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When God is Silent-Faith, Hope, & Prayer

Featured ~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

It is impossible to talk about prayer without also talking about faith and doubt. The two are bound up with prayer in Scripture. Faith and doubt also represent the polar dimensions of our experience when it comes to prayer. One side is reflected in Jesus’ promise when the disciples marveled that He had caused a fig tree to wither with only a few words. Jesus told them to have faith in God. “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them,” Jesus said. “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:22–23).

The other side is reflected in the warning of James 1:6–7 about the undermining effect of doubt. “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you,” he assures. “But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.”

I feel caught between these two Scriptures. On the one hand, as encouraging as the promise of Jesus is to me, it creates an expectation for the results of prayer that doesn’t seem to match my experience. This does not shake my trust in God so much as it erodes the confidence I have in my own faith. Jesus’ promise seems to place pressure on the outcome of my praying. I review the answers to my prayers, trying to determine whether they rise to the standard of Christ’s “whatever you ask for.” Does the fact that they do not mean that my faith was deficient? It is a little like investors who read the quarterly statement and second-guess their choices. Would the answers have been better if I had prayed differently?

If Jesus’s promise causes me to question my prayers after the fact, the warning of James 1:6–7 makes me worry about them at the outset. James seems absolute. If you doubt, don’t expect to receive anything from God. But if, by doubt, he means someone who sometimes wonders whether God is going to grant their request, then I am afraid that I am often guilty. Jesus’s promise may lead me to have unrealistic expectations of God, and James makes it sound like God has unreasonable expectations of me. Either way, it is hard for me to come to prayer without a certain amount of doubt.

Our problem on both sides of this equation is that we have put the wrong figure at the center. In either instance, we have come to believe that our prayer’s answer depends more on us than on God. This is certainly not where Jesus begins. His primary assertion is not “trust in your faith” but “have faith in God.” Prayer’s vast potential springs from a faith that is placed in God. The “whatever” potential of prayer is not because the one who prays has the ability to accomplish whatever he or she might want but because God can do whatever he pleases (Job 23:13; Psalm 115:3).

Faith is the foundation of all that we do in the Christian life. We, however, tend to emphasize the importance of faith at the beginning of our Christian experience and then leave it there. The result is that we tend to preach faith to the unbeliever and effort to the believer. This affects the way we look at faith in connection with prayer. We think of faith as a spiritual energy that we must stir up within ourselves to get the answers we want. The greater the request, the more energy we need. Or we come to view the faith associated with prayer as an ineffable quality of emotion. To get the right answer, we need to muster up a certain kind of feeling that the Bible defines as faith. Faith is not an emotional state but a conviction about what God is both able and willing to do if we ask him.

Yet it is only fair to note that it is Jesus himself who seems to suggest that uncertainty is a deal breaker when it comes to prayer. He qualifies his promise with an exception: “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them” (Mark 11:23). The clause “and does not doubt” sounds as if absolute certainty is a prerequisite for answers to prayer.

Confidence that God will hear my request and respond as he deems best is one thing. The certainty that I will get what I ask is something else. If this is what the Bible means by faith, then I may as well not bother. The perception that we need to be sure in advance that we will get precisely what we ask for has caused many people anxiety. There is a difference between confidence that God will answer my prayer and certainty about the way it will be answered. Jesus urges us to pray with confidence. This does not mean we can always know how God will answer our prayers or that we will always get what we desire.

We need go no further than Jesus’ own prayer to prove that faith in prayer is not synonymous with the certainty of its outcome. In Gethsemane, Jesus framed his request in language that affirmed his faith without expressing certainty about the result: “‘Abba, Father,’ he said, ‘everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will’ ” (Mark 14:36).

I admire the heroes of faith in church history and Scripture, but it is the prayer of the father described in Mark 9 that resonates most with my own. Ever since childhood, his son had been possessed by a spirit that robbed him of speech and sent him into convulsions. When Jesus asked the man how long his son had been like this, he told him it had been since childhood. “‘It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.’ ‘“If you can”?’ said Jesus. ‘Everything is possible for one who believes’ ” (Mark 9:21–23).

Jesus rebuked the father for his lack of faith, but what was the nature of the faith that Jesus expected? The man’s weakness was his view of Jesus. “If you can,” the man had said. He questioned Jesus’s ability to do what was asked. In turn, Jesus demanded faith at the focal point of his doubt. He called upon the man to believe, not so much in the possibility of healing, but in him.

The father responded with honesty. The fact that he had come to Jesus with his son in the first place indicates that he possessed a measure of faith, but like the doubter of James 1:8, he was of two minds in the matter. Jesus’s tone may seem unnecessarily harsh, but the father’s response shows that it had the intended effect. Instead of turning inward to try and find more faith, the father looks to Jesus for help. “Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, ‘I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!’” (Mark 9:24).

Faith is a gift as well as a command. Because it is a gift, not everyone has faith in the same proportion. We read the biographies of those who exercised great faith and wish we could be like them. But “you of little faith,” was Jesus’s favorite designation for his followers, and seems to imply that the opposite is more likely the case (Matthew 6:30; 8:26; 14:31; 16:8; see also Luke 12:28). When Jesus’s disciples recognized their limits in this area, they asked Jesus to increase their faith. But instead of offering a regimen of faith-building exercises, he told them, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you” (Luke 17:6).

Great faith is admirable, but according to Jesus, even a little faith is enough to see remarkable results. Instead of telling his disciples to increase their faith before going to God in prayer, he urges them to begin with the small measure of faith they already have. Jesus is not lowering the bar on faith. He only says that more is possible than we can now imagine. Jesus is more confident of the potential of our prayers than we are. He knows that their outcome is correlated more with the greatness of God than with the magnitude of our faith.

Prayer is an act of faith, and its expectation is shaped by hope. Hope in the common vernacular is more like a wish. We say things like, “I hope it doesn’t rain,” or “I hope I don’t get sick.” The hope that springs from faith shares the same spirit of desire but with a much stronger expectation. This hope is closer to certainty. Faith is a kind of motion that leans in God’s direction. Hope is the experience that the leaning of faith produces. Between the two, it is faith that is primary because it is the confidence that energizes hope.

How, then, do we pray in faith? First, we should not let our questions, fears, or even our doubts keep us from approaching God in prayer. Like the father who brought his son to Jesus, we should be honest about our struggles. If we do not know how to express our doubts, the father’s prayer is enough: “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”

Second, we should remind ourselves that a little faith is all that is required to pray. We do not have to wait until we become giants in faith. We do not even need great faith to make large requests. Jesus promised that if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, nothing will be impossible for you (Matthew 17:20).

Third, do not let the size of your request intimidate you. As the old hymn by John Newton says, “Thou art coming to a King, large petitions with thee bring, for His grace and power are such, none can ever ask too much.” The answer to your prayer depends upon God, and he is always greater than your request.

Fourth, trust God’s timing and plan as you wait for an answer. Even when our requests are the same as those of others, he does not always answer in the same way. His answers are personal, specifically suited to our need and his plan. Jesus urged his disciples to “always pray and not give up” (Luke 18:1). We should persist in prayer until God’s answer is clear to us.

The key to faith and prayer is to begin with the faith that you have, even if it is only the size of a mustard seed. Anchor your hope to Christ’s promise that even the smallest grain of faith is enough to change the shape of the world around you.

When God is Silent-Prayers Without Words

Featured ~ John Koessler ~ 5 Comments

Some years ago, a friend admitted to me that she couldn’t pray. “I don’t know why,” she said. “But it’s like choking.” She wrote to me recently and said that she still struggles. “I have read so much on prayer, and it still sticks in my throat and comes out halting and inadequate.” She is not alone. Some of the godliest people have found themselves at a loss for words in the presence of God.

