Bored with prayer?

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. Romans 8:26-27

Be completely honest, please… Do you ever find the business of praying a bit of a chore? Even worse, perhaps, a bit of a bore?

We know that prayer is at the heart of our faith as Christians, because Christianity, whatever else it may be about, is about a relationship with God, and how can we have a relationship with anybody without talking to them? The Bible, both testaments, is full of it: Jesus himself is our supreme example (see, for example, Matthew 14:23) and also our supreme teacher (Matthew 6:9-15). A prayerless faith will soon go dry and shrivelled.

And yet… it can be so hard!

We sense that prayer should be our greatest daily joy, but so often it’s more like a daily duty. I mustn’t claim to speak for all Christians, of course, but I suspect most of us can identify with the very honest words of CS Lewis: “We are reluctant to begin. We are delighted to finish”. It makes prayer sound a bit on a par with brushing our teeth or making that awkward phone call! – let’s get it over and done with, and get on with the day.

Does the Bible offer us any comfort in this quandary? Three things come to my mind…

First, the very fact that the Bible tells us so often to pray suggests that it recognises that it isn’t easy: after all, we don’t have to be told to do the  things we naturally enjoy, do we? Most of us don’t need any encouragement to settle down to watch our favourite television programme or eat a good meal, do we? We just do it.

If only prayer was like that! But it isn’t – and that’s that, so let’s get used to it.

(And let’s not forget: a duty faithfully carried out can, wonderfully, become a joy.)

Second, let’s bear in mind that many of the prayers in the Bible are really very short and even matter-of-fact. How many seconds does it take to pray the Lord’s Prayer, “the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray”? Answer: not many. True, we will probably want to linger over it and to enlarge on it according to our own needs and circumstances. But still…

Certainly, the Bible also has its share of prayers which are lengthy and highly emotional. So, sometimes, ours may be. But let’s not be intimidated by the example of Christians who think nothing of praying whole nights through or weeping whole buckets of tears (God bless them!). What’s right for them may not be right for us. (To quote CS Lewis again: “Emotional intensity is in itself no proof of spiritual depth”.)

Third, and most important perhaps, are the words of Romans 8:26: “… the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans”. That word “weakness” is very general, covering anything from physical and mental frailty to sickness and sheer weariness.

But isn’t what Paul says here just wonderful! Had you ever thought that the most powerful and meaningful prayer you ever pray might be expressed in – a groan!

Paul has quite a lot to say about groaning in this passage, starting at verse 18. He tells us that the very creation that God has made is a groaning creation (and don’t we know it in 2023!), and that we his people share in that groaning “as we wait eagerly for our adoption… the redemption of our bodies”. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit may lead to all sorts of dramatic utterances, including prophecy and “speaking in tongues”; but it may also result in unutterable groans. Christian, be encouraged!

We are new creatures in Christ, already sharing his resurrection; but we don’t yet have our new resurrection bodies. We are saved already; but we are still sinners. We are betwixt and between, and that’s how it will be until the day we die and rise again bodily. No wonder, then, that we groan in frustration and pain; no wonder that when we try to pray it often seems such hard work and we find it hard to stifle a yawn. Christian, be patient!

What it boils down to, I think, is this. When we come to God in prayer, certainly we should want to bring our best, but our business is to bring to him what we have - not what we think we ought to have, and not what we would like to have; certainly not pretending to have what we don’t. Do we really imagine we can fool God?

If our sincerest prayer is “O Lord, I’m finding praying such a burden” or even “Father, I really would like a break from prayer, please!”, or even a massive yawn – well, so be it. That yawn is a gift of the Holy Spirit and, as Paul says, “the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God” (verse 26). Where we might be all at sea, the Spirit knows exactly where he is going, and where we need to go. Just trust him to “process” our groans into prayer acceptable to our heavenly Father.

Father, my heart’s desire is to know you more deeply, to love you better, and to enjoy you more fully. But I find it sometimes so hard, and I feel such a failure. Thank you for the gift of the Spirit – please help me to trust that he turns my weakness into strength and my confusion into clarity. Please help me to persevere. Amen.

