#26: E-Bay Prayer

… with groans beyond talking,
with warrior cries, sulphuric tears…



#26: E-BAY PRAYER

“We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.” (Romans 8: 26)

My mum just called about a pair of shoes. That’s one of the best things about her - the way she cares about the trivial details of my life. She makes it her loving business to be involved. God is the same; passionately caught up in each moment of my life. He’s never bored, distant or unconcerned. In fact he even cries and groans for my well-being. And no matter how inadequate I may feel spiritually, he intercedes like crazy for me. Isn’t that incredible?

*** *** ***

I took one of my heroes for a pizza. Brennan Manning is a best-selling author whose message of unconditional love flows from a life truly lived. I was a bit nervous; like many New Yorkers, Brennan’s pretty direct.
“So how much do you pray?” he asked.
“Er, not enough,” I admitted, staring down at my pizza.
“That’s probably because you don’t understand prayer,” he continued. “If you think prayer is primarily about changing things ‘out there’ somewhere, you’ll never pray enough. In fact if that’s the way it works, a single News broadcast will leave you with a prayer-list longer than my arm!”
“Prayer does give me a bit of a guilt trip”, I confessed glumly to a couple of the olives staring up from my plate. “So what are you suggesting?”

Brennan looked at me and spoke slowly. “The most powerful thing that can happen in the place of prayer is that you yourself actually become the prayer. You re-centre on Christ and become a walking, talking answer to your own prayers. That way, when you watch the News you’re looking through Jesus’ eyes. The biggest miracle takes place in here,” he patted his chest, “not out there!”

I guess he’s right. We often say that ‘prayer changes things’ when it would be more accurate to say that ‘prayer changes me and then I change things’. Sometimes I treat prayer like Internet shopping: fill my basket, proceed to checkout and await delivery. It’s like a religious exchange on e-bay. But it’s only in the intimacy of God’s lap that we can pray in rhythm with his heartbeat. This isn’t a new understanding of things. In the film Shadowlands, C.S. Lewis played by Anthony Hopkins says, “I don’t pray to change God, I pray so that
God can change me.”

“Our common ideas concerning prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer simply as a means of getting things for ourselves, but the biblical purpose of prayer is that we may get to know God himself.” (Oswald Chambers)