Sometimes, their silence is the silence of awe. When Daniel the prophet was an old man in his eighties, he had a vision that puzzled him. After fasting for three weeks, he encountered a figure on the banks of the river Tigris dressed in white linen with a belt of gold. His appearance shown like lightning, and his eyes were like flaming torches. Daniel’s companions, who could not see the vision but felt his presence, fled in terror. Daniel was so overcome by the sight that he fainted. The heavenly being reached out to touch Daniel and spoke words of encouragement. As Daniel slowly rose, first on his hands and knees and then with trembling on his feet, the man assured him that his prayers had been heard. He had come to explain the vision. “While he was saying this to me,” Daniel later wrote, “I bowed with my face toward the ground and was speechless” (Daniel 10:15). When the being touched Daniel’s lips, he was finally able to speak. “I am overcome with anguish because of the vision, my lord, and I feel very weak,” he said. “How can I, your servant, talk with you, my lord? My strength is gone and I can hardly breathe” (Daniel 10:16–17). It is doubtful that many if any of us, have had an experience like Daniel’s. But we have all had moments of awe that took our breath away.

Silence is a common reaction of those who are perplexed or astonished. In prayer, we may come to God but find ourselves so confounded that we that we are unable to speak. Sometimes this is because we have realized something about God that overwhelms us. Or, as in Job’s case, by interacting with God, we suddenly realize something about ourselves that leaves us dumbfounded. It may be that we finally understand the flaw in our complaint or recognize the gravity of our fallenness. God’s reply to Job’s extensive complaint stunned the patriarch into silence. Job’s initial reaction was to say, “I am unworthy—how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth. I spoke once, but I have no answer—twice, but I will say no more” (Job 40:4–5).

Silence is the primary disposition of the learner. Learning can involve speaking, but it usually begins with listening, and listening demands silence from us. In the Old Testament, sacred ceremonies sometimes concluded with a call for silence on the part of God’s people (Deuteronomy 27:9; Nehemiah 8:11). The prophets called for silence as divine judgment approached (Habakkuk 2:20; Zephaniah 1:7; Zechariah 2:13). According to Revelation 8:1, there is even silence in heaven.

Silence is not the usual state of those who pray. Indeed, it seems to be the very antithesis of prayer. Yet silence in God’s presence does not have to be bad. Ecclesiastes 3:7 tells us that there is a time to be silent and a time to speak. The same writer counsels those who go to the house of God to be measured in their words: “Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong. Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few” (Ecclesiastes 5:1–2).

There is more going on here than a warning about our deportment or the formal way we address God in prayer. He is not merely saying, “Mind your manners.” We are warned that when we approach God, we must have a sense of God’s presence as well as a sense of our place before him. It is easy to be careless in our worship and our praying. We are absent-minded, too quick to offer empty words and cheap promises. This is because we are speaking out of habit. We are saying the things we have always said without considering whether we actually mean them.

When the writer of Ecclesiastes warns about the danger of making rash vows, he is talking about more than the temptation to make promises that we cannot keep. There is good reason to tread carefully when we approach God. It is not because he is irascible and easily angered. We all know hypersensitive people before whom we must weigh our words. We walk on eggshells whenever we talk to them because we are not sure how they will respond. This is not the issue with God; the problem is with us. We are the ones who are flighty and rash. We take God for granted. We babble and chatter because we feel we must say something but have not thought about what we ought to say. We are not self-aware, nor are we much aware of God either.

The warning of Ecclesiastes 5:1-2 does not minimize the importance of words but the opposite. It assumes their gravity. The writer of Ecclesiastes warns us to be sparing in our words because words mean something. If there is a danger in thoughtless prayer, it is that God might take us at our word and deal with us as we have asked. It is no accident that the Hebrew term for “word” can also be translated “deed.” God is not cavalier about the words he chooses. He means what he says. There are no empty words with God. It is reasonable that he should expect the same from us.

We often mistake silence for emptiness, and we are afraid of emptiness. That is why we tend to chatter when there is a prolonged break in a conversation. We feel compelled to fill the void with something. Anything. God views silence differently. God is comfortable with his own silence. He is no chatterbox. There is much that God has said. There is even more that he has not. God is equally comfortable with our silence; sometimes, he prefers it.

There are times when we have no words to offer God, only our strangled cries of anguish. The pain we feel is so great that it drives all thoughts from our minds. Even if we tried, we would not be able to formulate the sentences. Our groans are not metaphorical; they are literal. At other times, it is because we do not know what to say. We are confounded. We only know how we feel. Fortunately, we are not limited to words when it comes to prayer. What we are unable to say in a sentence can be expressed in a sob or a moan. The frequency with which Scripture mentions tears proves that they really are (as the old song declares) “a language that God understands.” The One who wept at the tomb of Lazarus will not look down on our groans, sighs, and tears.

If you cannot find the words, then speak to God in sighs. If sighs are not enough, then offer up your cries and groans instead. Groans are a language that God understands, too. God understands groans because it is a language that he speaks. According to Romans 8:26, “The Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.” Paul says that the Spirit does this because we do not know what to say. When we find ourselves at a loss for words in God’s presence, we can take comfort in the knowledge that the Spirit is praying for us.

According to Romans 8:27, the Spirit functions not only as our intercessor but as our proxy. When we don’t know how to pray, he takes the deep desires of our hearts and reframes them in a way that corresponds with the Father’s will. In this way, the Spirit’s wordless intercession also becomes our prayer. As the Spirit prays for the believer, the believer also prays through the Spirit. The Spirit is not alone in his work. Paul goes on in this chapter to point out that Jesus Christ is “at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us” (Romans 8:34).

We are tempted to think of our prayers as feeble things. They are only a puff of breath filled with the confused longings of our hearts. We do not know what to say. We are not sure whether God will give us what we want. But Paul paints a very different picture of what is happening. He removes the veil of our struggle to reveal a convergence of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit working together not only in response to our prayers but to help us pray.

Silence seems incompatible with prayer. But lovers know that they do not need to talk all the time to enjoy each other’s company. Silence may signal confusion, but it can also be a mark of contentment. As the hymn writer Isaac Watts observed in his paraphrase of Psalm 23:

The sure provisions of my God

attend me all my days;

oh, may your house be mine abode,

and all my work be praise.

There would I find a settled rest,

while others go and come;

no more a stranger, nor a guest,

but like a child at home.

If you don’t know what to say when you come into God’s presence, then say nothing. You are neither a stranger nor a guest. You are God’s child. And because of that, you are always welcome.

When God is Silent-Jesus on Prayer

Featured ~ John Koessler ~ 2 Comments

Everyone learns to talk by imitation. Most people learn to pray the same way. They hear the prayers of others and copy them. Jesus’s disciples learned how to pray from Jesus. His model prayer, usually referred to as the Lord’s Prayer, is a prayer that we can pray for ourselves, but it is also a kind of template. The Lord’s Prayer provides us with a foundational vocabulary for praying. The church received these words from Christ and for more than two millennia has prayed them back to God. These words of the Lord’s Prayer are proof of God’s care for us and of the new relationship that has come to us through Jesus Christ.

In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches us to begin by saying, “Our Father in heaven . . .” The first move, then, in all prayer is a move in God’s direction. Prayer begins by recognizing who God really is and what kind of relationship we have with him. Jesus’s prayer teaches us that we are not only approaching God as the creator and sovereign of the universe but as our great caregiver. The designation of God as our “Father in Heaven” unites these two ideas. Jesus grants us permission to address this powerful creator on the most intimate terms. Not only is he “Father,” in the sense that he is the creator, but Jesus’s prayer teaches us to approach God as our Father.

Prayer, as Jesus models it, is personal. We do not approach God as if he were a king who operates at a great distance from us. We are not mere commoners vying with others of greater importance for a small slice of his attention. This is a family matter. Jesus has already told us why this should encourage us. Because he is your Father, God’s eyes are upon you. Your Father sees, hears, and cares for you. Unlike someone who petitions royalty and must convince them that they share the same interests, God is already interested in you.