The CS Lewis quotes are from Letters to Malcolm, chiefly on prayer which, to me, is 30% wonderful and 70% incomprehensible. Worth reading for the 30% (just pray to know the difference!).

Truth will out

If you falter in a time of trouble, how small is your strength! Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering towards slaughter. If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done? Proverbs 25:10-12

Often when you read the Bible it’s necessary to immerse yourself in a passage and concentrate really hard. Other times it may be better to dip in almost at random and take from it whatever happens to strike you. I find this especially with Proverbs, a collection of mainly one-off sayings which, according to tradition, goes right back to King Solomon.

Some of the sayings rather make me smile – when, for example, we are told to eat honey (I like honey), or when grey hair is assumed to be a mark of a “righteous” person (if only!). But now and then you hit upon something that makes you sit still for a minute and do some serious thinking (something, I’m afraid, we tend not to be very good at).

Proverbs 24:10-12 recently had this effect on me. It’s a little cluster of verses that may or may not be connected and its meaning is not entirely clear. But it packs a punch, as they say.

Verse 10, “If you falter in a time of trouble, how small is your strength”, sounds like quite a severe rebuke.

One commentary suggests it is directed at “the quitter”, the weak person who gives up too easily. That may well be right, but it made me feel slightly uneasy too, for isn’t it a feature of our modern society that often people carry on past the point of reasonable perseverance and sink into exhaustion, “burn-out”, even severe mental health problems? Didn’t Jesus occasionally tell his disciples to “come apart and rest for a while”?

The Bible advocates perseverance, certainly – but it gives no comfort to the workaholic, or to the person who drives employees too hard. (Mental note to self: Always read with discernment!)

Then verse 11: “Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering towards slaughter”. Wow! What are we to make of that grim scenario! What kind of background is its setting? Two possibilities strike me: a country where despotism and tyranny rule; or a war situation, where law and order have broken down.

Whatever, it is in essence a call to notice victims of injustice – and not only to notice them, but to do something about them. This applies to many parts of our world today, but is surely a challenge to all of us, wherever we live. Christianity isn’t only about personal salvation; people may need “saving” in more than the ultimate sense.

It was verse 12 that really made me stop and think: “If you say, ‘But we knew nothing about this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?” This is about pretending to be ignorant of some evil or injustice; in a phrase, turning a blind eye, or “keeping our heads down”.

I think that what particularly made me sit up and take notice was that I had been reading quite a meaty book about the Nazi horrors of the 1920s-1940s. Its focus was on the brave souls, some Christian, some not, who refused to turn a blind eye, while others – good and decent people enough, entirely “respectable” people – did exactly that: “We didn’t know! If we had known, of course we would have acted!”

The challenge was, But how could they not have known? Truth leaks out even in the most oppressive societies (think Russia today), and there were whole villages and towns just a few miles from a concentration camp where a literal smell of death hung in the air for weeks on end. Jesus warned his followers: “There is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, or concealed that will not be made known” (Matthew 10:26). The context is different, true; but this surely is a universal truth.

It's easy for us to talk, of course – me as I sit at my desk tapping out these words, you as you sit in the comfort of your home reading them. But it’s precisely that that made me sit up: Would I have been any better? I would like to think so, of course, but…

Many of those brave protesters lost their lives, while those who kept their heads down “saved” them – but at what cost?

And so verse 12 spells it out: “Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done?” There is to be a day of reckoning, and none of us will be able to run and hide.

As I said, I sometimes read Proverbs with a smile on my face. But make no mistake, these three verses wiped it off pronto.

Father, please forgive me for the times I have turned a blind eye to ugly truths which make me feel uncomfortable. Thank you that you are a holy, perfectly just God who sees and knows all things. Help me to live day by day in the light of your purity, whatever the cost may be, and to have a practical concern for those who are victims of evil and injustice. Amen.

Should we pray for healing?

Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. James 5:14-15

“My mother isn’t well. She’s been taken into hospital”.

So said my friend, a member of the church of which I was the pastor. Of course, as a minister I was well-used to praying for the sick, sometimes with the laying on of hands – whatever seemed appropriate. But what came next wasn’t so routine: “Would you be willing to visit her and anoint her with oil?”

