6 Does Prayer Make Any Difference?
Does Prayer Make Any Difference?
There is an immense difference between a worldview that is not able to answer every question to complete satisfaction and one whose answers are consistently contradictory. There is an even greater difference between answers that contain paradoxes and those that are systemically irreconcilable. Once again, the Christian faith stands out as unique in this test, both as a system of thought and in the answers it gives. Christianity does not promise that you will have every question fully answered to your satisfaction before you die, but the answers it gives are consistently consistent. There may be paradoxes within Christian teaching and belief, but they are not irreconcilable. To those who feel that Christianity has failed them because of prayers that went unanswered, it is important to realize what I am saying here.
I sat with a man in my car, talking about a series of heartbreaks he had experienced. "There were just a few things I had wanted in life," he said. "None of them have turned out the way I had prayed. I wanted my parents to live until I was at least able to stand on my own and they could watch my children grow up. It didn't happen. I wanted my marriage to succeed, and it didn't. I wanted my children to grow up grateful for what God had given them. That didn't happen. I wanted my business to prosper, and it didn't. Not only have my prayers amounted to nothing; the exact opposite has happened. Don't even ask me if you can pray for me. I am left with no trust of any kind in such things."
I felt two emotions rising up within me as I listened. The
first was one of genuine sorrow. He felt that he had tried, that he had done his part, but that God hadn't lived up to his end of the deal. The second emotion was one of helplessness, as I wondered where to begin trying to help him.
These are the sharp edges of faith in a transcendent, allpowerful, personal God. Most of us have a tendency to react with anger or withdrawal when we feel God has let us down by not giving us things we felt were legitimate to ask him for. We may feel guilty that our expectations toward God were too great. We may feel that God has not answered our prayers because of something lacking in ourselves. We may compare ourselves with others whose every wish seems to be granted by God, and wonder why he hasn't come through for us in the way he does for others. And sometimes we allow this disappointment in God to fester and eat away at our faith in him until the years go by and we find ourselves bereft of belief.
G. K. Chesterton surmised that when belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from him—but, in heaven's name, to what? To the skeptic or the one who has been disappointed in his faith, the obvious answer to Chesterton's question may be to give up believing that there's somebody out there, take charge of your own life, and live it out to the best of your own ability.
But Chesterton also wrote, "The real trouble with the world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite."1 He is right. Only so much about life can be understood by reason; so much falls far short of any reasonable explanation. Prayer then becomes the irrepressible cry of the heart at the times we most need it. For every person who feels that prayer has not "worked" for them
and has therefore abandoned God, there is someone else for whom prayer remains a vital part of her life, sustaining her even when her prayers have gone unanswered, because her belief and trust is not only in the power of prayer but in the character and wisdom of God. God is the focus of such prayer, and that is what sustains such people and preserves their faith.
Prayer is far more complex than some make it out to be.
There is much more involved than merely asking for something and receiving it. In this, as in other contexts, we too often succumb to believing that something is what it never was, even when we know it cannot be as simple as we would like to think it is.
The Irish poet Frances Brown framed a poem about a band of pilgrims sharing about their losses in life. One pilgrim spoke of a treasure lost on the high seas, another of a fortune, ravaged and plundered. A third spoke of a lost love, and a fourth of having buried a little child.
But when their tales were done, there spake among them one, A stranger, seeming from all sorrow free: "Sad losses ye have met, but mine is heavier yet, For a believing heart hath gone from me."
"Alas!" these pilgrims said, "for the living and the dead, For fortune's cruelty, for love's sure cross, For the wrecks of land and sea! but, however it came to thee, Thine, stranger, is life's last and heaviest loss! For the believing heart has gone from thee."2
I remember my mother, lying in bed, her life hanging in the balance after a stroke at the age of fifty-seven. A group of elders from the church came and prayed for her. Afterward, one
of them told us that the Lord had told him that my mother would get well. My younger brother, especially, who was twenty-two at the time and a medical student, was greatly buoyed and encouraged by this assurance of God's promise to heal her. However, only a few days later, her condition deteriorated, and she passed away. Of course we were griefstricken and bewildered. But even more devastating was the response of some in the group—that she had died because someone in the family had lacked sufficient faith for her healing. We were already reeling from our loss, and now we each found ourselves, like the disciples, examining his or her own heart, asking God, "Is it possible that I am responsible for her death, or was this always in your plan and purpose?"
You are not alone in your experience of prayer. One hears stories of unanswered prayer all the time. Adding insult to injury is hearing someone else's story, someone whose prayers seem to be always answered or even someone who never thought of praying and yet their loved one has recovered.
Read the following thoughts of a prominent Christian author, which I have compiled from his various writings. I have changed some of the wording but retained his ideas.
I have prayed long and hard for God to save my mother's life, but my prayers have gone unanswered.
I wish so much that God would rescue me from this dreadful school, and I have prayed to no end. I am still here.
I finish praying and then struggle with my conscience, wondering if I had concentrated through it at all.
Prayer for me meant pain, defeat, and much lost sleep.
It is this terrible burden of duty in prayer that has taken its toll.
Every evening was so cloaked in gloom because I dreaded bedtime and the nightly struggle for supreme concentration.
His struggle over his problem with unanswered prayer caused him to turn away from his Christian faith at the age of thirteen, and it was not until some twenty years later that he knelt and prayed, "perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England."3 Yes, these are the experiences and words of C. S. Lewis. Lewis stated clearly that it was his disillusionment with prayer that made him walk away from his Christian belief when he was only a young lad. Yet fifteen or so years after his conversion, Lewis said he found himself in "philosophically a rather embarrassing position" of praying and trusting this same God for the safety of his brother
Warren, who was in Shanghai during a Japanese attack.4
If we are being honest, which of us has not sensed this frustration, dejection, and confusion over prayer? Scholars of great philosophical prowess have asked what sort of God this is who needs to be pleaded with, cajoled, and begged. Once again, they show their total ignorance of how people in the East relate to God and have no difficulty accepting the distinction and inequality between God and man. Some
Western celebrity thinkers, on the other hand, not only don't accede to this difference; they suggest that, if anything, man's ethic is higher than God's. But leaving the philosophers, scholars, and celebrities out of the discussion for the moment and returning to the subject of our own experiences with
prayer, we all fully understand Lewis's frustration and readily identify with him.
It is not always as easy for us to identify with the profound prayers of some who seem to know God so well, and we listen with rapt attention, wondering at just how foreign it seems, as if it originates from another planet. Years ago, I read about a notable Indian Christian by the name of Bakht Singh, truly a remarkable person. Born into a Sikh family in Punjab, he regularly attended Gurdwaras (Sikh temples). When he was presented with a Bible at school, he promptly tore it to shreds.
Years later, he went to Kings College in London, and while an engineering student in Canada, in 1929—the same year C. S.