The first request of the Lord’s Prayer, that God’s name be regarded as holy, invites a question. Regarded as holy by whom? Although it is true that we sometimes take God for granted, this request, like the two that follow, seems to be directed at the world at large. Jesus’s prayer assumes that we already recognize the dignity of God’s name. In other words, the position we should take as we approach God is of someone who knows God and treats him with the reverence that is his due. Coming to God with the familiarity of a child but also with reverence may sound like a contradiction. Some of us are so familiar in our approach to God that we slouch into his presence, mumble a few words without thinking, and then go our way. We have a greater sense of gravity when we meet with our supervisor at work or go out on a first date with someone. But somehow, the fact that we are approaching the creator of the universe does not move us. Is it possible that instead of being comfortable, we have grown callous? We can be confident and reverent at the same time.

Before turning to personal concerns, Jesus’ prayer expands our frame of reference so that we may consider those concerns within the larger context of God’s plan for the world. He teaches us to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” There is more to this petition than asking God to look after his own interests, although that is partly what is meant.

This petition is a way of aligning our plans with God’s plan. This request also draws a distinction between heaven and earth. God rules over both, but Jesus’ words imply that earth is not yet a place where God’s will is always done. Or, at least, it is not a place where the inhabitants are always inclined toward the will of God. On the one hand, this request reflects a desire to draw the rule of heaven down to earth. The hope of the kingdom is that its arrival will bring heaven and earth into alignment so that God’s will is done on earth just as it is in heaven. But it is also a request that aims to draw earth up into heaven. Before we begin to address our earthly concerns, Christ invites us to view our needs from above. God does not treat our earthly concerns with contempt, but he does expect us to approach these lower concerns with a perspective shaped by the view from above. God is in control, subduing all things for the sake of Christ.

With this in mind, we are ready to turn to the particular needs that affect us. And it should not surprise us that Jesus, who promised that the child who asks for bread would not receive a stone, teaches us to begin with bread (see Matthew 7:9). As the language shifts from “your” to “our,” Jesus teaches us to say: “Give us today our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). Food is one of the most basic concerns that we have. This request for daily bread includes all the other small concerns that occupy our daily lives. All the things we need to live and the means to provide them are of interest to God because he knows that we need them. We could add many other items to the list as well. We pray for our children, our friends, and our schedules. We ask God for help to accomplish the tasks that we have for the day. Sometimes we even pray for the weather. They are not necessities in the technical sense, but they are a concern for us. Because they are our concerns, God is not ashamed to concern himself with them.

As important as our everyday needs may be, there are other more important concerns. Consequently, the trajectory of personal requests in this prayer moves from material to spiritual. In particular, Jesus singles out the two that are the most critical. One is our need for forgiveness. The other is for spiritual protection. In Matthew 6:12 we are taught to pray: “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” The comparison mentioned in this verse is unsettling. Is it a condition? Is Jesus suggesting that we should ask God to make his forgiveness conditional on our forgiving others? The warning of verses 14–15 seems to suggest as much, but to say it this way makes the request sound like bargaining. What is more, we can think of many occasions where we have not forgiven others. From grudges for little slights to outright blame for major transgressions, there is plenty of evidence that shows that forgiveness does not come easily to us. We have no grounds for basing our request that God forgive us on our own track record of forgiveness.

The petition for spiritual protection in Matthew 6:13 addresses our practice of sin at its point of entrance: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” The nature of the request is simple enough. It asks God to keep us out of temptation’s way. This strategy is preemptive. Do not even let us come to the place where we feel the enticement to transgress in the first place. The phrase “lead us not” seems surprising. What does God have to do with temptation? Scripture emphatically denies that God has a role in tempting anyone to evil. It is Satan who is called “the tempter” (Matthew 4:3; 1 Thessalonians 3:5). Furthermore, James 1:13–14 reveals that we are also complicit: “When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me,’” James observes, “For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.”

When we ask God not to “lead us” into temptation, we are really asking him to protect us from those external and internal influences that work together to produce temptation. With this in mind, the evil spoken of in this petition can easily have a double force. On the one hand, it is a plea that God will protect us from Satan. He is “the evil one” with whom sin ultimately originated. At the same time, it is a request that God would preserve us from all the powers of evil in the larger sense of the word. With this phrase, we confess that our safety is found in God alone.

The doxology included at the end of Matthew 6:13 in some versions does not seem to have been part of Matthew’s original text. It is missing from the oldest manuscripts we currently have available. But there is a parallel in 1 Chronicles 29:11 where David declares: “Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, Lord, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all.”

Whether or not the doxology was part of the original, it is a fitting way to close. In this way, the Lord’s Prayer ends with God just as it begins with him. This is what is at the heart of every prayer. When we pray, we focus our attention on God. We remind ourselves of who he is and what he is like. As we approach him, we place ourselves, our concerns, and even our offenses before him. The confidence we have in doing so comes from the fact that it is Jesus Christ who has taught us to pray this way. He is our mentor in prayer. But more than this, he is our passport into God’s presence. “Until now you have not asked for anything in my name,” he told his disciples in John 16:24. “Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.”

The Christmas Story

Featured ~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

A few years ago, my wife Jane and I visited a church on Christmas Eve. It was one of those shopping mall churches–literally. The church building was a converted shopping center. Not only that, but the building in which the congregation worshipped had formerly been a store that specialized in Christmas decorations.

During the service, the pastor invited the children to come on stage and listen as he read a story. But it was not the story I expected. It was a picture book about a mouse. The story had a Christmas theme, of course. But I couldn’t help wondering why he thought it was a better choice than the Bible’s own account of the birth of Christ. Did he think that the biblical narrative wasn’t compelling enough to hold a child’s attention?

We often speak of the Bible’s account of the Nativity of Christ as the Christmas story, and we are right to do so. “Story is the primary verbal means of bringing God’s word to us,” Eugene Peterson has observed.[1] The narrative of Jesus’ birth recorded in the Gospels is no exception. It has all the elements one would expect of a great story. And one of the marks of a truly great story is that it grows more compelling each time we hear it.

Familiarity is the very thing that anchors such stories so firmly in our imagination. Why else do we return again and again to novels, plays, and movies that we have seen before? It is certainly not because we think the story will change with the retelling. We love these old tales precisely because we know them. They are like the familiar contours of a much-loved landscape. To go back to them is like coming home.

In his book The Art of Biblical Narrative, Robert Alter notes how “in biblical narrative more or less the same story often seems to be told two or three or more times about different characters, or sometimes even about the same character in different sets of circumstances.”[2] This is exactly how Luke’s account of the Christmas story begins. Not with Jesus, but with the priest Zechariah, who is startled by an angel that appears to him in the holy place to tell him that his prayer has been heard. At long last, his wife Elizabeth, will bear him a child after years of hopeless waiting. This is a child of promise who “will be great in the sight of the Lord” (Luke 1:15). We have heard this story before. Not once, but several times. Then it was Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, Elkanah and Hannah, and Manoah and his unnamed wife. So we know what comes next. Or, at least, we think we do. God makes a promise. Those who receive it have questions that are finally answered by a miraculous birth.

Only it turns out that, in this case, the familiar events, which unfold just as we expect them to, are not the main event. They are merely an antechamber to the real story, which is also about a miraculous birth but one with a truly unexpected twist. Mary isn’t an old woman whose womb has been closed by the will of God. She is a young woman whose womb is opened when the Holy Spirit overshadows her and enables her to conceive as a virgin. The child she bears will also be great, like the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth. But Mary’s son will be even greater because he “will be called the Son of the Most High,”  to whom the Lord will give the “throne of his father David” and a kingdom that will never end (Luke 1:32–33). Just as a bolt of lightning may cast a different light on a familiar room and reveal unexpected shapes, the old story suddenly becomes new. It turns out that the “seed” of the woman who was promised so long ago in the Garden of Eden and who will crush Satan’s head is also the Son of God.


The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact.

