rachel or George Bailey at Martini’s there will be times when we forget or don’t feel like “watering,” or praying or when we feel like there’s nothing good to show for our effort, but we keep on doing it anyway trusting that “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Blessing:

The fruit of silence is prayer. The fruit of prayer is faith. The fruit of faith is love.

The fruit of love is service. The fruit of service is peace. Mother Teresa

Questions for Reflection or Discussion

1. “On the one hand, prayer is a gift. It is something we receive, and we are to wait in silent expectation for the gift. On the other hand, we can learn how to pray and we are to give ourselves to the discipline of learning how to pray.” In the “School of Prayer” what “grade” would you say you’re in (kindergarten, third grade, middle school, high school, etc.)? Why do you say that grade?
2. Has prayer ever changed you – what happened? Do you know someone for whom prayer has made a difference in her or his life?
3. Christians of the 2nd and 3rd centuries spoke of three methods of prayer; verbal, silent thought, and contemplation, a type of prayer in which we focus our attention on a brief prayer, scripture or word. With which type of prayer are you most familiar? Which would like to try and explore a little more?
4. A simple definition of prayer is, “Prayer is a believer’s communication with God.” Why do you think each part of that definition is important?
5. In It’s a Wonderful Life, George pours his heart out in prayer and then gets punched in the mouth. Have you ever likewise prayed in a time of great need or desperation and felt like your prayer was unheard and things got worse? What happened?
6. In Luke 13 Jesus suggests three things when communicating with God in prayer – keep it _______, keep it _________, & keep it ____.

1 There are several articles in a series. Links to all can be found on The New Christian Martyrs page