As we know from listening to the Gospels each week, Jesus often taught using parables. At times, the meaning or the application of the parable is given at the end, or is left to us hearers to interpret. Today however, Luke tells us right off the top that Jesus is teaching his disciples the necessity of praying always, being persistent, having a fidelity to prayer.
So, with that in mind, let’s talk about prayer. We begin with the premise of course, that Jesus has asked us to pray and he has shown us how. But, there are some challenging questions that most all of us have probably asked ourselves at one time or another about prayer. Here goes: Does prayer really do anything? If God is good and God already wants the good to happen for us in our lives, then upon hearing our requests, he would just fulfill them, wouldn’t he? So why do we really need to pray? What exactly does it achieve?
These questions require us to examine things a little deeper. They take us to the very identity of God and the nature of the universe. Our faith tells us that everything comes directly or indirectly from God, and without him nothing at all would exist. But at the same time, that is not the same thing as saying that God has “absolute control”, and everything that happens in life is “a part of his plan.”
When God willed to create the universe, He created it to operate somewhat independently of Himself. God is still the Primary Cause, but he also created the universe, which has both “laws of nature” and is also filled with free human beings. To illustrate, God created chemistry, but He does not “control” a campfire or “cause” a wildfire; the fire burns because of the “secondary cause” of science or human decision making.
Free human beings can use their abilities and make decisions for the greater good, for the not-so-good, or for a mixed bag of good and bad. So we can have both great doctors, nurses, judges and innovators as well as thieves, liars and kidnappers. And so, in our daily comings and goings, both good and bad, we become causes ourselves.
So, when it comes to prayer and how prayer works, it might be helpful to consider this dynamic of primary and secondary causes. Christians believe that God exists and that God cares and acts in this world, but we also know that there are an abundance of secondary causes at work.
For example, it would be a little crazy for someone to say, “I don’t have to go to work in order to have money for food; if God wants me to have food, he will give it to me.” Well, we know that is an absurd position to take. We may be completely convinced that God loves us and still know that we have to work for our daily bread.
CS Lewis gives the example of asking whether any of us would leave the house in a rainstorm with no umbrella thinking that, “if God doesn’t want me to get wet, he won’t let it rain where I am.” Well of course, as Christians, we go through our day counting on God’s care while at the same time, we make choices that make a difference. We’re accustomed to being those secondary causes!
In the Bible, God has revealed that He wants prayer to operate in a similar way. There are many times in the Bible, including today’s Gospel, where we are taught that prayer makes a difference. Jesus uses the example of the persistent widow to illustrate that God will “secure the rights of the just who call out to Him day and night.” Our greatest right is our greatest privilege, to be with Jesus and cooperate with God’s will.
We all are invited to participate, we get to choose, we’re agents, we act on the world, we make decisions, and those decisions mean something, not only in the physical world, but also in the spiritual world as well. Our prayers are united to God’s goodness and it makes a difference.
It was Philosopher Blaise Pascal who declared, “In calling us to pray for one another, God has extended to us the dignity of becoming causes.”
Does our prayer change God? Not really. God is good. God is love. He is immutable, which is the same as saying He’s unchangeable. He is goodness, so he doesn’t need to be convinced to be good. He is love. He doesn’t need to be convinced to love us more. Our prayers don’t change God, but it does something. It changes things. Prayer actually changes things. More accurately said, God changes things.
When we care for a sick person, are we changing God’s will? Not really. Are we making a real difference? Yes. What we are doing is fulfilling God’s will. We know that from reading the scriptures. We are doing our part in God’s will to make this world more like He wants it to be.
Along these same lines, when we pray for another person, are we changing God’s mind? Not really. But our prayers make a difference because they are fulfilling what is needed for God’s will to be done. When we pray, we have become a “cause”.
God could do whatever he wanted to do on his own, but he wants to be in cooperation with us. He wants to be a coworker with us. And so God invites us into this despite the fact that He could just do it on his own! He’s already good, he’s already powerful. He wants the good but often times he invites us to participate in his work. And so when we cooperate with him, when we add our prayers to his goodness, that’s what he waits for from us – better said, that’s what he is calling us to.
This reveals a great deal about the nature and identity of God. It reveals that God is the opposite of a tyrant. It is our belief that God is not a dictator, but a father who wants to work with us.
So, prayer doesn’t change God, but it does change things, and another thing it does is, it changes us. Prayer changes us. When we come into contact with God, whether that is in meditative prayer, whether that is in silence and prayer, whether it’s through reading his Scripture, reading his word, or being a coworker with him, it changes us.
We become more like him when we live like him. We become more like him when we spend time in prayer with him. It does change us. Yes, he can do it on his own, but he wants to spend time with us, he wants us to have a relationship, and that is in so many ways, so many ways, the primary end of prayer is to have a relationship with God.
Many of us can think back to when we were growing up, and dad (or it could have been mom) was out in the driveway or in front of the house washing the car. He could have washed the car, dried it off, waxed it, Armour All’d the tires and cleaned the interior inside of 20 minutes, but he invited his kids to come help, which turned it into a 3 hour ordeal, didn’t it? He could have done it all, but he wanted to work with us.
We likely have fond memories of those days. It wasn’t about getting the job done. It was about spending time with dad in a setting that was just a little bit different. We got to see him a different way. We got to see how he reacted with compassion when our execution was, let’s say, less than flawless. We got to see his pleasure with just being with his kids.
That’s what prayer is, spending time with our Father, enjoying his company, as he enjoys being with us as our companion.
Jesus is teaching us today that prayer is a discipline. To have a fidelity to prayer requires a commitment to make it a habit. To build the habit, do it first in bite size chunks, but do it regularly. And if we fall off the wagon and lose our momentum, just start over. It’s not a race.
Rodney “Gipsy” Smith was a British evangelist and an early missionary worker in the Salvation Army. At one of his evangelistic meetings, a man asked him the secret of revival. Smith replied, “Here’s what you do. Go home and take a piece of chalk. Draw a circle on the floor around yourself. And then pray, ‘O Lord, revive everything inside this circle.”
Gipsy Smith understood the purpose of prayer is not to change God, but to allow God to change us. The purpose of prayer is to bring God’s power into our lives, to open us up to God’s blessings, and build a more intimate relationship with him.
And so we’ll end this discussion on prayer with a prayer. Dear Lord, thank you for your goodness and never ending love. We embrace the dignity that you have extended to us in our role as secondary causes. When you call us to pray, you make us into something even more than your children, you allow us to be co-workers with you. Guide our thoughts. Guide our steps. Guide our prayers, as we seek to grow closer to you every day and be the type of disciples you have called us to be.