I could hardly decline such a request – nor indeed did I want to. My friend, not British by birth, was from a different Christian background from me and, I suspected, had the words of James 5 in mind. To him it was a simple matter: the Bible says that the sick should be prayed over and anointed with oil, so, well, that’s that, isn’t it? Just get on and do it.

So of course I said Yes – it would be my privilege, and that was said entirely sincerely. My only problems were the practical ones: What sort of “ceremony”, if that was the right word, should I devise for prayer offered in the public space of a hospital ward? Even more, what should I do for oil? No doubt some ecclesiastical retailer could provide me with some kind of “sacred” oil, but that was completely alien to my understanding of how God’s mercy and grace might be called upon.

So it was off to the local chemist for a plastic bottle of baby oil. And (jumping the details) it turned out to be a very precious occasion – just a little group of us gathered for a few minutes round the bed of a sick lady. Questions of how exactly we understand a New Testament passage could wait.

But those questions were real. A trawl through a few Bible commentaries made clear that James 5:13-16, taking the passage as a whole, is something of a minefield for Bible-teachers. If we could get hold of James, sit him in an armchair, and quiz him over a cup of coffee, what would he say?

Why does he suggest using oil? True, oil was known in the ancient world to have healing properties – the Good Samaritan “poured oil and wine” on the injuries of the man who had been attacked (Luke 10:34: how that verse used to puzzle me as a child in Sunday School!). True, the Israelites in the Old Testament used it for the sacred anointing of kings and priests. And true, Jesus himself seems to have authorised the use of oil when he sent the apostles out to preach and heal (Mark 6:13). But it certainly doesn’t figure prominently in the Gospels or Acts; indeed, it hardly figures at all.

Some teachers say that the whole idea of “spiritual healing” was only ever intended to be for New Testament days anyway, oil or no oil. But they fail to find good New Testament evidence for that, and, to be completely honest, they tie themselves in all sorts of knots trying to explain how the Bible, of course, doesn’t really mean what it clearly seems to say.

For that is what’s at the heart of the debate, isn’t it? Do we modern Christians expect healing in answer to prayer in the way James certainly seems to do? Still more, should we expect such healing? Could it be that God has seen fit to withdraw this gift because of our lack of faith? But then didn’t Jesus say that faith like a grain of mustard seed – yes, that small - is enough to move mountains?

In a word, how do we hold together “You may ask anything in my name and I will do it?” and “Not my while but yours be done”?

It’s generally agreed among Bible scholars that, when it comes to interpreting any particular passage, the place to start is with the most natural, straightforward and literal meaning. This is surely right. But with a passage like James 5 it can be very difficult, for James seems almost to take healing for granted: “the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well”. Yet we know that often when we pray for healing it isn’t granted, and it’s just unrealistic – one might even go so far as to say slightly dishonest - to claim that it is.

For what it’s worth, the policy I worked out over the years was basically this: (a) to take the Bible’s promises at face value, and therefore to do, if asked, exactly what James 5 suggests; but then (b) to be completely open in the event of healing not being given, and to frankly admit that I just can’t provide an adequate explanation.

Putting it more bluntly, if that means living with Bible passages that seem to contradict one another, so be it. Honesty with God and with our fellow Christians trumps over-sophisticated, medieval-type argumentation. Stop agonising over theological niceties; just summon up faith, and pray; God is well able to look after the rest!

Oh, by the way, I ought to mention that the lady we prayed for that day made a full recovery. Just in case you wondered.

To God be the glory!

Father, you forbid us to seek signs, but you also encourage us to reach out to you for clear answers to prayer. This is a balance we sometimes find it hard to maintain and understand. So please grant us the gift of simple, childlike faith, and to trust all things to you. Amen.

A blighted life

And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whoever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice him as a burnt offering.” Judges 11:30-31

He was a truly tragic character, was Jephthah. What this usually means in both history and literature is someone who not only experiences terrible misery him or herself, but who also brings it down on the heads of pretty much everyone else whose lives are intertwined with theirs (if you’re into Shakespeare, think Hamlet or Othello).