Lewis became a Christian—Bakht Singh surrendered his life to Jesus Christ. He became one of the most notable Christians in India's history and was highly respected and revered, dying in 2000 at the age of ninety-seven.
Stories abound of the power he wielded in prayer. On one occasion on a long walk across India, a stranger is said to have stopped him and challenged him to pray for relief from drought for the area he was passing through. Bakht Singh asked the man if he would believe in Christ, should his prayer be answered. The man hesitated and then consented. As Singh was about to get on his knees to pray, his traveling companion supposedly cautioned him, "Don't you think we should wait to pray for rain until we are within range of our stop for the night
—we still have some way to go, and we don't have any umbrellas."
Fact or fable, I have never bothered to determine. There is precedent in Scripture, however, when Elijah prayed for rain during a time of severe drought and had to run for cover himself (1 Kings 18). The Bible is replete with such answers to
prayer, and it is a fact that George Mueller of Bristol, England, was just such a man of prayer in the 1800s. Often he would have not enough food to feed the orphans and street kids in his charge, but would offer thanks for the food anyway, before it even arrived. Numerous eyewitnesses and biographers have testified to his prayers of faith.
Saint John Chrysostom wrote this about the power of prayer:
Prayer is an all-efficient panoply, a treasure undiminished, a mine which is never exhausted, a sky unobscured by the clouds, a heaven unruffled by the storm. It is the root, the fountain, the mother of a thousand blessings… The potency of prayer hath subdued the strength of fire, it hath bridled the rage of lions, hushed anarchy to rest; extinguished wars, appeased the elements, expelled demons, burst the chains of death, expanded the gates of heaven, assuaged diseases, repelled frauds, rescued cities from destruction, stayed the sun in its course, and arrested the progress of the thunderbolt.5
Who can read that and not be tempted to exclaim, "Is that mere rhetoric?" No, not so. Each of the instances referred to by Chrysostom is drawn right out of the Scriptures. The Bible talks about the privilege of prayer and cautions against insincere prayer. Whether we're talking about the Welsh
Revival or that in the Hebrides or the Second Evangelical Awakening in America, all had one thing in common— concerted prayer over a protracted period of time. Often as a student I would read stories of those revivals and their foundations of prayer, and I would think, That's what I want to
build my life on—the solid footing of prayer. My library is full of books on prayer. One would think that with each passing year the discipline of prayer would get easier, but in fact it doesn't. Whether early in the morning or late at night, it is always a challenge. But as God has proved himself, I have had several different experiences in which I sensed God's very clear answer within my spirit. There is no doubt in my heart that prayer makes a difference in anyone's life.
IS ANYONE LISTENING? DOES ANYONE CARE?
There is no getting around the fact that the answers to prayer that Bakht Singh and George Mueller regularly experienced don't fit the common experience. My daughter Naomi has experienced some tough situations, but, by God's grace, has kept her feet steady. She travels the globe, working on behalf of the neediest of the world. Whether in the rescue or rehabilitation of women enslaved by the sex-trafficking industry or help for children affected by AIDS—either through the loss of their parents or their own diagnosis of HIV positive
—she is in the thick of situations where the need and pain are overwhelming. She often says that perhaps God intended her place to be among the broken people of the world, and in her own personal life she has endured much pain, disappointment, and betrayal. Every now and then I hear her say, "I wish God would answer some of my prayers in a way that would let me know he is even just listening."
She currently makes her home in a quiet neighborhood on the West Coast of the United States. Recently, after a visit with us in Atlanta, she returned home to be greeted by her energetic
Golden Retriever, India, who insists that Naomi first make up
for all the lost time with her before anything else is done. Her landlady also came running to welcome Naomi home. So she set her suitcase on the ground just outside her door and got down on the floor, greeting the dog with all the preoccupation of the oneway conversation that a person with an affectionate dog regularly engages in, and also responding to her landlady's conversation. Finally she turned back to grab her suitcase. Only ten minutes had elapsed from setting it down outside the door and returning to retrieve it, and when she opened the door it was not there. She began to wonder if she had left it in her car, although she was sure she remembered unloading it. But her landlady confirmed that the suitcase had been at the door, which is how she had known that Naomi was back. She searched the periphery of the house in case it had been moved, but there was no sign of either the suitcase or its contents. I was ten thousand miles away when she called home, quite upset. Some of her favorite things were in the suitcase, as well as a few new things she had bought while she was away. She reported the loss to the police, and after two days when it still hadn't been located, they didn't give her much hope that she would ever see it, or anything in it, again.
I wrote to her, encouraging her not to lose hope. This was a small thing for God, and we continued to earnestly pray that he would restore it to her. Her prayer was, "I know it isn't important in the grand scheme of things. It's just a suitcase.
But there are things in it that are important to me. I've experienced so much of the pain of life and seem to have known so few answers to my prayers—couldn't you bring my suitcase back? It would mean so much to me to know that you are there and that you are listening."
The fourth morning after its disappearance, she got up
and checked outside the door as she had for the last three mornings—only to find nothing. She spent the morning working, frequently asking the Lord for the return of her suitcase. At noon she again checked outside the door, finding nothing. In the early afternoon she went out to run an errand, and when she came back there was still no suitcase in front of her door. A few minutes later, she went to the door, and sitting in the exact spot where she had left it three days earlier was her suitcase! She couldn't believe her eyes. In great excitement she opened it up and found everything there. Not a single thing had been taken.
Now mystified but filled with gratitude to the Lord, she called me. "Dad! Dad, you won't believe this! My suitcase is back, and nothing has been taken!" Later that day, she wrote to me and said, "You know, it's a small thing, but I needed that little small thing from God right now. I needed that little gesture just to know that he cares when I'm a little down."
Someone once humorously quipped that if you really want your spouse to hang on to every word you say—to listen with rapt attention and remember every word—just talk in your sleep. Someone else told a story about a bishop who knelt before the altar and began praying, "Dear Lord…" And a voice came from heaven asking, "What is it?" They had to pick the bishop off the floor, as he had fainted. The reason these stories strike us as funny is that it is so important to us that someone care enough about us and love us enough to listen to what we say, to care about what we think. And when we pray, when we pour out our hearts and make ourselves vulnerable before God, we sometimes cannot help but wonder—even a little bit—if there really is anyone listening.
LITTLE THINGS THAT MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE
Prayer has wings. It can lift you beyond the dark clouds of the human struggle so that you are able to soar above. At the same time, prayer is a reminder that we are not God. Do you remember those lines by Robert Browning?
Go on, you shall no more move my gravity Than, when I see boys ride a-cockhorse I find it in my heart to embarrass them By hinting that their stick's a mock horse,
And they really carry what they say carries them.6
I have absolutely no doubt that if you are a praying Christian, your faith in God is what is carrying you, through both the good times and the hard times. However, if you are not a praying person, you are carrying your faith—you are trying to make your faith work for you apart from your source of power—and trying to carry the infinite is very exhausting.
