Joe McKeever: On Prayer

Sense and Nonsense About Prayer

It would appear from the stories our Lord gave in Scripture that a good way to teach prayer is by negative examples, that is, "how not to do it." Jesus told of prideful Pharisees bragging on themselves in prayer, mean-spirited tyrants asking for forgiveness but unwilling to forgive others, and a powerless widow hounding a merciless judge until he caved in and gave her what she wanted.

All illustrate wrongs way to pray.

I've previously mentioned in this website Lehman Strauss' book "Sense and Nonsense About Prayer." Well, after owning the book for three decades--it was first published in 1974--and frequently citing its lessons, I decided the time had arrived to go back and re-read it. I did that Monday.

The twelve chapters that deal with our subject--Strauss has a section at the end on the Lord's prayer and the prayer life of Jesus--are worthy of your consideration and study. At the end of these chapters, he invites the reader to agree or disagree with him at any point, but in love. I found myself disagreeing with facets of one or two principles in this list, but overall, the list is excellent and I commend it to you.

At the end, we'll include three of his non-sensical stories on how not to pray.

1) It does not make sense to pray if there is unconfessed sin in the heart. Psalm 66:18
However, it makes sense to confess our sins if we expect God to hear us.

Praying Amiss

In the 1987 meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, the report of the Foreign Mission Board contained a telephone hook-up with Frances Fuller, one of our missionaries to Lebanon. A few days earlier, President Reagon had ordered Americans out of that war-torn country, and had warned any who insisted on staying they would lose their passports. Our missionaries had been evacuated to Cyprus, from where Mrs. Fuller was placing her call.

"You have failed your missionaries by your prayers," Mrs. Fuller told the thousands of messengers at the convention. With that, she had our undivided attention.

"All the people I talk to back in the States tell me, 'We're praying for your safety,' or 'We're praying for you to get out of that country.'"

She continued, "You should have prayed that God would keep us safely in this country in order that we might bear fruit for Him. Consequently, we have been exiled from a country of great need where we should not have left."

She concluded, "Give us back to Lebanon in your prayers."

No one who sat in the huge auditorium that night will ever forget her plea.

In the New Testament epistle of James, we read, "You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives...." (4:3) Another translation has it read, "You ask amiss."

Lehman Strauss wrote a powerful book on prayer a generation ago, with the intriguing title, "Sense and Nonsense About Prayer." I confess to buying it for the title. I knew there was a lot of nonsense about prayer out there, and was glad to hear someone in a leadership position admit it.

Enough, But No More

(A prayer for my grandchildren)

"Heavenly Father,

You have showered Heaven's blessings on me in ten thousand ways--with life and salvation, with health and friends, with family and church. But no gift from Thy hand has filled me with deeper joy and purer pleasure than the children of my children.

I thank Thee for my grandchildren.

And I pray for them.

I pray that they shall know

--enough of sin to drive them to the Savior, to make them understanding toward others, and to keep them humble.

--enough of failure to turn them to the overcoming Lord and make them wise and strong and smart.

--enough of heartache to appreciate the comfort of the Holy Spirit and to fill them with kindness.

--enough of betrayal to appreciate Thy faithfulness and make them loyal.

--enough of struggle and hardships to find strength in Thee and make them faithful.

--enough of bruises in life to toughen them and make them gentle.

--enough of disappointments to open their eyes about people and give them discernment and judgment.

--enough of ugliness to appreciate the beauty always found in the heart of God and in Thy creation.

Enough--but no more than that, please.

A Prayer for Cleansing

"Father, hear my prayer. There is a need in my heart from the soil in my soul. Please cleanse me of all my sin.

Take away everything in me that does not confess Thee as my Lord, tha does not have Thy name on it, that is resistant to Thy Spirit, and unworthy of Thee.

Remove from me all attitudes and opinions and convictions that do not originate from Thee and conform to Thy will and every desire and motive and ambition in conflict with Thy purpose. Take away anything that runs and hides when You enter, that laughs when I believe, that squirms when I pray, and fears when I trust.

Whatever in me that does not give Thee joy, make Thee proud, or honor Thy name, I hereby give my permission for it to be gone.

Anything that holds me back, weights me down, cheapens my praise, dampens Thy fire within me, and threatens my future effectiveness, please remove.

By the precious blood of Jesus, purge my iniquity.
In the matchless name of Jesus, make me clean.
For the wonderful sake of Jesus, draw me to Thee.

Make me whole and holy and wholesome.
Make me right and upright and righteous.

Give me a heart that wants only to do Thy will, that answers only to Thy call, and serves only to hear Thy 'well done, good and faithful servant.'