Jephthah’s tragedy climaxes in a rash vow he made (Judges 11:30-31). But the story of his blighted life in Judges 10-12 is dogged with pain and injustice. We can summarise it fairly quickly…

First, he was born into unhappy circumstances. His father was Gilead, who we might call a princeling in Israel. But he was born not to Gilead’s wife but to a prostitute. When other sons were born they rejected Jephthah because “you are the son of another woman” (verse 2). He was, then, the victim of cruelty, in effect made an outcast by his own family.

What was he to do? What choice did he have? He ran away and joined a lawless gang (verse 3).

This may remind us of young people in our modern world for whom home-life is impossible, or just intolerable, and who end up in gangs and in trouble with the police. While many foster-carers or adoptive parents do a wonderful job (thank God for them - how they need our prayers!) the inner scars and hurts may never fully heal. A poisonous plant of bitterness is hard to root out.

It's sometimes said – and surely rightly - that what matters most in life is not what happens to you, but how you react to what happens to you. But that’s easy to say when you have a stable and loving start in life; and it’s very easy to condemn those who lose their way. Do some of us need to take a look at our hard hearts? Are we guilty of indifference or self-righteousness?

Second, Jephthah probably thought his old life was gone for ever. But it seems he earned a reputation as a fighter and a leader of men, for – ironically – a situation arose where the people who had kicked him out began to realise they needed him after all: “the elders of Gilead (no doubt including some of his own blood brothers) went to get Jephthah… ‘Come’, they said, ‘be our commander, so we can fight the Ammonites’.” The boot, as they say, is on the other foot.

After some negotiation, Jephthah agrees. He then talks with the King of the Ammonites, which suggests he was a man of words as well as a man of deeds. But it’s all to no avail, and battle proves inevitable.

Third, it turns out that though his own family may have rejected him, God hasn’t, for we read in verse 29 the remarkable words that “the Spirit of the Lord came on Jephthah”. With our New Testament perspective we tend to associate the Holy Spirit with spiritual power and the proclamation of God’s word. But the events in Judges took place over  1000 years before Jesus, and the Spirit was simply not understood in the same way. He, or perhaps we should think of the Spirit at this time as “it”, granted all sorts of other skills as well, including military ones.

Fourth (however that may be), before battle is joined, the key moment of Jephthah’s life takes place: he makes a vow to God that if he defeats the Ammonites he will sacrifice by burnt offering “whoever comes out of the door of my house” on his triumphant return (verses 30-31). And that “whoever” turns out to be his unmarried daughter, his only child.

This, especially, is where we need to pause and think. Who hasn’t made a rash promise at some point in their life? Who hasn’t longed to turn the clock back and unspeak foolish words?

For us today it probably isn’t a “vow” in a formal sense – though it wouldn’t do any of us any harm to reflect a little on our baptismal vows (or equivalent) or, of course, on our marriage vows. Have we become careless? Has what was once solemn and deeply serious become a matter for shoulder-shrugging?

On a more day-to-day level, Jephthah’s folly raises issues of reliability. Are we people of our word? Do we throw off promises too casually? I remember someone who used to routinely round off a conversation with “Bye. I’ll give you a tinkle” (that’s a phone call, in case you didn’t know). That expression somehow used to grate on me and make me want to smash his teeth right down his throat (in Christian love, of course). Did he ever “give me a tinkle”? I’ll leave you to guess.

But who am I to speak? How often have I said to somebody in need “You’ll be in my prayers”, but neglected to remember them?

A big question… Should Jephthah have gone back on his vow? Surely yes (in spite of Deuteronomy 23:21-23). Human sacrifice is frequently condemned in the Old Testament, and to go ahead with it would only be to compound evil.

Fifth, as hinted earlier, Jephthah  brought down untold misery on the heads of many people: himself, his loyal and devout daughter (whose name isn’t even recorded!), and the people whose trust he commanded.

The message is clear: Think before you speak. Remember the warning of Proverbs 20:25: “It is a trap to dedicate something rashly and only later to consider one’s vows”. A trap indeed!

Dear Father, I look back with regret to promises I have broken, to pain and suffering I have caused through thoughtlessness, inattention and sheer stupidity. Please forgive me, and help me to absorb the tragic lesson of Jephthah. Amen.

An impossible love?

