Joe McKeever: On Prayer

5 Things You Do Not Know About Prayer

To be sure, we know a lot about prayer. We know it's of faith--addressing a God whom we cannot see and are unable to prove that He's even there, much less listening to the likes of us--and we know we ought to do more of it and do it better.

But, it occurs to me, it might be helpful to address some of the things we do not know about prayer.

See if you find any of this encouraging.

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

That's Romans 8:26. "Likewise, the Spirit also helps us in our weaknesses. For we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered."

Pray or Else!

Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart. (Luke 18:1)

Pray or quit.

Pray or grow discouraged and drop by the wayside.

Pray or weaken and wither away.

If I were the devil, I would do anything within my power to stop God's people from praying.

If I were the devil, I'd be patting myself on the back about now, since it would appear that very few are praying. Well, praying in any sort of meaningful, situation-altering way, anyway.

No one believed in prayer the way the Lord Jesus did.

Perhaps no subject so permeates the four gospels like prayer. Jesus exhibited it, taught it, reminded His disciples of it, and told stories of people who did it well.

Pray or else, disciple of Jesus.

The Biggest Problem About Prayer

This is one that almost never gets addressed. It was put to me this week by my friend Nancy. Her note, almost verbatim:

Someday I need you to help me understand why we are told when we pray and believe our prayers will be answered. Then people die in spite of our pleas for health. I know it is within God's will but why ask if His will is what is going to occur anyway? I know thousands of prayers were said for (a friend who died some years back) and for my friend I saw buried today. Thousands are being said for (a friend with cancer) yet she is in a battle for her life.

We are told "you have not because you ask not." Maybe this would be a good blog topic. I can't be the only one who struggles with these thoughts.

If you only knew, Nancy.

On this blog, I probably have fifty articles dealing with prayer in one way or the other. And--truth be known--most of them skirt around the edges of this subject.

So, let's try to meet it head on.

Let's start by this upfront admission: Things are not as simple as they seem at first.

Frankly, as one who likes things simple and cut-and-dried, this is painful to admit.

The Bible actually does say things like: "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives...." (Matthew 6:7-8) And this: "Whatever you ask in my name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in my name, I will do it" (John 14:13-14).

There are plenty more, but those two are sufficient to establish that the blanket promises are out there.

What are serious disciples of the Lord Jesus to make of such prayer promises?

10 Prayers I Hope Never to Hear Again

You're sitting in church, working hard to worship. You've had a hectic week and this Sunday morning has had its share of stresses. But finally, you're here, in place, in the Lord's house, sitting in your favorite pew. You've joined the congregation in singing the first hymn of the day. The minister has started the service right with a wonderful call to worship. And then it happens.

The person leading the opening prayer strays across an invisible border and says something that offends you or frightens you or angers you or troubles you or at the very least disturbs you.

That's what this is about.

Just so you will know, I'm a pastor. We pastors have the same reaction you do when the person praying--whether a layman or a trained minister who should know better--says something very wrong or quite stupid or somewhat offensive. We wonder what that was all about, where he learned that doctrine, or where he picked that weird phrase up and decided to incorporate it into his public prayers.

Everyone has his/her list of prayers that cross that deadline. Here is my list of the Top ten prayers I hope never to hear again.

10. "And Lord, we want to tell you...and Lord, this, and Lord that."

My neighbor Kay Swanson hears people pray, "Father God, Lord, I pray....and Father God, that you would...Lord God, Father God, be merciful to us...." Kay says, "Please! When you're speaking to me, you don't invoke my name between every couple of words. Why do you do this to God?"

Using the Lord's name as punctuation is a no-no.

Before You Speak on Prayer, Three Cautions

They invite you to bring a talk, a lesson, or a sermon on prayer. Your first thought, if you are normal, is, "Who me? What little I know about prayer you could put in a thimble."

There may be some Christian somewhere who considers himself an authority on prayer, but I have yet to meet him. The truly godly men and women known as prayer warriors will tell you they feel they have just enrolled in kindergarten.

I'm confident of this one thing: our Heavenly Father is not happy with any of His children claiming to have the inside track on how to approach Him, how to "get things from God," "how to make prayer work for your benefit," and how to get on His good side.