C. S. Lewis

It is not a hyperbole to describe the Christmas story as fantastic. That is to say, it has all the characteristics of a fantasy. Except it is not fantasy. C. S. Lewis used the term “myth” to speak of the Christmas story. Today (and indeed in Lewis’s day as well), myth is a synonym for what is fiction. To call something a myth these days is to label it a mere story. But Lewis uses the term in the opposite direction to speak of facts that are more like a story and a story that is more than a tale. “In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction,” Lewis explains. It is not a hyperbole to describe the Christmas story as fantastic. That is to say, it has all the characteristics of a fantasy. “The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact.”[3]

Most Christians, at least those who believe in the Nativity as something that actually took place, would be more comfortable calling these events history. But this label, while true enough, is not entirely adequate to describe what happened. The story of Christ’s birth is indeed history, but it is not bare history. I am tempted to describe it as history that is theologically charged. I am not speaking of history that has been recast in the telling to reflect the already accepted doctrinal views of a particular segment of the church (though I admit that this has sometimes been done). But that these are true events by which God has revealed not only His plan but Himself.

“A fairytale is not an allegory,” the 19th-century fantasy writer George MacDonald observed. “There may be allegory in it, but it is not an allegory.”[4] Something similar can be said of the Christmas story. The events described in the Bible’s account of Christ’s birth may have elements that are fantastic, but they are not fantasy. There may even be some allegory in the Bible’s historical accounts (cf. Gal. 4:24–26). But they are not strictly allegories.

Likewise, the Christmas story is historical but not strict history in the modern sense. To the modern mind, history is a detailed account of events as they happened. It is objective. It lays bare the facts for all to see. Anyone who has read a modern history knows that this strict definition is itself a fiction. Writers of history are rarely neutral. They are not merely recounting events. They are espousing a view. The Gospel writers are no different. They are not neutral. Nor do they recite facts dispassionately. Their story is told with an agenda. George MacDonald’s observation about the “meaning” of a fairytale is just as applicable to the theological histories we know as the Gospels: “It is there not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning.”[5]

Perhaps this is why the Gospel writers exclude so much from their accounts that we moderns would prefer them to have included. If the writing is spare, it is by God’s design to leave room for the imagination to be awakened. “The best way with music, I imagine, is not to bring the forces of our intellect to bear upon it,” George MacDonald recommended, “but to be still and let it work on that part of us for whose sake it exists.”

Let us likewise settle ourselves as we listen to the story of Christ’s birth. It is indeed an old story. We have listened to it a hundred times. But that does not mean that there is nothing more to hear in it. Be still and let it work on that part of you for whose sake it exists, and you will not be disappointed. It is the perfect story. And it is only the beginning.

[1] Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 40.

[2] Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, (New York: Basic, 2011), 58.

[3] C. S. Lewis, “Myth Became Fact,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 57.

[4] George MacDonald, “The Fantastic Imagination,” in The Gifts of the Child Christ, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973), 25–26.

[5] Ibid., 25.

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When God is Silent-Staying Focused During Prayer

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Many things can get in the way of praying. But one of the most common obstacles is boredom. Prayer can sometimes seem tedious. Our prayers often sound the same. They begin and end the same way. They seem to be composed of the same requests uttered day after day in the same words. We don’t necessarily need to be troubled by the fact that we get bored when we pray. Prayer is an interchange, not a performance. It doesn’t have to be interesting to be effective. What is more, there are many factors that influence the way we feel, none of which necessarily have any bearing on the actual outcome of our prayers. We may be tired or sick. We may be afraid. The fact that we state our requests unimaginatively means nothing to God, who doesn’t analyze their style but searches the heart (Romans 8:27).

Yet the monotony we feel during prayer is sometimes of our own making. We may be bored because we are only praying one kind of prayer. Or it may be because it is the same prayer over and over again. The vocabulary that the Bible uses to speak of prayer is often more expansive than our practice. There is a variety reflected in Paul’s command in Ephesians 6:18 when he urges believers to “pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.” There are many different situations that prompt us to pray, and we can do so with a variety of types of prayers. One of the things that makes the act of praying interesting, for lack of a better word, is the situation or occasion that prompts it. Just as our lives are filled with great and small traditions, we might also say that there are also great and small prayers. It is unreasonable to expect every prayer to be a transcendent experience.

Sometimes our prayers are urgent. We turn to God in a moment of great need. In those moments, we reach for God the way a drowning swimmer reaches for the outstretched arm of a lifeguard. We have skin in the game. Those are often the times when we feel God’s presence the most. We can say with the conviction of the psalmist, “In my distress I called to the Lord; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears” (Psalm 18:6).

At other times, the situation that moves us to pray is mundane. We say grace before a meal or at the beginning of some task. We run through the names on our prayer list and generally ask for God’s blessing on their lives. We are not too specific because we are not aware of any remarkable need.

The more ordinary the context, the less emotionally charged the experience. But it isn’t necessarily the point of prayer to have an emotional experience. Most of our lives are made up of ordinary days. Just as an athlete’s regular training outside the game produces the muscle memory that will enable them to perform in the heat of competition, the habit of ordinary prayer trains us to respond prayerfully in the moment of crisis. Ordinary prayer sanctifies the mundane and makes the benign beautiful. There is nothing wrong with these “bread and butter” prayers. The Bible is full of such prayers. It is our inattention that creates the problem. When our prayers become so common that all we are doing is making religious noise, it ceases to be prayer.

Occasional prayers are a little different. As the label suggests, they are prayers suited to a particular occasion. Invocations and benedictions are an example. Occasional prayers are often a feature of the church’s great traditions. We open and close special services with such prayers. Invocations and benedictions are located at the opposite ends of a task or an endeavor. When a church service begins, sometimes the pastor or worship leader will offer an invocation. This is a kind of invitation offered to God, although we shouldn’t think that He needs permission from us to be part of the service.

God sees past our vague requests
to the real needs that lie beneath them.

Nor should we think that He is somewhere outside the building waiting to be let in. In a way, an invocation is a reminder to ourselves that God is already present as much as it is an invitation to God. A benediction is a blessing. It asks God to bless what we have done or to continue to help us. Although benedictions are viewed as prayers, often they are not addressed to God at all but to the congregation. They are promises addressed to God’s people. One does not need to be ordained to pray an invocation or benediction. Nor are they necessarily reserved for church service. When my children were small, my wife Jane and I would pray the priestly blessing from Numbers 6:24–26 over them when they went to bed at night. Many benedictions are scattered throughout the Scriptures, but writing your own can be especially meaningful. Think about how you want God to bless those for whom you pray and put it into the form of a promise. A good way to formulate your benedictions is to use the language of Scripture’s promises.

The Bible employs several terms to speak of prayer. The most basic is “ask.” It is the general word that Paul uses in Philippians 4:6: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” A prayer is simply a request. But Paul’s inclusion of two additional terms expands the definition. Paul speaks of “prayers” and “petitions.” If there is a difference between the two, it is a difference in perspective. The term prayer looks at it from God’s direction. It was the term commonly used to refer to a request addressed to a deity. This language reminds us of the relational dynamic that provides the context for our request. We are coming to God, who is greater than we are. In a sense, it is a word that puts us in our place.

A petition, on the other hand, looks at prayer from our angle. A petition expresses what we want. The Greek word speaks of beseeching or begging someone. It is more than a request; this is an earnest request. So, the first principle to help us stay interested is to have clarity about what we are doing and what we want. What exactly do we want? What are we asking? It is shockingly easy to pray absentmindedly. Our petitions are not petitions at all. They are not specific enough. We ask God to bless us but in a very general sense. So general, in fact, that God could not answer them if he were limited only to the specifics we share.

Fortunately, God is able to see past our vague requests to the real needs that lie beneath them. But it is hard for us to stay attentive without a concrete sense of what we need. It is not selfish to think about yourself and your situation before you pray. It only makes sense that we should have our problems in mind when we pray. They are the concerns that motivate us to go to God in the first place. But it is possible that in the process, we may magnify those concerns so much that they drive God from our minds. Sometimes when we pray, we are only worrying out loud to God. God hears even these prayers, but they don’t bring us much comfort.

