Prayer changes things
The American evangelist Tony Campolo tells a true story about a time when he was preaching at a
Pentecostals seem to pray longer and with more dynamism than we Baptists do. 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 ?’ 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 members prayed at length about a particular man named Charlie Stoltzfus. That kind of annoyed me. I thought to myself, ‘If you’re going to lean so hard on my head, the least you can do is pray for me.’ He prayed on and on for this man who was about to leave his wife and 3 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 him back to that family ! You know who I’m talking about, Lord… 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 to he
I didn’t say a word but drove to the next junction turned around and headed back. When I did that he looked at me and asked what I was doing, and I said, ‘I’m taking you home’. He said ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘Because you just left your wife and children – right ?’
And he said ‘Right, right…’
He leaned against the passenger door the rest of the way just looking at me – and then I drove off at a junction onto a side road, straight to his silver house trailer. Again he looked with astonishment and said, ‘How did you know I lived here ?’ and I said, ‘God told me, now you go inside because I want to talk to you and your wife’.
Charlie ran in ahead of me – I don’t know what he said to his wife but when I got in there her eyes were as wide as saucers. I sat down and said, ‘I’m going to talk and you’re going to listen’.
And did they listen – after an hour I led them both into a personal relationship with Jesus – today that man is a Pentecostal minister.’
It’s an incredible story – If it wasn’t true it could easily be dismissed as a hopelessly far fetched bit of fantasy, but this story shows us the power of God and the power of our prayers to him.
One of the most difficult aspects of prayer is accepting that not every prayer gets answered in the way that we want it to be. All of us will, I’m sure, have asked for something which hasn’t been given, but that doesn’t make our prayers any less important. In the reading from Mark’s gospel (9:14-29) Jesus intervenes to heal a boy – the boy’s father had already asked some of the disciples who had tried and failed, and now he spoke directly to Jesus, ‘if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us !’
The man believed that Jesus had the power to heal, but Jesus turned this back on him and said, ‘If you are able ! all things can be done for the one who believes’, and the father cried out, ‘Lord I believe, help my unbelief.’
Jesus was asking the man to have faith in him and the man, who had already showed some faith in bringing the boy to Jesus, prayed to him to cast away any doubt, ‘Help my unbelief’. And the reality I suspect is that most of us approach God with prayers, half expecting that they won’t be answered. And when the disciples spoke to Jesus and asked why they had not been able to heal the boy, Jesus said to them, ‘this kind can only come out through prayer.’
The prayer of the disciples had not been enough. Their faith was still an imperfect faith, just like the boy’s father, and just like ours. The sadness of our faith is that through our own doubts we are missing out on enjoying all of the wonderful benefits God has prepared for us to enjoy, not just in heaven but here and now.
How good it would be to see the world, not through eyes of cynicism or even despair, but with eyes of hope. How good it would be not to worry about that meeting later in the week or that money problem or any other sort of problem. How good it would be not to worry about that illness…
This is the ideal that Jesus wants us to achieve, this is the promised peace that he came to bring – and yet it seems so far off. Prayer is one way of leading us to this peace.
Prayer is not about sitting or kneeling in Church – that is just one small part of the action of prayer – instead prayer is a relationship that we continue through every part of our lives – it is a constant dialogue with someone who is always ready and always wanting to listen to us and talk to us. I think many people doubt the power of prayer only because they are afraid of the power of prayer, afraid of something they can’t explain away – that is Jesus – someone who is greater and more powerful than we can ever explain, yet someone who is more loving and merciful than anyone we can ever hope to meet on earth.
And so Jesus appeals to all of us, all with our imperfections and our doubts, to come to him, to seek shelter and rest in his protection, to cast onto him all of our worries and problems, and move forward on our journey of faith putting our trust and our hope in him, and proclaiming his wonder, his power and his love wherever we are, and expecting to be surprised, just as Tony Campolo and Charlie Stoltzfus were surprised and just as the father and the disciples were in the Bible reading.
Let us pray : Lord we give you thanks that you are a God of power and love, and that you have the ability to surprise us. Help us to move into a closer relationship with you, so that your thoughts may become our thoughts and your actions our actions. These things we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN
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Kathie from Illinois