Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified. What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(Romans 8:26-39)
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I have always been interested in what you might call the dynamic of prayer. To put it a different way, I've always wondered what exactly it is that's happening when we pray. We know that prayer is a way of communicating with God; it's a type of conversation we have with God. But communication and conversation has a point. What's the point of this conversation? On the one hand, prayer seems like such a simple thing, so that you can take the words of Pope Francis and pretty much sum up what prayer is - “To be friends with God means to pray with simplicity, like children talking to their parents.” I certainy agree with Francis on that - and I'm sure the Pope is relieved to have me onside! But if prayer is at its essence a simple thing, it's also at its essence a mysterious thing. Last week, I was talking about "thin places" - those places where heaven and earth seem to meet - and I suggested that the thinnest place of all was actually our own hearts and souls, and prayer seems to be a way of living that out. Real prayers - sincerely expressed and heartfelt - come out of us as a part of that dynamic interaction with the God who dwells within us.
Today's passage from Romans is an interesting one. Almost every interpreter holds these verses together as a single passage where Paul is speaking about the same subject. And yet, the passage moves from the mystery of prayer to a statement of absolute faith. Paul starts with an acknowledgement that sometimes prayer (and, I suppose, life) is so mysterious that we don't even know what it is we're supposed to be praying for. "... for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words." It's not entirely clear what Paul means here. Some people see this as a reference to what's called "praying in tongues" - the "babble" sort of language that some people begin to use when they pray. I'm not sure about that though. I suspect that Paul was simply trying to make the point that if we're always connected with God then what we say comes from God just as much as it goes to God. And it's the discipline of prayer that ultimately deepens and strengthens our faith to the point at which we have the assurance within that we'll never be separated from God. The last few verses of this passage are often used at funerals as a way of saying that death doesn't separate us from God. But in context, the point is that nothing separates us from God - and that assurance comes at least partly from the connection we establish with God through prayer. So Paul sees prayer as an absolutely integral component of any life of faith. Which means that we should try to understand prayer a little better. This passage got me thinking more deeply about prayer, and what's involved in prayer and how to make prayer more meaningful, and I managed to condense those thoughts down to three key components of prayer that I want to share with you today.
The first thing I would want to suggest as a key to prayer is the question of why we pray. I think there are a number of reasons, actually. We pray because we believe in God. That might seem simple, but you always have to start at the beginning. We believe in God. Prayer in and of itself is a statement of personal faith. We wouldn’t pray to a God we didn’t believe in. And a part of that faith is not only belief in God – it’s a belief that God is interested; that God cares; that God actually listens. There’s not much point in talking to someone if you don’t believe that they’re going to less to or care what you have to say. Prayer demonstrates that we believe in God, what we believe about God and, perhaps most important, that we want to have this ongoing conversation with God. You can’t be in a relationship with someone – not even God – if you never talk to them. Relationships just don’t work that way. Somehow there has to be some two-way communication going on for the relationship to be real; for it to grow and flourish; for it to eventually lead us to that place Paul got to after he started to discuss the mystery of prayer: a place of deep and abiding assurance that nothing will ever be able to break the intimacy of this relationship we have with God. So the first key to prayer is why we pray – and it’s because we want to develop a relationship of intimacy with God.
The second key to prayer is how we pray. There are all sorts of teachings on this question. Jesus taught his disciples how to pray – and the end result of that teaching was what we call now “The Lord’s Prayer” - almost certainly the best known prayer in the world. The Pope taught people how to pray when he said that we should “… pray with simplicity, like children talking to their parents.” Then there’s the advice that Paul gives in this passage we read today. Paul’s basic perspective seems to be that real prayer has to come from within us, because it all happens within us, in that thin place inside us where heaven and earth meet and where God’s Spirit interacts with our spirit – and something happens! I don’t think that means so much that the words have to come from within us. We can use prayers we’ve memorized (like the Lord’s Prayer) or written prayers (like we have in our order of service) but what does have to come from inside is the spirit in which the prayers are offered. Are the words we’re speaking real and passionate and from the heart or are we just reading words and without them touching us or moving us or changing us in any way?
That brings me to what I would argue is the third key to prayer – which is after we pray. If prayer only impacts us for however long it is that we pray then it’s been pointless. It doesn’t really matter whether our prayers last for thirty seconds or two hours – although there are some who will look at that as either meaningless prayer that demonstrates a lack of real faith or pretentiousness prayer that’s trying to show off. What matters, though, is after we finish praying. Are we moved to follow Jesus? Are we inspired to take our faith outside our proverbial prayer closets and into the world? It seems to me that while I’m calling this the third key, it might be the most important of them, because if our faith and how we live it simply ends when our words of prayer end then it’s fluff – it’s of no importance, it offers no service to others and no glory to God. There’s an old saying that tells us to “practice what you preach.” But you could also say that practice comes from prayer; that prayer is what ultimately moves us to practice what we preach and to practice what we believe.
Why we pray, how we pray and what happens after we pray. These are three keys to prayer. Use them to unlock the riches of a life of prayer; use them to deepen your relationship with God and with the world around you.
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