Amen."

"We do not know how to pray as we should," admitted the great Apostle Paul. We may say with confidence that if he didn't, it's a sure bet that the rest of us don't either. And yet prayer to the Savior is our lifeline in this dangerous world. As the Apostle Peter watched the multitudes drifting away from Jesus because of His tough teachings, he confessed, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life."

The Hardest Prayer I Ever Prayed

I'm very aware of the tabloid mentality of our generation and the love for scandals, but, sorry, none today, not here. However, what I will tell you is that I was in a valley of depression, Margaret and I were going through a terrible time in our marriage, and absolutely nothing I was doing was of any interest to me. Furthermore, I could not find any alternative that offered hope for anything better.

Classic depression, I'd call that. My first bout with it. I was 39 years old and truly miserable for the first time in my life.

And a pastor. Yep, I was still in the pulpit, still going to the church office every morning, still holding funerals and weddings and counseling people with problems. And me a basket case.

I looked into becoming a college professor, which had been my original career plan until the Lord called me into the ministry while a senior at Birmingham-Southern. Since we had a good college in the town where we were living, I asked a professor what a beginning instructor would earn, someone who had just received his Ph.D., which I had not done, of course. The figure he named was so low, about half of what I was making, that it was like cold water in my face. It pricked my little pretentious balloon in record time.

Margaret and I had gone into, suffered through, and emerged on the other side of a solid year of marriage counseling. We had learned much about ourselves and our different backgrounds and the completely opposite drives that had brought us into this marriage in the first place. She had had an unhappy home life and was latching onto the "prince charming" who would take her away from it. I was a young minister who wanted a wife of low maintenance who would keep the home fires burning while I saved the world. We had not been married a month when we began to see that the reality of our marriage was light years away from what we had anticipated.

And yet, all the while I knew that this marriage was God's will for me, and that Margaret was the person He had chosen for me. Even in my rebellion, I knew that, and it even made me angrier. Like a spoiled child, I did not want anyone telling me what was best, what was the will of God, and how I should repress my own agenda to find happiness in life.

A rebellious heart is a terrible thing. I was my own worst enemy.

Two years later, when Margaret and I took the Sunday night worship service at our church and gave our testimonies as to how the Lord had changed our hearts and saved our home, I told the congregation how I had continued preaching during this bleak time: "I never said a thing I didn't believe; I said a great deal I didn't feel."

My adult children will read this and probably have only vague memories of any of it, which is good. We both always adored our children, and in fact, that only added to my complete frustration. I wanted what I wanted--which was out of that marriage and in a teaching profession and to continue being the father of Neil and Marty and Carla--and was torn right down the middle. I was holding onto two dead-opposite goals in life.

A perfect recipe for misery.

So I began to pray.

The First Ten Lessons I Learned about Prayer

Disclaimer: I'm still a learner, and most definitely not an expert on praying.

1. The only real mistake we can make in prayer is in not praying.

If we pray earnestly, almost anything we do is better than not praying. After all, no father rejects the child's plea because she did not use the right words or form. He welcomes his child into his arms.

Someone has said, "Nothing never happens when we pray."

2. No matter how much you pray, you will never be completely satisfied with your prayer life.

You will always feel the goal is out there beyond you somewhere. We must work against perfectionism, that mental disease that convinces us because we're not doing something perfectly, that we should stop it altogether. No matter how ineffective you think your prayers are, believe that they matter to God and keep on praying.

3. The Holy Spirit helps us in our prayer.

Romans 8:26 assures us "He helps us in our weakness because we do not know how to pray." The Greek word translated "helps" is a compound Greek verb "synantilambanomai." The "syn" means "together, with us." The "anti" means "opposite to, in front of." And the "lambanomai" is a form of the verb "to lift." Together they tell us the Holy Spirit gets on the other end of our task, opposite to us, and together with us lifts the burden. He does not do this in our place, but works with us.

4. Keep on praying.

Persistence in prayer is taught so many times in Scripture. My favorite is blind Bartimaeus in Luke 18. Let nothing stop you from praying. Not your own inadequacy (of which there is much), your own needs (which can be overwhelming), not your fears (which never tire of assaulting you), and most definitely not other people (discouragement is all around us). Just keep at it.

5. Our emotions and feelings are irrelevant to effective praying.

50 Ways to Overcome Boredom in Prayer

I threw this question out to members of the last church I pastored and quickly wrote down their answers. Aside from an entire discussion on why in the world would anyone get bored visiting with the Ruler of the Universe, which is a great question and one that deserves its own treatment, here are their answers.