The question of unanswered prayer is a haunting one.
What if prayer doesn't make the difference it's supposed to make? In this chapter it is not my intention to deny the great disappointments of unanswered prayer or even to attempt to provide answers to why our prayers are not answered. Rather, I want us to take a good, hard look at what God intends prayer to be.
THE MYSTERIOUS IMPACT OF PRAYER
The Bible has a lot to say about prayer, either directly or by inference, with respect to the effect of prayer both on a situation and in the life of the person praying. Nearly fifty quite lengthy prayers are recorded in the Scriptures, along with numerous short ones. If we want to understand prayer, it is critical to understand how the Bible views prayer.
In all of its expressions, whether halting and short or flowing in beautiful, well-structured phrases, prayer is simply a conversation with God. If we turn prayer into a monologue or use it as a way to showcase our gift with words or as a venue for informing or instructing others who may be listening, we defeat the very purpose of prayer. The Bible makes it clear that prayer is intended as the line of connection from the heart of the praying person directly to the heart of God. Jesus himself practiced a lifestyle of prayer and urged his disciples to imitate him by making it part of their daily existence. His prayers represented prayer at its best and most sincere.
I marvel at the impact of praying with a hurting person. I have prayed many times with someone who has claimed to be a skeptic and is living in a manner that supports that claim, only to finish my prayer and open my eyes to see tears in his eyes.
Although prayer remains a mystery to all of us but especially to one who lives apart from God, I have observed again and again that even the hardened heart retains a longing for the possibility of communicating with God.
For example, on a trip to Hungary, I spent an evening with a few colleagues as we discussed spiritual and philosophical issues and tried to answer the questions of our six Hungarian hosts. They included, among others, a member of the
parliament, a theoretical physicist, and a successful businessman. None of them were followers of Jesus Christ.
They were in the truest sense atheistic—with no belief in God or recognition of any need for God.
After hours of interaction, the evening came to an end.
Before we separated, I asked if they would mind if I concluded our time together with prayer. They were a bit taken aback, but in a rather bemused manner they agreed that I should pray. I prayed briefly for their nation, their families, and their own lives. I prayed that God would show himself to them in some meaningful way and thanked him for the opportunity to meet them in their homeland and spend the evening with them.
When I said Amen and lifted my eyes, I saw tears in the eyes of each of our hosts. There was a hushed silence. Everyone seemed peculiarly reluctant to disturb the sense of God's sudden, unexpected presence. We bid them good night.
The next morning, I stood to address an audience miles away from the dinner of the previous night and recognized some of the very people with whom we had spent the previous long evening. I was surprised, not only because of the distance they had traveled to be there, but also because this was a closed event, open only to registered delegates. But there they were.
When the session finished and the hall cleared, the businessman approached me and said, "Something happened last night." He went on to say that after the prayer the previous evening he had been so moved that he hadn't gone back to his hotel room. Instead he had walked most of the night until he had come to the place of accepting that Jesus Christ was who he claimed to be—the Son of God and the Savior of the world.
And he had given his life into the keeping of that Savior.
Prayer can accomplish amazing things, reaching into hearts in a way that all the correct answers to questions that are honestly asked sometimes cannot do.
Conversely, more certainly than anything else, sustained prayer that seems to bring nothing in response can result in a sense of futility with life and an erosion of faith. Like the myth of Sisyphus, who repeatedly rolled a huge rock up a mountain only to watch it roll down again, unanswered prayer may well be where most of those who have lost their faith began that journey into unbelief.
JESUS ON PRAYER
No one is a better instructor on prayer than Jesus himself. By simply observing the specific occasions in which the Scriptures tell us that Jesus spent time in prayer, it should be evident how very important prayer is: at his baptism (Luke
3:21); on the occasion of his transfiguration (Luke 9:29); at the selection of his twelve disciples (Luke 6:12); at the Last Supper with his disciples during the Passover Feast (John 17:1 – 26); before his arrest in Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36 – 46); and at his cruel execution on the cross (prayers that are recorded by all four gospel writers).
Reading these prayers and coming to terms with how Jesus prayed and why he prayed as he did provide all we need for a fascinating study. The most definitive passage on prayer is what is often called the Lord's Prayer or, as some scholars like to call it, the Disciples' Prayer. (More than once I have heard an audience asked to recite the Ten Commandments by memory, and few can do so. But most people who have attended church even for a short period of time or are over the
age of fifty have learned the Lord's Prayer either in church or in school.) A mere sixty-five words, it is uttered thousands of times a day. In this simple prayer, we see what prayer, however expanded, should be.
The highly significant first words carry the weight of all of prayer: "Our Father in heaven." This is a uniquely Christian utterance. I have never heard a Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, or anyone of any other faith ever begin prayer with those words.
The conversion story of a wealthy socialite woman in Pakistan, Bilquis Sheikh, is appropriately titled I Dared to Call Him
Father. In these two words alone—"Our Father"—we recognize, at least implicitly, two truths: the nearness of God as our heavenly Father, and the sovereignty of God as the one who controls everything. As soon as you cry out in prayer,
"Heavenly Father," you are recognizing his sovereign rule over your life.
The great prayers of the Old Testament—even from Abraham, the friend of God, or from David, a man after God's own heart—do not begin this way. To address God in this way is distinctive. It was Jesus' way of introducing to his disciples that God was their heavenly Father. Can you imagine how new this must have been to the disciples—even shocking—to hear
God addressed this way. In the Jewish faith, of which Christianity is the fulfillment, God was so revered, so distant, so holy—so "other"—that his name could not even be spoken.
That attitude is still true among Jews today. To hear God addressed in such a familiar and intimate manner must have made an immediate impression on them of what Jesus was teaching about their relationship with God.
The prayer recorded by Matthew (6:9 – 13) is also recorded by Luke (11:2 – 4). Jesus gives the context in verses 5
– 10.
Then [Jesus] said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.'
"Then the one inside answers, 'Don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed.
I can't get up and give you anything.' I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs.
"So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened."
The New Testament events took place in the Middle East, and in the East it is an absolute must to place food in front of a guest, without exception. You simply do not welcome anyone into your home without offering them food and drink. My first reaction when reading this story was to think that I knew exactly how the host felt: What on earth is this friend thinking, arriving unexpectedly at midnight [it had to be unexpected, or the food would have been ready], and hungry at that? But it happens all the time.