Praying is spiritual, but it is also a cognitive act that requires focused attention. Everyone knows the frustration of having a conversation with someone who is distracted. Perhaps it is because their mind wanders, flitting from one topic to another. Or it may be a result of multi-tasking—the one with whom we are trying to converse is doing something else at the same time. Their attention is divided. Prayer is no different. Conversation with God, just like a conversation with any other person, requires that we concentrate on the topic at hand and on the one to whom we wish to speak.

A meaningful prayer experience, then, requires some forethought. First, what is the subject that we have come to God to talk about? Second, what exactly do we want to say? If we had an appointment with our employer that we knew would cover important topics related to our job, we would spend some time thinking in advance about what we planned to say. The same is true when we have a serious talk with a friend or a family member. We choose our words carefully so that we can express ourselves in just the right way. We do this, in part, so that they will not misunderstand us. But only in part. We choose our words carefully because we have something we want to express. This is what makes the conversation important to us.

Although there is no danger that God will misunderstand us, there is a possibility that we may come to him without having much to say. Perhaps the reason we have trouble focusing during prayer is that the conversation isn’t important. Our thoughts are muddled because we haven’t given much thought to what we are trying to say.

Although words are primary, especially where prayer is concerned, we do not communicate with words alone. Gestures and body motions are also a kind of language. The technical word for this is kinesics. A wink, a nod, a slight gesture of the hand all indicate something. Posture, gestures, and various actions are part of the nonverbal vocabulary some use to talk to God. The difference between these holy kinesics and ordinary body language is that God does not need such signals to understand us. They are for our benefit. Things like posture and gestures can sometimes help us focus our attention when we pray. They may enable us to express ourselves more fully, not because God needs more clarity but because we do. They can also serve as reminders both of our purpose in prayer and the promises that shape it.

Maybe the real problem with my praying is that what I have been calling tedium is actually familiarity. I have come looking for a burning bush only to find a quiet room and a comfortable chair. God does not have to announce his presence with a flourish. Our momentary conversation does not have to be dramatic. Perhaps it is enough just to say my piece and then go my way.

When God is Silent-Praying in the Words of Another

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The first prayer that I remember praying was one I learned. It was a bedtime prayer. I don’t recall whether I learned it from my mother or someone else. It went like this:

Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

To be honest, this prayer disturbed me. Up to that point, it hadn’t occurred to me that I could die in my sleep. The possibility terrified me. The prayer sounded more like an invitation for God to take my life than a prayer for divine protection. But many people have found it helpful to pray using the words of others. Sometimes, these are rote prayers, like the bedtime prayer I learned to recite as a child. Others pray written prayers that are published.

My Christian experience began among people who looked down on written prayers and rituals in general. They believed that the best prayers were spontaneous, framed in one’s own words. Liturgical prayers (prayers that were memorized and repeated) were part of what they viewed as dead traditionalism, and written prayers were even worse.

Yet, it is just as easy for so-called extemporaneous prayer to be undeveloped and unreflective. Often, extemporaneous prayer is not spontaneous at all but a repetition of phrases and themes that we have learned from listening to the prayers of others. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Everyone learns to talk by listening to the conversations of others. The vocabulary of prayer is much the same. Indeed, plenty of evidence in the New Testament suggests that the early church learned to pray primarily by imitation. One prominent example of this is the form of prayer that Jesus taught when his disciples asked him to teach them how to pray. According to Luke 11:1, Jesus introduced his prayer with the words: “When you pray, say …” Matthew’s version begins with a similar command: “This is how you should pray …” (Matthew 6:9). The prayer’s petitions, which are voiced using the first-person plural, also imply that Jesus expected the church to recite it together (Luke 11:3–4; Matthew 6:11–13).

From its earliest days, the church has prayed in both modes—sometimes by praying the words of others verbatim and at others speaking to God using their own words. It does not have to be an either/or choice. We can pray the Lord’s Prayer word for word as Christ delivered it to the church, and we can also use it as a template by adding concerns that are specific to our lives.

One of the first pictures we have of the church is that of a church that prayed together. This is where we find the disciples immediately after Christ’s ascension. They returned to Jerusalem and went upstairs to the room where they were staying: “They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers” (Acts 1:14). Two questions immediately come to mind. First, how could they pray constantly? Second, what did they say?

When some of us pray, our minds wander after only a few minutes! Did the first disciples really engage in a marathon prayer session that lasted seven weeks? Surely they had to take breaks for eating and sleeping. We know that they stopped at least once to conduct business. Acts 1:15–26 says that “in those days,” the disciples took time to choose someone to replace the traitor Judas. As for the content of these prayers, it seems likely that it was a mixture of praying based on tradition, quotes from the Psalms, and specific requests arising out of their circumstances.

Everyone who learns to pray begins by praying words they have heard from another.

James 5:13 declares, “Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise.” The specific mode of prayer that James recommends for the cheerful is song. The word that is translated “sing songs of praise” is a Greek term that literally means “to play on a harp.” It is related to the word for a psalm and is a reminder of the value of using the book of Psalms as a resource for our prayers and the vital role that singing plays in our overall prayer life. We are used to thinking of singing as an act of worship. Indeed, for many in the church, singing is worship. But singing is also a form of prayer.

Another revealing feature of the command of James 5:13 is the connection that it makes between music and emotion. We know from experience that music has an affective quality. Most of us do not choose our music based on its technical quality but because of the way it makes us feel. The same is true of the church. Today’s church uses music to create a mood and attract visitors. Worship and music are so identified that if someone says that we are going to worship, most people will assume they mean we are going to sing. Yet, when Acts 2:42 lists the priorities of the first disciples, it does not mention music or even worship. Instead, it says that they “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”

Nevertheless, the New Testament does show that music had an important place in the early church. Paul and Silas sang through the night while in prison (Acts 16:25). John’s vision of heaven’s worship includes singing with musical instruments (Revelation 5:9; 14:2–3). John does not describe the melody, only its overall effect. He says that it was “like the roar of rushing waters and like a loud peal of thunder” (Revelation 14:2).

When we sing, we express our emotions as well as our thoughts. Furthermore, there is a physical dimension to music-making. Its sonic nature resonates with us on our deepest level in the most literal sense. “Music is a very bodily business, whether or not the human voice is used,” Jeremy Begbie explains. “Our physical, physiological, and neurological makeup shapes the making and hearing of music to a high degree.”[1] Singing enables us to pray with the whole person and not only with words.

The main thing that troubles those who are uncomfortable with memorized prayer is its liturgical nature. It bothers them that the words they pray are not their own words. Until they pray them so often that they become second nature, it feels as if they are speaking to God in someone else’s voice. But is this really such a bad thing? The fact that some forms of prayer are ritualized speech is not necessarily a condemning factor either. Dead rituals can indeed pose a danger, but in such cases, it is the deadness, not the fact that they are rituals, that poses the problem. Rituals are merely repeated actions that become meaningful to us by their repetition.

Some kind of rote praying is a feature of every Christian tradition, just as every church has its own liturgy, whether it is formal or informal. Everybody who learns to pray begins by praying words they have heard from others. In a way, none of us begins by praying in our own voice. We must first learn a vocabulary and a pattern of speech. It shows us what to ask for and how to ask. It enables us to put into words feelings and desires for which we previously had no name. Over time, what once sounded like an unfamiliar voice eventually becomes a way to find our own.

[1] Jeremy S. Begbie, Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 47.

When God is Silent-Managing Our Angry Prayers

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Sometimes when we pray, we are angry with other people. On other occasions, we pray because we are angry with God. When Jonah prayed, it was both. After delivering what may be the shortest and most successful sermon in preaching history, Jonah prayed an angry prayer in which he took God to task for his mercy and then begged for death.  