50. Repent of it. Praying boring prayers is an insult to Almighty God.

49. Determine to start believing in God. You're already saved but you need to start taking the Lord seriously and His promises at face value.

48. Sing a hymn prayerfully.

47. Be thankful for your blessings.

46. Pray for others: friends, family, those in need.

45. Get a prayer partner, especially someone experienced in real prayer.

44. Keep a prayer journal. Write your prayer list, insights God gives you, Scriptures that help you, answers to prayers, etc.

43. Find new things to pray for.

42. Pray a complete prayer--praise, thanksgiving, for God's will, supplication, and forgiveness.

41. Study the promises of God and claim them in prayer. Begin expecting.

So Many Reasons To Pray For The Preacher

A friend and I have been having an internet discussion about preachers. We both love our preachers, and years ago, I was her pastor, so we have a mutual understanding about a lot of things.

The conversation went like this.

She: "One of the things I've enjoyed in our church lately is an enhanced understanding of every phrase of the Lord's prayer. So much so that I was offended recently at a funeral when the minister asked us to stand and 'recite' the Lord's Prayer. I don't think it's something to be recited; it's something to be prayed diligently!"

She added: "Now don't go getting the wrong idea. I think that preacher is a delightful person, and I like him very much."

I said, "Asking someone to 'recite' the Lord's Prayer reminds me of something similar that drives me up the wall. You'll be in a moving worship service, and the leader will say, 'Now, let us have a word of prayer,' or 'I'm going to ask Bill to lead us in a word of prayer.' I don't know why that bothers me so much. I feel like calling out, 'Hey friend, pray! Don't just have a 'word' of prayer. Go to the Heavenly Father and pray!' Somehow, it minimizes the importance of prayer, as though we're all tipping our hats to the Almighty, then going on with the important stuff."

We branched out to discussing how we preachers sometimes say foolish things without a clue as to how it's being received. I told her about a recent internet conversation with a friend in North Carolina.

Pastor, You Will Pray or Quit!

If anyone on planet Earth needs to pray faithfully and fervently, it's the pastor. For one thing, this job requires more of you than there is and more time than you have. The person accepting the Lord's call into the ministry is agreeing to live in a world of unfinished tasks. You are literally being sentenced to live beyond yourself.

It is by its very nature impossible to live this life and do this work in your own strength. You will develop a strong prayer life or you will not survive. It's as simple as that.

Prayer: Come Boldly to the Throne, but Tentatively to Pontificating on Prayer

My son Marty, always on the alert to keep his dad out of trouble, has remarked on the irony of my beginning this series on prayer with the assertion that "there are no experts on prayer." If there are no experts, he asks, am I not presenting myself as one with all these articles laden with instructions on how to pray?

I thanked him for the observation, and have been considering it ever since. (What he calls irony, someone else could call hypocrisy.)

The main response that suggests itself to me is that a third-grader might have some points to share with others in his class, or in the younger rooms, but he always knows he is still the child with so much to learn.

In the middle of his wonderful book on this subject ("The Meaning of Prayer" is a genuine classic), Harry Emerson Fosdick takes up a similar consideration. (I suggest you not buy everything Fosdick peddled over his lengthy ministry; he was admittedly and proudly a theological liberal with all that implies, but he sure could teach most of us a great deal about real prayer. Being a conservative, I'm still wrestling with how to reconcile those two!)

"A critic with discriminating insight has objected to Voltaire's writings on the ground that nothing could possibly be quite so clear as Voltaire makes it. A book on prayer readily runs into danger of the same criticism. For, like every other vital experience, prayer in practice meets obstacles that a theoretical discussion too easily glosses over and forgets."

Fosdick goes on to add, "Even when prayer is defined as communion with God, and our thought of it is thereby freed from many embarrassments, as a kite escapes the trees and bushes when one flies it high, there remain practical difficulties which perplex many who sincerely try to pray."

So, I say to myself and to our longsuffering readers, that once we fill this "features" box with perhaps fifty articles on the subject of prayer, there will still be so much more to be said on this subject. No one has yet written and this one certainly shall not be the definitive last word on prayer.

Prayer: What the Guy in the Pew Wishes the Pastor Knew

In the last couple of years, I have become a Pew-Spud. If people who occupy their time sprawled in front of the television are couch-potatoes, it figures that those who spend their Sundays soaking up sermons in church auditoriums are pew-spuds. And after over 40 years of pastoring, I have become one. It's not all bad. In fact, I'm enjoying it, even though I still relish the opportunity to preach.

I keep reminding our pastors that when I drop in on their services, I come as a worshiper and not as a critic or advisor or their mentor. I come as a fellow believer. I consider myself a good audience for a preacher. I want him to do well, I pray for him and work at listening.