I had an uncle who, when an earthquake hit our city, moved his whole family of seven into our home for three months. Already a family of seven living in a small twobedroom home, we had to feed and provide a place for them for
all those months. Even then, I marveled at it. I remember asking my mother how my uncle felt he was safer living with us when his own home was a mere half mile away. Why was it necessary because of one earthquake for their family to move in with us for three months? There we were, fourteen of us in a four-room house—two bedrooms, a small kitchen, and a living room.
Indeed, they actually did arrive at midnight, and all of a sudden we all had to vacate our beds and give them to the "guests."
We were not happy. But there was absolutely no possibility, not even a thought on the part of my parents, of turning them away. Courtesy demanded that we open our home to them and share all that we had.
This is precisely the context of Jesus' story. It is one of those "how much more" passages. If through sheer pressure of culture a person yields to the needs of a friend because of his friend's persistence, "how much more will your heavenly
Father do for you?" The man's neighbor was asleep; God doesn't sleep. The neighbor had locked his door against any intrusion; God is always available to us. The neighbor didn't know his friend; God knows every heart and every need. He knows the numbers of hairs on our heads. He knows the days each of us have been given for life on this earth. He sees every sparrow that falls. He knows our need before we even ask him to meet it.
Jesus then applied the lesson by saying, "Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?"
(Luke 11:11 – 12). Then he gives the key to the whole passage that begins with his model prayer: "How much more will your
Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"
(verse 13).
On the heels of the Lord's Prayer and as his conclusion to it, Jesus tells us that God will give the Holy Spirit, his indwelling presence, to those who ask for it. That is the whole point of the prayer. It is not spoken in the form of a question— it ends with an exclamation point. God will give the gift of the indwelling presence of the holy God to any who ask for it—this is an absolute certainty! You can count on it!
We hear so little of this today. In its efforts to make God relevant to modern men and women, the emergent church seldom emphasizes to its audiences that the ultimate result of prayer is that Jesus intends to make his home within the life of the supplicant. We have turned prayer into a means to our ends and seldom wait on God's response long enough to think about what he wants for us in that very moment. By reducing the evidence of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to one particular gift, we have robbed people of the Holy Presence that prompts us in prayer, prays for us when we don't have the words to pray for ourselves, and comforts us in our times of need.
The paramount need in the church today and in the individual Christian is the indwelling presence of God. In an incredible twist, this indwelling presence of God, the Holy
Spirit, makes God both the enabler of our prayers and the provider of answers to those prayers.
This is precisely how a wise parent raises his or her child —teaching the child to train his or her hungers and longings so that in turn, the parent is able to provide for those hungers and longings. More than anything else, this is what prayer is about—training one's hungers and longings to correspond with God's will for us—and it is what the Christian faith is all about. Paul reminds us of this numerous times. Jesus talks of
the prompting from within and the provision that comes from without, which is the work of the Holy Spirit within us and the provision of God from without.
A neighbor once came to our door, asking me to pray for a particular family need. I smiled at her and said, "I'm glad to pray for you, but you know, you have equal access to God and can come to him yourself at any time." I thought I had captured a nice, culturally relevant term for her. But she paused for a moment and said, "I know that, but you seem to have an 800 number for him; for me it's a long-distance call." I suppose if that had happened today, I could have replied by suggesting that she get a roaming package on her phone.
Humor aside, I think the reason we sometimes have the false sense that God is so far away is because that is where we have put him. We have kept him at a distance, and then when we are in need and call on him in prayer, we wonder where he is. He is exactly where we left him.
Calvin Miller makes a powerful point:
The sermon and the Spirit always work in combination to pronounce liberation. Sometimes the Spirit and sermon do supply direct answers to human need, but most often they answer indirectly. Most problems are not solved by listening to sermons. The sermon, no matter how sincere, cannot solve these unsolvable problems. So if the sermon is not a problem solver, where shall we go for solutions?
Together with the Spirit, the sermon exists to point out that having answers is not essential to living. What is essential is the sense of God's presence during dark seasons of questioning…Our need for specific answers is dissolved in the greater issue of the lordship of Christ
over all questions—those that have answers and those that don't."7
This is one of the most defining differences between an apologist who is merely interested in arguments and an apologist who knows God in a clear and personal walk with him. To the skeptic, to say that prayer is more about the lordship of Christ than it is about getting answers may seem at first blush to be evasive, but it is not. It is in keeping with the worldview that God's presence is a felt presence and must be pursued with diligence—and it is precisely what "ask, seek, and knock" means.
In his book The Integrity of Worship, Paul Waitman Hoon makes a powerful observation about how God works on us as individuals through prayer, molding us into what he wants us to be, teaching us to think as he wants us to think:
How often have we craved light on our life in the world, only to be summoned to ponder our destiny in eternity.
How often have we been preoccupied with the church local and instead found our vision turned to the church triumphant and universal. And how often have we asked that worship bless our souls with peace, only to hear the lesson for the day calling us to a holy warfare. How often have we desired strength to overcome the world, only to learn that we are to be stoned and sawn asunder in the world. How often have we sought comfort to our sorrows and instead found the sorrows of the world added to our own. Such reversals may be strange to men. But only such contradiction answers to realities both relevant and irrelevant that are at the heart of the church's worship.8
MORE ON THE LORD'S PRAYER
Let us now focus our thoughts on three other dimensions to the Lord's Prayer. They are obvious in one sense but not in another.
"Hallowed Be Your Name": From Nearness to Distance The opening affirmation reveres the name of God as sacred and is the starting posture of prayer. God is our Father, but he is also holy in character. This alone should remind us that God's name in our lives and in our requests must be paramount. What's in a name? Who you are in your character is carried in your name. It is because of his name that numerous prayers are prayed. It is in his name that numerous prayers are prayed.
The failure to recognize that our prayers carry his name has brought much disaster to many Christians. His name is quite "unhallowed" in the way we see God in relation to ourselves, if the contemporary expressions of worship that we often engage in are any indication. This vacuous understanding of the sacred may be part of the reason for the collapsing foundation of Christianity in the West.
In Jeremiah 7, we find the people of God living with a false sense of security. They knew the northern portion of their divided kingdom had fallen to the Assyrians, but they lived with the false hope that the southern kingdom of Judah would never fall because the temple of the Lord, which symbolized the presence of God, was located there. God speaks to Jeremiah in clear terms:
"Do not trust in deceptive words and say, 'This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple
of the Lord!'… "Go now to the place in Shiloh where I first made a dwelling for my Name, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of my people Israel."
JEREMIAH 7:4, 12
The citizens of the southern kingdom rested in the false hope that because Jerusalem was special to God, he would never let it fall to the enemy. God shocked them by reminding them that Shiloh had preceded Jerusalem chronologically in God's affections—and yet Shiloh had become a byword, a topic of conversation in the region because of its devastation
—and that Jerusalem's turn was coming. In the end, God will always protect his name, but when we disrespect that name— when we imply by our speech and by the way we live that the character of God is not revered—and when we live with the illusion that God will not call us to task for what we are doing to his name, he will act drastically to disassociate himself from the desecration of his name. To be reverenced is the very least that God expects from every human being.