You might think that Jonah would be happy. Instead, the prophet was outraged. The Hebrew text literally says, “It was evil to Jonah, a great evil and he was angry” (Jonah 4:1). Jonah wasn’t surprised by what God had done (or, more specifically, by what he hadn’t done). Jonah was furious because God had behaved exactly as he expected. “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home?” he complained in Jonah 4:2–3. “That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”  

Yet, Jonah’s angry prayers are not an anomaly. Indeed, angry prayers are common enough that those who study the prayers of the Bible have an entire category devoted to them. They call them imprecatory prayers, after a Latin word that means to curse or invoke evil. To be fair, Jonah’s prayers were not technically imprecatory. They were more occasions of grumbling out loud to God. But the anger that prompted them is the same spirit that fuels the imprecations of the Psalms, the laments of Jeremiah, and even a few of the “wish prayers” of the apostle Paul (Galatians 1:8; 5:12).  

Prayers for protection have always been prayed by God’s people. Imprecatory prayers go a step further. They ask for protection, but they also ask God to punish, sometimes with language that we would consider immoderate. For example, in Psalm 69:28, David prays that God would blot his enemies out of the Book of Life. Even more disturbing, Psalm 137:8–9 pronounces a curse on Babylon and a blessing on those who destroy it.  

Anyone who has experienced abuse or witnessed an atrocity can identify with the emotion that energizes these prayers. But we don’t have to suffer abuse to understand the angry prayers of the Psalms and prophets. We have all had the same feelings, though on a much smaller scale, every time someone has wronged us. Yet, there is more than an emotion behind the imprecations of the Old Testament. The retributive standard of the Mosaic law—eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot—shapes them. Leviticus 24:20 summarizes the principle in these words: “The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury” (see also Exodus 21:24; Deuteronomy 19:21).

As a legal standard, the purpose of this command was to limit retribution. The basic rule was that the punishment should fit the crime and not go beyond it. Any penalty must consider the degree of damage inflicted on the victim and the retaliation imposed should not have extreme punitive damages. The Mosaic law’s limitation of the penalty to an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was not exclusive to Israel. It also existed in other cultures, perhaps most famously in the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi. Possibly we might view the psalmist’s and Jeremiah’s imprecatory prayers as an application of the Babylonians’ own standard of law against them, but the limits set by God’s law on retribution were more than a cultural adaption of advanced Babylonian jurisprudence. It reflected a larger movement in the direction of grace that Jesus Christ would eventually fulfill by his coming. John gives the broad outline of this trajectory when he observes that “the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).  

Christ’s inauguration of this full measure of grace must shape our understanding of Scripture’s angry prayers. The advent of an age of grace did not lower the bar of God’s justice. Jesus did not come to overturn the law but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17–18). Not only did Jesus warn of a coming day of judgment, but he also made it clear that on that day, he would be its primary agent (Matthew 13:41–43; cf. 2 Peter 2:9; 3:7). But until that day, Christ’s dealings with the offender are marked by grace.  

The spirit that shapes our prayers for those who anger us is not the spirit of Jonah but the spirit of Christ. It is not a cry for justice but a prayer for grace. To hear such a thing will undoubtedly rankle some in this era when justice has become a cultural byword. Yet Jesus could not have been clearer on this matter in his teaching. Our model is not the imprecatory prayers of the Psalms and prophets, but the pattern Christ gave us in the Sermon on the Mount. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’” Jesus declared. “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:43–45). What kind of prayer shall we pray for those we judge to be our persecutors? Paul echoes Christ’s command and clarifies the sort of prayer he had in mind: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse” (Romans 12:15).  

How, then, should we pray our angry prayers? Given what Jesus says, should we even pray them at all? It doesn’t seem realistic to think that we can deny our anger. To deny it would be to pray through a mask of false piety. We cannot hide our feelings from the one that Scripture says “knew what was in each person” (John 2:24). Nor is it reasonable to dismiss the things that have sparked our outrage. They are important. At least, they are important to us, or else we would not be angry about them. Whether or not the outrage we feel is justified is not the point (not yet, anyway). If we are to worship God in spirit and truth, the truest self at this moment is our angry self. Jesus’ command to love our enemy and bless our persecutors does not mean that we cannot pray if we are angry.  

We do not have to deny our anger, but we must take these feelings in hand and discipline ourselves to pray both as Jesus taught us and as he himself prayed. But if we are to pray as Jesus did, then we must also take upon our lips not only his words of forgiveness offered on behalf of those who crucified him but his cry of dereliction. Before Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them,” he prayed, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34).  

I am not saying that on the cross, Jesus spoke in anger or disappointment with the Father. Far from it. Yet these words of anguish were more than a mere symbol. Just as they truly described the emotion of the psalmist at the time when they were first written, they express the agony Christ suffered as he “‘bore our sins’ in his body on the cross” (1 Peter 2:24). It is this reality that makes Jesus prayer a model for us in our anger. When we admit our anger and frustration to God, we acknowledge our ambivalence. On the one hand, the fact that we are praying is itself a recognition of God’s sovereignty. We pray because he is our God. We know that he is in control. In the act of praying, we begin with God and not our problem.  

At the same time, we often feel conflicted as well. Like Jonah, we are hunkered down and waiting to see what God will do for us. If we are not angry, we are at least frustrated by our circumstances. We wonder why the sovereign God would allow such things to occur. This note of frustration is frequently heard in the prayers of the Bible.  

Jonah had a problem with God because he had a problem with the people of Nineveh. Jonah was angry about the evil of Nineveh. But mostly, he was angry because God did not seem to share his anger. Jonah learned by experience what he already knew as a matter of intuition. When you pick a fight with God, you usually end up on the losing side. God is bigger than you are and has all the power. He holds all the cards and knows what you are going to say before you say it.  

The Jonah story ends in silence. God asks, “Should I not pity Nineveh?” But Jonah gives no answer. We, too, are silent but often for a different reason. Sometimes ours is a silence born of fear. At other times it is the silence of artifice. Instead of expressing our real thoughts and feelings in prayer, we tell God what we think he wants to hear, as if God could not see through our charade, as if he did not already know what was in our hearts. It would be far better for us to take our stand with the patriarchs, the psalmists, and the prophets and state our feelings in plain words. It might be better, even, if we were to join Jonah as he sulks on the outskirts of Nineveh and risk engaging God in impolite conversation. Jonah, admittedly, is only barely obedient. But at least he is honest.

When God is Silent-The Art of Praying for Others

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When I was a pastor, one of my responsibilities was to pray for the congregation. I usually began every morning in my “praying chair” with the church directory open on my lap. I would look at the pictures and pray for each person by name. It was easy, as long as I was praying in generalities. It was harder when I tried to pray in specifics. Besides asking God to give them a good day, keep them safe, and bless them (whatever that meant), I often found myself at a loss for words.

My problem wasn’t the church’s size. The congregation was small, only fifty or sixty regular attenders. I knew everyone by name. I knew where they worked and some of the details of their lives. I was usually aware when something happened worth praying about: an illness, a job change, a death in the family. It wasn’t rocket science. It seemed to me that being familiar with the congregation should make praying for them easier, but it wasn’t.

Most of the time, when we pray for others, we are either trying to change them or their situation, but we face two significant obstacles. One is the people for whom we are praying. The other is God. It sometimes seems as if neither party is willing to cooperate with our effort. Do a search on books about intercessory prayer on the Internet, and the overall impression you get is that our concerns in this area are primarily concerns of focus and method. Many of the titles describe those for whom we should pray. They are about praying for our spouses and children, our nation, and our churches. We are praying for health, prosperity, and revival. These book titles indicate that we wrestle with the same insecurities and disappointments here as we do with the rest of our prayers. We don’t think we are very good at it. We are worried about our technique and are looking for some way to ensure we will get the response we desire from God.