“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.” Luke 6:27-31

“Enemies? But I don’t have enemies! I just have friends who don’t like me...”

“Ha-very-ha” is my response to that witticism. All credit to the speaker (a well-known modern poet, I believe) for his self-deprecating humour. But the fact is that one of the battles of life is working out how to handle, if not actual enemies, certainly relationships in our lives that are not easy.

At a fairly everyday level, the difficult situation may simply be a head-on difference of opinion, or a grating personality clash, or a perceived wrong done. For some, of course, it may be far worse: a serious hurt or injury. For Christians in many parts of the world it is outright persecution or injustice. But the fact is that “enemies”, in whatever form they come, can’t just be shrugged off with a wisecrack. Would that they could!

Well, Jesus has an answer to the question, How should I treat my enemies? Love them. Yes; no ifs, no buts: love them.

My wife and I were mulling over these verses in Luke 6 recently and we discovered – not by any means for the first time – that what seems very simple advice is in fact far from so. Here are some of the things we pondered…

First, loving and liking are very different things. You can love someone even when you don’t like them.

How so? Well, liking is an emotion, a feeling, something that you have no control over, something that comes into you from outside; loving, on the other hand, is an act of will, something you choose to do, something that comes from within you.

It’s hard to imagine Jesus liking the soldiers who nailed him to the cross, yet he chose to pray that God his Father would forgive them (Luke 23:33-34); which means, surely, that he chose to love them. (Have we, by the way, ever pondered whether that wonderful prayer was actually answered? I imagine we just assume it was, for at this point the Father and the Son were still in perfect harmony; and that must be right. Well, what clearer example could we want?)

But second, forgiveness can be tricky.

Jesus’ enemies, when they heard him pronounce forgiveness of sins, condemned him: “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (for example, Mark 2:6). This, surely, is a fair question: who indeed? If nothing else, Jesus’ words point to the fact that he was God in the flesh.

But in many other places Jesus instructs his followers not only to love their enemies, but to forgive them. Right here in Luke 6 he teaches “Forgive, and you will be forgiven” (verse 37). But we are not God!

Perhaps this is a puzzle we can never fully resolve, beyond saying that while of course the ultimate decision to forgive belongs to God and God alone, the  willingness to forgive must be there on our part. If – or when – we reach the point of saying “I forgive you”, it can only be on the basis of an authority delegated to us by God.

Third, looking at the passage as a whole, we concluded that loving enemies boils down to two basic responses on our part: first, wish them well, and not ill; and second, do them good, and not harm.

Experience suggests that even that can be desperately hard: “But how do you expect me to wish well to that person who has hurt me so badly, never mind do them good!” To which the honest answer may well be, “With great difficulty”.

But this is where the grace of God within us makes the impossible possible. Once we make up our minds to love that person, and pray for the help of the Holy Spirit to do so, a wonderful thing begins to happen: we begin to see them through new eyes. At the deepest level, we begin to see them as God sees them - not just as nasty or spiteful or whatever, but as really rather pathetic and pitiful. We may not have changed our enemy; but we have undergone change ourselves – and that may be far more important.

At this point my wife and I felt that we had come about as far as we could.

But we did then recognise that - well, wonderful though all this is, is there a danger of seeming soft on sin? We reminded ourselves that there are such things as rights and wrongs, and that the wrongs need to be “called out”, to use the modern expression. God isn’t a heavenly grandad who always smiles benignly and says “Oh, don’t worry, I’m happy to turn a blind eye”. That isn’t the kind of God he is. He is perfectly pure and holy. So casual indifference to wrong isn’t an option.

But we came to the conclusion that that is, so to speak, God’s problem, not ours. If our enemy remains hard and antagonistic, well, that’s for God to deal with as he sees fit.

As far as we are concerned, our Christlike duty is plain: Love your enemies. Just that: let’s say it again; no ifs, no buts.

(And remember, by the way, that in difficult relationships, the fault, ahem, is unlikely to be all on one side…!)

Lord Jesus, thank you that even as you hung dying on the cross you chose to demonstrate your love for those who killed you by praying for their forgiveness. When I feel that I have been wronged by someone, please help me to see them with your eyes – and to love them with your love. Amen.