The name of God must always be treated as sacred, and history brings staggering reminders of how much we need to keep this in mind. There is nothing more memorable in the history of Russia than Czar Alexander I, a totally profane man, falling on his face before God in a church in Saint Petersburg, asking God for the deliverance of his nation, even as Napoleon's army was preparing to torch the spires of Moscow.
God responded by sending a minor prophet—the winter. How ironic that the very church in which he prayed was later converted into the Museum of Atheism during the high noon of Marxism. Success seems to bring with it short memories of
divine intervention, and prayer is a ready casualty.
The sacred is that which cannot be made commonplace.
We have to ask ourselves as individuals and as a culture if we really think we can desacral-ize God's name with impunity. It is telling that throughout the world it is the name of Jesus that is used profanely—not Buddha, not Muhammad, not Krishna.
Even the profane in those cultures have enough reverence for the names of their own prophets or deities. We in the West are the only ones who use the name of our God more as a punctuation mark that reveals our irreverence than as a name that speaks to us of the sacred. This applies to nations, to communities, and to individuals. No prayer is sincere if his name is unhallowed. The reason is straightforward and of enormous significance. In the end, how we see his name is how we will see ourselves. This is the logical connection in prayer.
But whether our prayer meets with "success" or "failure," we are far too inclined to think of God either as a magician, answering all our demands or needs as we see them, or as distant and uncaring when our prayers aren't answered and we don't get what we asked for. The first mistake we make is to turn prayer into merely a wish list because when those wishes aren't granted, we struggle to believe in God and feel that he has disappointed or failed us.
Some years ago, Steve Martin starred in a movie called Leap of Faith. It told the story of a faith healer with the memorable name, Jonas Nightingale. Jonas works a circuit, setting up his tent in various small towns for his revivals. He uses all the crooked and perverted terms for faith associated with a glamorized version of Christianity that is too often displayed on Christian telecasts. He had created a system that informed him of who in the audience was suffering from what
and where they were seated. Then, in the climax of a "healing service" and with the grandiloquence of a circus ringmaster, he would call his "would-be victim" to the front to be healed.
Because his bus breaks down, he ends up in a simple agrarian community in the Midwest, in the throes of a dreadful drought. The entire community had pitched their tents in small family units, spending nightlong vigils in prayer for rain when
Brother Jonas arrives and finds a ready-made audience for his exploitation. He befriends a waitress who is earnestly in need of the touch of God in her family, especially for her brother, who cannot walk. Believing Jonas, she asks him to heal her brother. He realizes this is serious stuff to the "simpleminded" believing community in a town where people grow up depending on the elements for their very sustenance, and he begins to feel a sense of discomfort at taking advantage of them and playing with their faith.
So he prepares to bring his series of meetings to an abrupt end but is caught when a real miracle of healing takes place in his meeting. As the sick respond to his "charade" up front to "come to Jesus for healing," the young brother of the waitress comes forward and, in a remarkable moment, is able to throw off his crutches and walk again. The crowd roars in delight and celebration of what God has done.
Nobody is in a greater state of shock than Jonas Nightingale. After all the euphoria has died down, he retires into his quiet room. He has planned to leave the area the next day, but, unable to sleep, he is lying awake as he tries to figure out what has happened. He gets up, dresses, and goes to the tent, where all is in darkness. He walks to the front to a large crucifix, where the miracle of the young lad's healing had taken place. He looks up at the figure on the cross and begins to
speak: "Lord, this is…Jack." For the first time in the movie he calls himself by his real name. He has come to terms with who God is and sees his own name as a true reflection of the person he really is.
Pretense is the cornerstone of our own ultimate failure. To pray as though we have the right to demand what we want without the candor of facing up to who we really are is to make prayer the ultimate charade, even if we think no one is watching.
Alone after making peace with God, Jack returns to his room. In the still-dark hours, he picks up his pack and hitches a ride from a truck driver passing through town. Suddenly he sees a raindrop on the windshield and then two, then three, as the thunderclouds celebrate with teardrops for the healing of a fake healer who has come to faith.
Most interesting to me in such a movie are the insights that even skeptics have into what faith is meant to be, sometimes bearing very little resemblance to what commercialized Christianity makes Jesus out to be. There is probably something deeper here. I wondered why the script writers even gave him the name of Jack. Was it short for Jacob?
Do you remember the story of how Jacob pretended to be his older brother Esau and stole the blessing from his blind father?
Do you remember that when the day of reckoning came and he was to meet up with his brother who was bigger and burlier than him, Jacob wrestled all night with God and said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me"? God asked him the most unusual question; he asked him for his name. All of a sudden
Jacob realized that he was face to face with himself as God knew him to be and as he himself knew he was. He had run from God with the stolen blessing of a fake name. Now, as he
was returning home, he knew he was not Esau—he was Jacob, a name that means duplicitous. That day, Jacob admitted to his true name before God and was reborn as a spiritual man; that day a nation was reborn spiritually and its children became the inheritors of the blessing.
"Hallowed be your name" is the opening line of the prayer recognizing both the sovereignty of God and the character of God—a character that is holy and will not lie or deceive, in contrast to our own deceitful hearts. "Father" brings him near, while "hallowed be your name" creates the legitimate distance between a holy God and his creation. His love for us is balanced by his protection of us from that which will make us less than what God intends us to be. That is the pivotal first half of "the equation" of prayer: God is love and God is holy.
"Your Kingdom Come": God Keeps Watch over All of Time The kingdom of God is neither political nor material. It is spiritual. We tend to define our successes in political or material terms, but God's kingdom is a spiritual rule. It is not a theocracy but rather the imperative of eternity. Life is not subsumed by our "threescore years and ten" (Psalm 90:10
KJV). This is sustained by the implied limitation of the prayer, "Give us each day our daily bread" (Luke 11:3, emphasis added). One would think it would be simpler to pray for enough sustenance for the week or even for a lifetime. If enough provision for one day is good, provision for two days is better.
Then we wouldn't have to come back, asking for more. But this is precisely the nature of God's provision. We live in bite-sized portions of time and must seek God for strength for the day, one day at a time. We must depend on God each day we live.
When we live life this way, we are able to face history with the guarantee of his keeping watch over all of time. Unless we live
with the eternal in mind while addressing the specifics of each day, we will live as temporarily suspended, with faith always seeking sight.
At the close of Luke's gospel, we see Jesus' disciples disillusioned, confused, and fearful following the crucifixion. In the last chapter, Luke tells us that on the Sunday of Jesus' resurrection, two of Jesus' followers are walking to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking about all that had happened the previous week when
Jesus himself came up and walked along with them—but they were kept from recognizing him. He asked them what they were talking about, and they, in amazement asked him if he is the only visitor to Jerusalem who didn't know what had happened there over the weekend. The delightful irony of their question is that he was the only one who did know what had happened.
