Your Questions About Prayer...Answered

Should we pray for and about everything in our heart – i.e. parking space, job, favorite team to win?
Obviously, my prayers for Auburn have done no good over the past few years, so either there are some things so messed up that God can’t even fix them, or my prayers don’t do much good!

Seriously, praying about everything isn’t a bad thing. Why? Because you are communicating with God. And yes, your team may fumble the ball on the game tying drive, or you can’t find a parking space close to the store, but you are talking to God, and that is something the Lord can work with, no matter what the conversation is about. The Psalms show us that we can pray to God about anything, taking all of our emotions — happy praise, overwhelming lament, even our fury. The Lord hears and understands; if we keep up the conversation, God does something within us that maybe will change the tone of our prayers and the focus of our praying.

Maybe instead of asking for the parking space near the door, God will change the prayer into gratitude that one can walk a long distance into the store.

Instead of praying for a victory, we pray for the safety of the players and for our own attitude about sports, which sometimes in my own life, isn’t the best.

Remember, prayer is honest conversation with God. You can bring it all to the Lord. Then, see what God does within your life as you share honestly with the Lord!

Is it always necessary to pray in Jesus’ name?
We Christians often invoke the Lord’s name, not so much as a totem to get what we want, but as a means to ensure that what we are asking for is in line with our Lord’s will. That is what praying in Jesus’ name means.

But some ask what about people of other faiths and their prayers. Well, our Jewish friends have been praying to God for several thousand years before Jesus came on the scene, and their prayers are recorded in scripture as being heard by God. But we also know that God is the creator of the universe and thus all people. So somehow, God hears and responds to the prayers of people that are not believers (and we hope somehow will come to know Jesus!) In our Methodist understanding of prevenient grace, God is at work in the lives of all people even before they are aware of it. This pneumo centric soteriology means the Spirit is moving in the lives of people to cause them to want to reach out to something greater than themselves. And somehow, God listens to those prayers. It is our hope that this process will woo them to Jesus so they can know the joy of being in relationship with Him.

Sometimes, when we do not know how to pray, it is helpful to look at the prayers of the Church, written by godly people throughout the centuries for use in private and public worship. Some of these prayers specifically relate to praying for the nation, our leaders, and how people should treat one another. Many of these prayers petition for peace among the nations and between individuals. These prayers echo Paul in 2 Timothy 2 where he instructs his young protégé Timothy and his church to pray for kings and persons in high places to promote peace, which is conducive to the spread of the Gospel.

Praying for rulers to seek wisdom to foster justice and truth are common themes in historic prayers. This seeking of justice is echoed in the words from the Anglican Daily Guide for Prayer, “let not the needy be forgotten, nor the hope of the poor be taken away.” We are also led to pray for our enemies, following the commandments of Christ, which includes those with whom we disagree so that hatred, vengeance, and cruelty will be removed from our world, our nation, and our hearts.

Finally, I believe we would do well to ask God to forgive our nation for its sins of arrogance, avarice, and disobedience seen in the many ways in which we live together. For the sake of convenience, we have done much to harm our neighbors and our planet. We should seek God’s mercy and empowerment to live more in line with His way of love.

During these turbulent times for our country, ask God to guide you as you see events unfold in the news, so the Lord can teach you how to pray for what is happening and enable you to respond as necessary — with a heart free from anxiety and filled with God’s peace.

Sometimes you will never know on this side of eternity what an answer to prayer might be.  Who knows, when you get to heaven, a person you never met in person might come up to you and say, “Thank you for praying for me.”

And then, there might be times you will know an answer has been given: you get the job you prayed about…or maybe you did not get that job. A person is healed…or maybe healing did not happen. (This is a subject for another question.)

Also, you might pray about a decision and you get a feeling, an intuition, or a thought that you cannot explain — but you follow that leading and end up in a place you had never thought you would be…doing something you thought you would never do. (That is how I ended up here!)

One time, I was praying about making a decision, and my devotional reading for the day seemed to answer the question for me.  (That is why I did not move from here when presented with the opportunity!)

You never know how God will respond. Just be open and believe that somehow God will respond, maybe in a way you did not anticipate.