Something I would like to say on Prayer but Can't

Instinctively I have known all my mature life that prayer should be at the heart of my foundering relationship with God. I have really wanted to be "a man of prayer," still do for that matter. Early in my ministry I was impressed by those biographies that focused on the prayer life of followers of the Lord. In the 1950s and 60s such biographies were almost all triumphalistic and did not deal with the human and sinful realities in the lives of the people about which they wrote. I once bought a picture of Christ (not the real thing!) and had a little bronze plaque made that read "Prayer Changes Things." I attached that plaque to the bottom of the picture frame and hung it on my wall. It disappeared somewhere along the way. Later I was to study Christian monasticism and got a clearer and more realistic view of prayer. I continue to read in this tradition and believe that it has something very meaningful for me to learn.

Actually prayer is rather easy to understand. Prayer is simply communicating with God. There, that wasn't hard, was it? It usually consists of talking with God and listening to God. We understand right away what talking to God means; listening may be another matter. Actually listening isn't difficult to grasp either. Listening is being open to what God wants to impress on your mind and heart, however God wants to do it. That may mean being quiet and listening, or reading the Bible or a meditative book with an open heart, or being impressed by something that comes from a sermon or teaching, or think you "hear" God through the advice of a concerned friend or advisor. It does get a bit confusing when one reads that some prayers are vocal, some interior, some short and spontaneous, some intercessory, etc. When we begin to grade prayers and describe them as though it was a beef inspection going on then I get shaky all over again.

Let me ask you, does prayer "change things?" I doubt it now that I have been praying for such a long time. It is God who changes things, not how we talk to God - or listen to God. I should have put on that plaque, "God Changes Things." That would have been much better. An invitation to prayer is an invitation to get involved. It does not require so many minutes, a certain set of words, a particular sense of urgency, or being done in a particular place. When a person stands up in a Christian gathering and says, "Pray for my aunt," we all just did. I think that when we mention each other's needs before God in a setting where people are gathered to praise God that the request alone is a prayer done. We don't have to stop and say, "Lord, you know all about Ann's aunt ..."

One more thing, I am very tired of being the "professional pray-er" at functions. I am no specialist first class in prayer. I have no"in" with God that He should hear me before anyone else. I don't always know the right thing to say, or what to ask. Sometimes I cannot think quickly on the spot, and at other times I would like to have two minutes of silence so we could all focus on God in the way we do that best. At the end of a revival service in which I was preaching in West Virginia, a male in the congregation died in the pew. The place got quiet while a couple of people worked on the man while the paramedics were coming. The pastor turned to me and said, "Brother Mercer, pray!" Why did he choose me? Why didn't he pray? It was his congregation. I think the service should have been dismissed. I prayed. What did I say? What all professionals say, "Thy will be done!"

If you ask me to pray for you I will ask you want you want. I will in turn ask God for what you want, then you have to settle up with Him if you don't get it.

Jerry Mercer