His explanation of the significance of these events was detailed, profound, and persuasive, going right back to the writings of the prophets as he unfolded the eternal plan of God.
The seven miles flew by, and before they realized it, they had arrived in Emmaus. True Easterners, they invited Jesus to join them for dinner. He accepted their invitation and as they sat down to eat, Jesus, the universal member of all cultures, became the host as he took bread in his hands and gave thanks to the Father for it. Whether it was the way he broke the bread that may have reminded them of a meal they had shared with him previously, or whether as he did so, they suddenly noticed the wounds in his hands, their eyes were opened to him, and they understood God's eternal presence in all things throughout history, even when hope seems lost. As Jesus left them, the fatigue of the miles they had walked that day vanished, and they joyfully retraced their steps to Jerusalem—
all seven miles of them—to tell the other disciples the good news Jesus had shared with them.
"Your Will Be Done": From Submission to Crisis Through Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane we learn the most important thing about prayer—that it is ultimately a conversational relationship in which God does for you what you cannot do for yourself. It is not trying to persuade God to rethink his will but the means through which God reshapes you into a person who desires his will and is content to receive it, regardless of what it entails.
This is not fatalism. It is not defeat. It is not confusion. It is not a cop-out. It is sometimes easier to resist God's will than to have faith and confidence in God and in his specific purpose for each one of us. Only through exercising this kind of faith can the moment be accepted and understood as a small portion of a bigger story. For some of us this may entail a long, arduous journey, but it will be accomplished one moment at a time, one day at a time, each moment and day undergirded by the strength of the indwelling presence of God.
C. S. Lewis resisted writing any book about prayer, for he considered himself to be always a student of prayer. His
Letters to Malcolm explains why he doesn't think most people are qualified to write on the subject, himself included. His response to the taunting of a skeptic that prayer was nothing more than talking to oneself while thinking there was someone listening at the other end is best expressed in the anonymously written poem he tells us he found in an old notebook:
They tell me, Lord, that when I seem To be in speech with you, Since but one voice is heard, it's all a dream, One talker
aping two.
Sometimes it is, yet not as they Conceive it. Rather, I Seek in myself the things I hoped to say, But lo! my wells are dry.
Then, seeing me empty, you forsake The listener's role and through My dumb lips breathe and into utterance wake The thoughts I never knew.
And thus you neither need reply Nor can; thus, while we seem Two talkers, thou art One forever, and I No dreamer, but thy dream.9
God's ultimate purpose is to bring us to himself through the relationship made possible by the gift of his Son. The most important point of Gethsemane is that it underscores just how hard that struggle may be at times. Jesus had just finished celebrating the Passover with the disciples, where he had spoken to them about his betrayal at the hands of one of his own. He knew this was the purpose for which he had left heaven for earth, a purpose to which he had fully acceded. Yet in the hours before the inevitable, even he who was fully man and fully God struggled, asking the Father if there was any other way to accomplish the plan.
"My Father," he prayed, overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death, "if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.
Yet not as I will, but as you will" (Matthew 26:39). And then a little later, "My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done" (verse 42).
I wonder how much time elapsed between the first part of the prayer and the last. Luke tells us the struggle was so great that
his sweat was "like drops of blood falling to the ground" (Luke 22:44). It's also revealing to read that at the darkest part of this struggle to align his will with the Father's, God sent an angel to him who strengthened him in his resolve to do the Father's will.
Prayer is hard work. Being aligned with God's will is no light matter. For Jesus, just at his most desolate and agonizing moments, even as he faced the agony of being separated from his Father to make it possible that we would never have to face that total abandonment, he was, in fact, right in the center of his Father's will. How gracious of God to even let us into the struggle of such unimaginable proportions between the Father and the Son!
There are several other instances in the Bible of such urgent struggle to achieve confidence in the wisdom and will of God. Daniel's three friends (Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego), facing the king's very real threat to toss them into a fiery furnace if they did not bend to his authority, come to the conclusion, "If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up" (Daniel 3:17-18).
There are numerous reasons given in Scripture for the reality that prayers sometimes go unanswered. But if one understands the purpose of prayer—and, more to the point, the purpose of life—the unanswered prayer becomes more endurable in light of the bigger picture. How many times have we read of someone who was spared from a tragic crash because of some unavoidable circumstance that forced them to miss the plane or train or bus? How often have we marveled at the tales of a lone survivor of a military firefight returning home
and being killed within days in a car accident? All of this must point us to the understanding that we all have an unavoidable appointment with God. None of us will be spared that moment.
We never know what our last days will be like as we get closer to that final moment.
Before I took the platform to speak recently on the problem of pain, I was introduced by a man who said that in one tragic year he had lost five members of his immediate family, all in different circumstances. As he listed them, one after another—the loss of his wife, his parents, his brother, and one of his children—there was pin-drop silence in the vast audience. Every relationship was tested. Then he added these words. "Our speaker tonight has helped me immensely through those times, and God's presence has been very real through all those heartaches." I sat in silence as he finished his introduction, wondering how I would have fared in the same circumstances. But this is where the grace of God is so uniquely given in the time of each person's need.
UNANSWERED PRAYER
Philip Yancey lists several possible reasons people have given for unanswered prayer and the sense of distance from God that so often is experienced at the same time.10 We may be focused on ourselves rather than on God and his wisdom; it may be that we are at fault, not the prayer; we may simply be out of fellowship with God; we may be lacking concern for the poor and the needy (the Bible often points to this as a reason for unanswered prayer). Prayer is not magic, nor is it a fixed formula. Sometimes we have placed value in the wrong place—
on what we are asking for rather than on what God wants to accomplish in us. Sometimes the delay is not an unanswered prayer but a matter of God's timing and what he needs to have completed in us before he can answer that prayer.
Each of us could make our own list of reasons for unanswered prayer. None of these come from any fresh insight into the mind of God. So we need to focus on what we know to be the purpose of prayer. As I read Scripture, I see five distinct realities that God wants us to know or learn through the process of prayer.
Humility God repeatedly reminds us that his purpose behind the particular journey in life through which he takes us is that we might see what is in our own hearts. Growing to the place of achieving a humble heart is a double-edged victory. It involves recognizing (1) that none of the blessings he bestows on us are given because we are better than anybody else and (2) that he instead gives them to us as a sovereign act and with the prevailing peace that he is the author and distributor of our blessings, choosing to bestow them according to his own reason.