The first explicit example of intercessory prayer recorded in Scripture is by Abraham. This doesn’t mean that he was the first to pray. Or even that he was the first to pray for someone else. Abraham prayed for Sodom after God told him that he intended to destroy the city. One of the most surprising features of this prayer is that it sounds like bargaining. It was not Abraham who initiated the conversation but God. However, Abraham did have a personal stake in the outcome. His nephew Lot was a resident of Sodom. The way that Abraham keeps driving down the number of righteous people needed to spare the city of Sodom does indeed make it feel as if he is haggling with a merchant in the marketplace. Upon closer inspection, however, there was no bargaining going on at all in Abraham’s intercession. A bargain involves an exchange with some quid pro quo given and received. Abraham offers nothing in exchange for the terms he suggests to God other than an article of faith. He only asks that “the Judge of all the earth do right” (Genesis 18:25).

Of all those who pray in the Old Testament, Moses stands as the premier example of intercessory prayer. One of his most notable prayers occurred when Israel turned from God and worshiped the golden calf (Exodus 32–34). Moses’s prayer seems to stand between God and the destruction of the nation. On the surface, we could be tempted to see God’s anger as a momentary flash of rage that subsides after Moses talks God off the ledge.

A closer analysis reveals much more. If God had truly wanted to destroy the nation, he could have done so while Moses was still on the mountain. Instead, the Lord said, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt” (Exodus 32:7). More than informing Moses of the problem, this declaration is cleverly framed in a way that seems to place their fate in Moses’s hands. In addition to calling them “your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt,” the Lord demands, “Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation” (v. 10). In the exchange that follows, Moses prays four times and offers three arguments based on what God has already revealed about his purpose and character.

Intercession is not bargaining or talking God
into or out of something.

Intercessory prayer is not bargaining or talking God into or out of something. When we pray for others, we respond to God’s invitation to enter into his purposes. Instead of carefully crafted arguments intended to persuade a reluctant God, we confess God’s promises. His grace, mercy, and justice shape our petitions. The more we know about God, the more confidently and intelligently we can pray.

In the New Testament, the apostle Paul is both an example and an advocate for intercessory prayer. He saw intercession as a way of participating with God in what he is doing in the lives of others. Praying for others is a way of participating with God in what he is doing in the lives of others. When we engage in intercessory prayer, we are not trying to direct God’s attention toward someone he is not aware of or in whom he is not interested. When we pray for someone else, we enter into a relationship that already exists between that person and God as their creator.

The apostle Paul’s language of spiritual collaboration places intercessory prayer within a relational rather than a transactional framework. He saw the Corinthians as his helpers through their prayers. Those who prayed for Paul enabled him to preach. Their prayers went on ahead and opened doors (2 Cor. 1:11). The same is true for us. The record of Paul’s prayers in his letters and his requests that the churches pray for him in return provide evidence of a praying network that was the foundation of the apostle’s ministry. Paul not only solicited prayers for himself but invited them to pray along with him for others. When we pray for a friend going through a hard time, we share the load with them. Our prayers can ease their burden.

How, then, should we practice the art of intercessory prayer? To some extent, the answer is that intercessory prayer is the same as any other kind of praying. We bring our concerns to God and ask him to take care of them. The apostle Paul’s prayers recorded in the New Testament provide a simple model that we can use for ourselves. Many of his prayers include four key elements. First, they are addressed to God. But rather than merely saying, “Dear God,” Paul’s openings often describe God by one of his attributes as recorded in Scripture.

The second element of Paul’s prayers is a request. Sometimes these are stated explicitly as petitions and at other times in words that sound more like a wish. The point here is not so much whether he used the optative mood or the indicative when he made his requests so much as it is that he saw those for whom we pray within the framework of God’s care. He was not merely asking for things. He made his requests with a Godward focus. The apostle recognized that a petition is not a demand.

A third feature of Paul’s prayers is that they usually mention those for whom he prays. He has specific people in mind. Paul’s prayers for others are personal and suited to their needs. They are not vague. The third feature of Paul’s prayers is that they usually mention those for whom he prays. He has specific people in mind. Paul’s prayers for others are personal and suited to their needs. They are not vague.

A fourth element of the apostle’s prayers is that Paul often articulates an outcome that he expects to see as a result of God’s answer. These purpose clauses set the apostle’s requests within the larger framework of God’s plan. It is easy to be so caught up in the specific requests we are making that we lose sight of why we are praying at all. Christian prayer is not magic. We are participating in God’s plan for the church, for our lives, and the world at large. There is a bigger picture to keep in view, along with the particular requests that we make. God’s purposes and his promises are a motivator and a guide in all our praying.

There is one other noteworthy feature of Paul’s intercessory prayers. Those that are recorded in the New Testament are generally brief. Often, they are no more than a paragraph or two. Many are only a few sentences. Our prayers do not have to be works of art. They do not have to be long. We can pray while working, playing, or as we lie on our bed at night. Say what you have to say as best you can and leave the matter with God.

When God is Silent-Asking and Getting What You Want . . . or Not

Featured ~ John Koessler ~ 3 Comments

In one of his parables, Jesus compares prayer to someone who asks a neighbor to loan him three loaves of bread when an unexpected visitor shows up at midnight (Luke 11:5–8). In the scenario that Jesus describes, the neighbor is unwilling at first. “Don’t bother me,” the neighbor says. “The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.” What is Jesus’s counsel in such a situation? Keep asking. Be shameless in your persistence: “I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need” (Luke 11:8).

Jesus made the same point in another parable “to show [his disciples] that they should always pray and not give up” (Luke 18:1). This story concerned a widow who kept going to a judge with the plea, “Grant me justice against my adversary” (Luke 18:3). Because the judge “neither feared God nor cared what people thought,” the woman came to him repeatedly without getting the answer she desired. The power dynamics described in this witty story aptly describe how we often feel when it comes to prayer: helpless, powerless, and frequently ignored.

Prayer is an act of communion with God. But for most of us, it’s also about getting something from God. Most prayers include an “ask” of some kind. We aren’t praying just to hear ourselves talk. Jesus’s primary point, of course, is that God is not like the neighbor or the judge. But it is an important starting point to acknowledge that we often feel that he is. We do not struggle with prayer because it is hard. Our problem is that we are not sure it is worthwhile. We suspect that God is not interested in our case or fear that he will not decide matters in our favor. Delay and denial are the major reasons for this uncertainty. We pray, but the answer does not seem to come. Or we pray, and the response we receive is not the one we had wanted.

Why does God often seem so slow when Scripture assures us that he is not slow? One reason is that our relationship to time is very different from God’s. In 2 Peter 3:8, we are told to remember that “with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” What seems to us like a delay is not a delay to God. God’s plans unfold according to his schedule. The fact that time does not limit God does not mean that he has no sense of timing.

While a “no” is probably not the answer we want, it is still an answer.

Jesus began his public ministry with the words, “The time has come” (Mark 1:15). Romans 5:6 tells us that Christ died for sinners “at just the right time.” We are frustrated with the timing of God’s answers to our prayers because we forget that we are also part of a larger drama that is unfolding. As far as our daily experience is concerned, we continue to live on a timeline that unfolds as past, present, and future. We are subject to the limitations of the temporal realm in this present life. Yet, we are also living in the reality of Christ’s finished work. Our lives have been folded into Christ and his kingdom. As a result, “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

One implication of this is that our prayers’ answers are accomplished facts even before they have been granted. Another is that we can be certain that whatever form God’s answer may take, it will reflect his loving purpose for our lives. This heavenly perspective casts Jesus’s promise in Matthew 18:19 in a new light: “Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.” Although the context of Jesus’s promise in this particular verse is narrow—it primarily has to do with the exercise of church discipline—it parallels Jesus’ statements in Matthew 21:22, Mark 11:24 and John 14:13–14.

What Jesus describes in these passages is not a positive attitude but a sphere of authority. Those who ask in faith can be certain of an answer because they operate out of the heavenly realm where God’s will is always done (Matthew 6:10; Luke 11:2; see also Matthew 26:42). The trouble with the view that sees Jesus’ promises as a blank check which guarantees that we can get whatever we want from God is that it shifts the focus of prayer away from the Heavenly Father so that our only concern is the particular request we happen to be making. This approach to prayer reduces God to little more than a delivery system for the thing we hope to obtain. He might as well be a vending machine. Second, such an approach confuses an affirmative with an answer. It fails to allow for the possibility that God could also answer our prayer by denying our request. While a “no” is probably not the answer we want, it is still an answer.