But, I'm about to violate that unspoken contract with our pastors. I need to tell you something that weighs heavily on my heart. Pastor, you need to give some thought to what you say from the pulpit. No, I'm not referring to the sermon. You seem to be doing well on that. I'm talking about what you say to the Lord, your prayers in the worship service.

In a typical service, there is the invocation and the benediction. In between will often come a pastoral prayer, an offertory prayer, and occasionally a prayer at the start and/or conclusion of the sermon. Some of those are spoken by staffers or deacons, but most belong to you, the pastor.

What follows is my impression of what the fellow in the pew would like to register with you the pastor. This is not to imply that he sits there thinking these things. In most cases, I fear he has long since abandoned hope that you might invigorate your prayers with fresh thoughts and uplifting praise and strong intercessions. But, if I were a wagering man, I'd betcha that the lay men and women who read this will connect with it in a heartbeat. As always, we invite them to leave their comments at the conclusion, in agreement or disagreement, contributing their own suggestions and anecdotes.

What Joe PewSpud wishes his pastor knew about his public prayers....

1) Remember that you are praying with me and for me.

This is not your private prayer time, pastor. You are voicing a prayer on behalf of the congregation. Therefore, say "We" and "our," and not "I" and "my."

At some point in recent history, some misguided influencer-of-preachers convinced them that no one can voice a prayer for someone else and that when you pray in public, you should use the first person singular pronoun. "I make my prayer in Jesus' name, amen."

My response is that this would be news to Jesus. He taught us to pray, "Our Father...give us...forgive us...lead us...."

So, make your prayers on behalf of the entire congregation. What are they feeling, where are they hurting, what do they need? What has God impressed you to request on behalf of your congregation? Then pray that.

2) We're counting on you to lift us to the Lord's throne in prayer.

Prayer: It's Up to You

"Draw nigh to God and He will draw nigh to you." (James 4:8)

Dwight Munn, a member of the ministerial staff of the great First Baptist Church of West Monroe, Louisiana, pastored a church across the river from New Orleans some years back. He told me this story.

The television network was running a made-for-TV movie on the life of Noah, one covering two hours each night for several evenings. People who know their Bibles flocked to watch it, then grew disillusioned when the story took some strange turns and gave up on it. But on this particular Sunday night, Dwight and Lissa hurried home from church with their two small daughters to catch the story. On the way home, they picked up fast food and ate it in the living room while the movie ran.

Dwight said, "Lissa and I were on the couch, and 6-year-old Marissa was sitting on the floor halfway between us and the television. At one point, as Noah and God are conversing, we became aware that our little girl was sniffing. I said, 'Honey, are you all right?'"

"Marissa turned her face around and I could see the big tears in her eyes. She said, 'How come God never talks to me like that?'"

Dwight told the story, then said, "McKeever, how long has it been since you have shed tears because you've not been hearing from God?"

That must have been 8 or 9 years ago, but the question still haunts me. Why don't I long for the nearness of God the way that child did?

Someone has said, "If God seems far away, guess who moved?"

Likewise, coming back to Him is up to us.

There are No Experts on Prayer. Here's Why.

I don't know why this offended me. I was standing in the section of the local Lifeway Christian Store that features books on prayer--I must have a hundred and am always looking for the next great one--and picked up one by a Southern Baptist pastor from a nearby state. I scanned the table of contents to see what his book covered, then read the comments on the back.

At the bottom of the back cover was the author's thumb-sized photo and a small bio. "Pastor So-and-So is an expert on prayer," it announced. That stopped me in my tracks. Until that moment, I don't think I had ever actually heard anyone referred to as an expert on prayer. On expository preaching, perhaps, and evangelism, leadership, sermon-building, stewardship, and a dozen other aspects of the ministry. But prayer?

How does one get to be an expert on prayer? At what point does he or she move from apprenticeship in this greatest of all subjects to becoming a master?

I wondered if the pastor wrote that line or if the publisher did it for him. One thing we can be sure of, it was done with the pastor's knowledge and approval. And that makes me wonder if his choosing to leave the line in was an act of hubris and not of humility.

As I say, I'm still trying to figure out why that offended me. Maybe I'm just a tad upset that someone is a better pray-er than I, although that is certainly not news and never has been. I'm under no illusion about the inadequacies of my prayer life, even though I consider myself a person of prayer.

"We do not know how to pray as we should."

Paul said that in Romans 8:26. It appears to me that if anyone could claim status as a prayer expert, it would be this apostle. Not only does he refuse the designation, he basically says there aren't any, that no one qualifies for that august category.

There are no experts on prayer.