Years ago as a young preacher, I was asked to call a famous preacher who was in the hospital after having suffered a serious stroke. He was a prolific writer with a double doctorate from Oxford, one of the most eloquent speakers of the day. He was a godly man, yet he had been felled by an unexpected stroke and had lost his ability to speak. Our conversation was difficult. After anything I said, I had to wait for protracted moments before he was able to force out a
tentative "Y-y-yes." I could not hold back the tears and struggled to continue the conversation. To hear such debilitation in a voice that once rang with such oratorical skill was a fearsome thing to me, also a preacher. After I hung up the phone, I went straight to my knees and thanked God for the voice I had taken for granted. God's gifts are given at his discretion and may be removed at any time—also at his discretion.
This is not "worm theology," as though we are groveling and treating ourselves as scum. Skeptics love to use this expression to ridicule Christians. Nietzsche called such people weak—the scourge of the earth. That is not what is being espoused here. We are not demeaning our humanity. We are recognizing our fragile nature as we come to God with the recognition that, between our selfish motives and finite glimpses of his perfect will for us, we are prone to think we are more in control of life than we actually are.
When my younger brother was about seven years old, he was stricken with double pneumonia and typhoid fever. As the days went by and his body began to die in front of us, we were grief-stricken. Night after night, though he did not know the Lord at that time, my father would lead us in prayer. That in itself was a powerful lesson to us. He was a tough man who never voluntarily admitted to any sign of weakness. But watching his youngest son at the door of death brought his pursuit for power and success to a halt. Every night we got into bed with fearful hearts about what would happen during the night. My mother sat by my brother's bed for days.
Finally the doctors informed us that his case was hopeless and that he would likely pass away that night. In tears we said our good-byes and went home from the hospital engulfed in a
deep sense of loss. My mother stayed by his bedside, refusing to leave him for even a moment. Sometime in the early hours of the morning, she suddenly woke up, still sitting in the chair, and realized she had fallen asleep during the very hours that we had been told he would slip out of this life. In dismay and fear she reached out to touch his face. Something in the way he felt gave her hope that he was better than he had been some hours ago. With the dawning of the day the doctor arrived, expecting to find that my brother had died. He realized there had been a positive change but didn't want to give false hope.
"He is defying what we thought would happen," was all he would commit to.
Today my brother, in his fifties, is a doctor in Canada. I often reflect on those days. When all that could be done had been done, when everyone had given all that they could give to him and none of us were even awake, God turned the corner for this little boy and healed his body. I know we don't always see this happen; I've already mentioned the loss of my mother many years later. But we must admit to our own frailty and limitation and realize that sometimes God's greatest work is done when we are least involved in it.
In humility we come to God, and with a humble heart we trust in his character and his wisdom. Any other option flirts with the act of playing God.
Spirituality Ultimately, a successful life is built by developing the spirit, not the body. Time and matter must always give way to the eternal and to the spiritual. We dislike this inversion. We collectively spend billions of dollars each year trying to look
young. I shudder to even think of the possibility of discovering or developing a "fountain of youth" that would eliminate aging and death. What kind of world would that be?
This drive to be as beautiful at sixty as we were at twenty has its last hurrah in the creams and potions we use to disguise death when it comes, liberally lavishing it on the deceased until someone can comment, "He looks just like himself, doesn't he?" I have never seen a corpse that didn't look like a corpse.
Death is the absence of life, and no matter how we dress it up, the person is gone from the material shell that housed that great intangible—life. All the things that mattered most and made the person the individual they were—their mind, passions, will, smile, tears, aches, and joys—all are gone.
These were the things of the spirit. That is why Jesus said we could not live by bread alone. We are, first and foremost, spiritual beings who must attend to the things of the spirit.
Regardless of our pursuits or achievements in life, the hungers of the spirit must always be primary. We must seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness (Matthew 6:33)—and no one who has done this regrets taking final leave of the body.
Faith Prayer teaches us faith. It is not a guarantor of getting what we want. It is the assurance that our Lord superintends over our lives in our needs and our dependencies, in our successes and accomplishments. Faith is that sublime hourly dependence on God—our conviction that even though we may not get what we want or think we need, we know and love the One who denies us in this instance for his good reason and for
our ultimate good.
The most significant relationships in life are based on this kind of faith, where love and trust triumph over disappointment. In the face of the apparent defeat of unanswered prayer, faith enables us to have victory in the certainty of trusting the One who is in control. Although we tend in our language to interpret faith as "containing no basis for belief," this is not the way the Bible uses the word. In fact, in the Hebrew language, faith is more an idea than a word. In the book of Habakkuk, we see the description of "the righteous person" as one who lives "by his faithfulness."
"Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that the herald may run with it.
For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false.
Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.
See, he is puffed up; his desires are not upright—but the righteous will live by his faith [faithfulness]—"
HABAKKUK 2:2 – 4
Having faith is more than believing; it is living in such a way that the results of faith are evident.
Three of the New Testament books refer to this verse— Paul's letter to the Galatians, Paul's letter to the Romans, and the letter to the Hebrews. These believers all received a reminder of this concept from Habakkuk. The early church was going to be tossed about with fears, dissension, and tensions, and the injunction of the authors of these letters was clearly that they should remain faithful to the teaching they had
received, trust in God's timing, and learn from his discipline. By doing so, they would validate their faithfulness before God and men. For the Greeks this was a term of belief; for the Hebrews it was a term with moral ramifications. There are two sides to faith, which is why James declared that faith without deeds is dead (James 2:26).
Fellowship Walking in the knowledge of service and love with one's heavenly Father results in a unique quality of nearness to him.
There is no shortcut to getting there. There is no way to accomplish it by just wishing it or repeating some simple formula. No relationship is built in ten easy steps, especially if it is going to be meaningful and lasting. True friendship comes from being faithful through the thick and thin of the vicissitudes of life. Fellowship with God will always be threatened by unexpected detours.
A powerful story recorded in Matthew 11 shows a side to John the Baptist that should bring comfort to all of us. After all, it was John who introduced Jesus to the world when he declared to all, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29). Yet even he was nonplussed by Jesus' seeming lack of action when John came under attack by Herod and was imprisoned. John had not expected that Jesus would stand by and do nothing. Perhaps John had been able to face Herod and Herodias so fearlessly because he thought sure that as Jesus' emissary, his safety would be guaranteed.
So when John sent a delegation to Jesus to ask for an explanation and for reassurance that he had not been mistaken about who Jesus was, Jesus first reported to them all the
miracles that he had performed, demonstrating who he was and affirming John's ministry. Then he asked them a few questions of his own.
"What did you go out into the desert to see? A reed swayed by the wind? If not, what did you go out to see?
A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear fine clothes are in kings' palaces [and not in a dungeon]. Then what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written:
" 'I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.'
"I tell you the truth: Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he… "To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others:
"'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge and you did not mourn.'"