The Bible offers many examples of notable saints whose prayers were refused by God. Moses pleaded with God to allow him to enter the land of promise (Deuteronomy 3:23–27). David asked God to heal his first son by Bathsheba (2 Samuel 12:16–20). Paul repeatedly prayed for God to remove the “thorn in my flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7–9). Most notably, Jesus prayed to be spared the suffering of the cross in language that suggests he was fully aware that such a thing was not possible.

Likewise, there are many in Scripture who waited many years, some for their entire lives, without seeing God grant their desires. Of them, the author of Hebrews writes, “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect” (Hebrews 11:39–40). Although he is not speaking explicitly of prayer, the principle is just as true. The fact that God does not grant our request as soon as we would like may not mean that he will not give it to us at all. His refusal to grant a request altogether isn’t always a sign that God is displeased with us. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we lack the faith to receive it. Sometimes God’s decision not to grant our request has nothing to do with us at all, at least as far as cause and effect are concerned.

Is there ever a time when we don’t get what we ask because it is our own fault? The answer is yes. James 4:2–3 explains, “You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” Prayer is not magic. It does not work like an incantation. We do not get what we want in prayer simply because we voice our desire aloud to God.

There is a kind of assurance in what James says here. It means that we cannot manipulate God by our prayers. We never have to worry that God will give us something that we should not have. At the same time, the scenario that James describes should sober us because it shows how evil motives can subvert a spiritual activity like prayer. The specific motives mentioned by James are greed and envy. But other motives can insert themselves into our praying. For example, Jesus warns of the danger of praying “to be seen by others” (Matthew 6:5). Some prayers are not prayers at all. They are theater. The prayers Jesus condemns in this verse were public displays of piety intended to elicit praise from others. He warns that such prayers go unanswered: “Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.”

The first principle in prayer is simply to ask. Tell God what you want, as simply as you can (James 5:13-16). Getting something from God is not the only thing. But it is the first thing. Need and desire provide the initial impetus for us to pray. There is no reason to be ashamed of this.

The second principle in prayer is to pray honestly. One of the greatest temptations in prayer is to tell God what we think he wants to hear instead of what is really on our heart. There is no point in putting on airs. He already knows what we think.

The third principle of prayer is to persist. This advice comes directly from Jesus. Pray and do not give up. We persist in prayer, not because we think it will put pressure on God to grant our request but as an expression of faith. We continue because we believe that God’s interest in us and in our needs is persistent. Persistence is evidence of our dependency, not a sign of our doubt.

God is not like the reluctant neighbor or the unjust judge in Jesus’s parables. It is God’s nature to give “good gifts” to his children. God hears us whenever we cry out to him. When God hears, his response is immediate. Although he may not always grant us the particular object of our desire or grant the answer according to our preferred timetable, we can be sure that he will always act in our interest.

Picture of Jesus praying in Gethsemane with the caption "Sometimes the best answer to our prayer is "No." With a picture of the book When God is Silent by John Koessler and a caption "Pre-Order now for a 30% discount at lexhampress.com

When God is Silent-Awkward Conversation

Featured ~ John Koessler ~ 1 Comment

Some conversations are just hard: telling someone about the loss of a loved one; talking to the kids about the facts of life; informing an employee that their contract will not be renewed; making small talk with a person whom you have virtually nothing in common. But few conversations are quite as challenging as trying to talk with someone who seems to have nothing to say.

I say this to make a point about God, or to be more precise, to make a point about our experience with God. God does not seem to be much of a conversationalist. He is mostly silent when we talk to him. We know from Scripture that God has a voice. According to the book of Genesis, the first words ever spoken were God’s words: “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). Yet, the Bible also shows that God is no chatterbox. God indeed spoke to Moses “face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (Exodus 33:11). He spoke to Abraham the same way, but ordinary conversation has never been God’s primary communication mode, at least not the kind of conversations we are used to having.

God has chosen to speak through others most of the time: prophets, preachers, and occasionally angels. Even then, God has never shown himself to be what you could describe as voluble. His words have been, for the most part, relatively few and sometimes far between. Long gaps of years, decades, centuries, and even millennia separate the occasions where God speaks to his people.

We assume that it would be a comfort to hear God speak directly to us. Yet Scripture suggests that we are more likely to be unnerved by the experience. When Israel heard God’s voice, they were so put off by the experience that they begged him to stop. God came to Elijah in a gentle whisper, but on Sinai, it was with a shout and in a blaze of fire. “Go near and listen to all that the Lord our God says. Then tell us whatever the Lord our God tells you,” they begged Moses. “We will listen and obey” (Deuteronomy 5:27). It seems more likely that if God spoke directly to us, we would react as they did. Or we would put our hands over our ears in stunned silence as Job did (Job 40:3–5).

We assume it would be a comfort to hear God speak directly to us.

Taken as a whole, the Bible describes many occasions where God revealed himself to specific individuals, but very few had a face-to-face conversation with him (Exodus 33:11; Numbers 12:8). As the writer of Hebrews observes, “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe” (Hebrews 1:1–2).

Whatever prayer may be, it is not an ordinary conversation. Believers in every generation have understood prayer as one of the means by which God communicates to his people. Yet it is a conversation where we do the majority of the talking. In prayer, we approach God but do not see either face or form and do not hear his voice. Therefore it is a conversation that lacks all the normal cues we rely upon for meaning. When we talk to God, we cannot rely upon inflection, body language, or facial expression to gauge his response the way we can when conversing with others.

Prayer differs from ordinary conversation in another respect. Those who pray often talk to themselves as well as to God. The self-talk of prayer is not a pep talk or even positive thinking. When we talk to ourselves in prayer, we remind ourselves of the truth we already know. We remember God’s disposition toward us and base our expectations upon it. This kind of prayer talk amounts to a confession of faith made in the presence of God.

If prayer is not a conversation in the ordinary sense, then what is it? Prayer is a conversation that moves primarily in one direction. It moves from the believer who prays to the God who hears. God’s silence does not mean that he is unresponsive. The first assumption of faith is that we have God’s attention. 1 John 5:14-15 assures us: “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.”

The key to understanding John’s bold and frequently misunderstood promise is to note that to “hear,” in this sense, means something more than to take notice of something. To hear as John uses the term is to grasp the full implications of something. God knows both our desire and our true need. He also knows how our request fits into his plan.

It might help if we thought of prayer as communion instead of conversation. The essence of communion is shared experience. The mistake we make is to interpret God’s silence as absence or disinterest. In true conversation, listening is interaction as much as speech. Listening may even be more of an exchange than words because, to really listen, we must enter into someone’s experience.

Sometimes when we pray, we feel like we need to do something to attract God’s attention. We are like a person on the ground waving their hands at a plane passing high overhead, hoping that someone up there will see us. God does not have to come down from on high to take note of us. We do not need to arrest his attention. Although we often talk about “coming” into God’s presence, the truth is that we are already there.

We are not trying to capture God’s attention but responding to an overture that he has already made. Not only was God the first to speak, he spoke to us long before we ever uttered a word to him. He has revealed himself in creation and by his written word. We do not need to feel God’s presence to know that he is present when we pray. Psalm 139 assures us that wherever we are, God is already there. “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” the psalmist says. “If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there” (Psalm 139:7–8).

The awkwardness of prayer should not put us off. It does not originate with God but with us. We have felt uncomfortable with other conversations we have had and have pushed through the discomfort to say what needed to be said. How much more should this be true when it comes to God? “You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways,” the psalmist declares. “Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely” (Psalm 139:3–4). We do not need to feel that God is near to be in his presence. We do not need to be comfortable to pray. We do not need to speak nicely to be heard. Before we have even uttered a word, God knows our minds and hearts completely.