MATTHEW 11:7-11, 16-17
This is a remarkable passage. John is struggling to understand why he is in prison when the Lord of the universe is within earshot. Jesus sends back the message that miracles are on every side for the one who wants to see it. Then he goes
on to applaud the greatness of John as an entryway to his main thought that no child of the kingdom is inferior to a prophet, and that the prophet is not above any child of the kingdom.
But notice—though Jesus reported to John the miracles he was doing, he did not do a miracle for John and set him free. In this instance, John paid for his love for God with his life.
The inherent danger within all of us is that no matter what God does, someone will wish he had done it differently. The gift of faith is precisely what makes it possible to accept that God works in his own way (which is not always our way), in his own time, and for his purpose. It is our assignment to lay aside our doubts and fall in line with God's purpose, always waiting patiently for the last link to fall into place, finding courage and strength to move forward in the fellowship we have with the Father. It was his fellowship with the Father, sustained by prayer, that made it possible for Jesus to move toward the cross when every fiber of his being was urging him in the opposite direction. God offers us this same fellowship with him.
Understanding To think God's thoughts after him and to walk through our daily lives with him—not ahead of him—is the last of the five distinct realities that God wants us to know or learn through the process of prayer. To understand God is to trust him, even when we don't understand right now what and why something is happening. These are the realities of our walk with him.
Eleven of the twelve disciples died a martyr's death.
When they began walking with Jesus, not one of them anticipated how they would die. If they had known where
following Jesus would lead them, one wonders whether any of them would have started out on the journey, for as they proved later, they were not particularly brave men. Many, many times I have looked back at my own journey. Had I known the cost it would exact, I am absolutely positive that at the very least I would have had grave reservations and trembled as I stepped onto the road.
I stood one day, as a young man trying to come to terms with God's call in ministry, by a garbage dump in Buôn Ma
Thuột, Vietnam, at the grave of six missionaries martyred in the Tet Offensive of 1968. All alone, I pondered the price they had paid for following Jesus. I asked myself whether any of them would have answered God's call on their lives if they had known they would end their lives in a garbage dump. God knows our frailties; how loving of him that he does not allow us to know the future! I prayed there by those graves that God would make me faithful so that I would not focus on the cost but keep my eyes on the mission to serve Jesus with all my heart, soul, and mind and on the sweetness of my walk with him, day by day.
Years ago, I had the great privilege to be in Shanghai in the home of the famed Chinese evangelist Wang Mingdao. He had served twenty-two years in prison for his faith, under the order of Mao Tse Tung. He told us that every day in prison he woke up and sang a hymn:
All the way my Savior leads me— What have I to ask beside?
Can I doubt his tender mercy, Who through life has been my guide?
Heavenly peace, divinest comfort,
Here by faith in him to dwell!
For I know whate'er befall me, Jesus doeth all things well; For I know whate'er befall me, Jesus doeth all things well.11
At first the guards tried to silence him. When they weren't able to succeed, they reluctantly put up with his singing.
Gradually, as the years went by, they would gather near the opening to his cell to listen as he sang of God's faithfulness to him. Eventually, they began to ask him to sing to them and to teach them the words of the song. Such is the impact of one who understands and walks with God.
I was asked to speak at Amsterdam 2000, a conference for evangelists sponsored by the Billy Graham Evangelistic
Association. When the renowned soloist George Beverly Shea stood up to sing, he began by recounting the story of how he received the words for the song he was about to sing. One
Sunday morning when he was twenty-one, his mother left a poem by Mrs. Rhea Miller on the piano for him to see. George sat down at the piano and in that moment of inspiration put the words to melody. We listened as a ninety-one-year-old man sang again his favorite song, the song he had been singing for seventy-one years.
I'd rather have Jesus than men's applause; I'd rather be faithful to his dear cause;
I'd rather have Jesus than worldwide fame; I'd rather be true to his holy name.
Than to be the king of a vast domain Or be held in sin's dread sway—
I'd rather have Jesus than anything This world affords today.12
When the last note died away, every eye glistened with tears as the ten thousand delegates rose to their feet to honor both
God's faithfulness to the man and the man's faithfulness to God. Faithfulness over the long run is the shining example of what faith is meant to be. George Beverly Shea recently celebrated his one hundredth birthday. And the message of the song that has been sung to millions of people over eight decades continues.
The prayer written by the French cleric Michel Quoist is a powerful reminder of our frailty and of God's faithful response to us. To anyone reading this who may be struggling with the guilt of failure, perhaps realizing for the first time that God has not failed you—it is you who have failed to remain true to him when the going got tough—please read this prayer and look up into the face of God, who is faithfully waiting to lift you up.
I have fallen, Lord, Once more.
I can't go on, I'll never succeed.
I am ashamed, I don't dare look at you.
And yet I struggled, Lord, for I knew you were right near me, bending over me, watching.
But temptation blew like a hurricane, And instead of looking at you I turned my head away,
I stepped aside While you stood, silent and sorrowful, Like the spurned fiancé who sees his loved one carried away by the enemy.
When the wind died down as suddenly as it had arisen, When the lightning ceased after proudly streaking the darkness, All of a sudden I found myself alone, ashamed, disgusted, with my sin in my hands.
This sin that I selected the way a customer makes his purchase, This sin that I have paid for and cannot return, for the storekeeper is no longer there, This tasteless sin, This odorless sin, This sin that sickens me, That I have wanted but want no more, That I have imagined, sought, played with, fondled, for a long time;
That I have finally embraced while turning coldly away from you, My arms outstretched, my eyes and heart irresistibly drawn;
This sin that I have grasped and consumed with gluttony, It's mine now, but it possesses me as the spiderweb holds captive the gnat.
It is mine, It sticks to me, It flows in my veins, It fills my heart.
It has slipped in everywhere, as darkness slips into the forest at dusk And fills all the patches of light.
I can't get rid of it.
I run from it the way one tries to lose a stray dog, but it catches
up with me and bounds joyfully against my legs.
Everyone must notice it.
I'm so ashamed that I feel like crawling to avoid being seen, I'm ashamed of being seen by my friends,
I'm ashamed of being seen by you, Lord, For you loved me, and I forgot you.
I forgot you because I was thinking of myself And one can't think of several persons at once.
One must choose, and I chose.
And your voice, And your look And your love hurt me.
They weigh me down They weigh me down more than my sin.
Lord, don't look at me like that, For I am naked, I am dirty, I am down, Shattered, With no strength left.
I dare make no more promises, I can only lie bowed before you.
[The Father's Response] Come, son, look up.
Isn't it mainly your vanity that is wounded?
If you loved me, you would grieve, but you would trust.
Do you think that there's a limit to God's love?
Do you think that for a moment I stopped loving you?
But you still rely on yourself, son. You must rely only on me.
Ask my pardon And get up quickly.
You see, it's not falling that is the worst, But staying on the ground.13