Jesus Christ has done everything necessary for us to enter the Throne Room of Heaven. See Hebrews 4:16.

Jesus Christ has opened the divider between man and God and we have an open invitation to "come on in." See Hebrews 10:19-22.

If you and I are not entering God's presence and lifting up our needs and petitions and interceding for those on our hearts, it's not God's fault. It's not the fault of Jesus, who did everything necessary to make it possible for us to pray effectively.

So, come on in. Come in humbly, for this is the Throne Room of the Universe. Come in worshipfully for the One on the Throne is the Lord of Lords. Come in boldly because your Authority is the Blood of Jesus. Come in regularly because you live in a needy, fallen world. Come in with Jesus: in His Name, by His blood, for His sake.

That's what we want to teach others.

But there are some things we do not want to teach, no matter how great the temptation.

Here are three cautions for anyone about to stand in front of others to teach prayer.

Anything But Prayer

This kind cannot come out by anything but prayer.(Mark 9:29 NASB)

Anything but prayer.

In my Bible where this verse has been highlighted, I've underscored those three words and written in the margin, "Yep. That's us. Anything but prayer."

To be sure, I've taken those three words right out of their context. That is, I'm using them in ways not intended in the text. But the point is a valid one: We are prone to try everything in the world before we turn to prayer.

Somewhere I read where a fellow was talking with his elderly grandmother about a family problem that was eating at her. "Well, in the final analysis, Grandma," he said, "All we can do is pray about it."

"Oh my," she said. "Has it come to that?"

Yes, and sooner or later it always comes to that.

Let's talk about that.

The Pastor's in Trouble--So He Prays

Nothing jerks our prayers out of their "blessed generality" stage like a crisis. The best kind of crisis for that is for a close loved one to get in serious trouble--car wreck, cancer, emergency surgery, that sort of thing.

But a close second is a personal crisis, the kind where someone is making life miserable for you and it's taking all the reserves you can muster to get out of bed in the morning and walk into one more day. You either quit praying altogether, the worst possible choice, or your prayers lose their vain repetitions and meaningless phrases and get down to business.

Yesterday, going through a stack of notes from the 1990s, I found such a prayer of mine, written in the thick of church conflict. It's undated, so there's no way of determining what particular struggle was going on then. We went through so many, the first six or seven years of my 14-year pastorate at the last church we served.

The prayer was written in longhand and filled two pages. It's about as specific as one would want a prayer to be. No more "bless him" and "help her." But on the other hand, it does not call names and I'm glad to report, it's not as harsh as some of the Psalms where David or whoever is praying for the children of his enemies to not live to see that day's sunset.

Here is the prayer, along with a few comments. I send it forth in the hope that some servant of the Lord in the fight of his life may find encouragement to hang tough and be faithful.

Praying Prayers of Faith

What if you tried this some Sunday soon....

While the pastor is in his Sunday morning prayer or a deacon is invoking the blessings of the Almighty on the offering, interrupt them.

"Pastor." (Or, "Deacon.")

"May I interrupt you for a moment?"

This is not normally done, so don't be surprised if it takes a moment for it to get through to the one praying that he's being summoned.

"What?" he says. "Shhh. I'm praying."

"I know you're praying. That's what I want to ask you about."

"You want to ask me about my prayer? Couldn't this wait until after church?"

"No. It needs to be asked right now, in the middle of your prayer."

"All right. What is it?"

"I just wanted to know what you think you're doing. I mean, what is the point of this prayer? Where are you going with this?"

"I beg your pardon."

"Well, your prayer sort of touches on half the issues in the world and doesn't really dwell on anything, and I was just wondering. What exactly do you want the Lord to do?"

"What I want Him to do is to bless us, to bless this world. To be with us today, and to make this worship service special."

"Oh. That's good. You could have fooled me. I suppose that somewhere in the middle of all those words you were flinging heavenward there was that. But those requests were buried in the wordiness."

"Uh, friend, are you rebuking me right here in front of the entire church?"

"No, not really. Because you see, I'm not really doing this. I'm just fantasizing about it. This is not really happening, pastor."

"Well, good. Now, if you will excuse me, I'd like to get back to the morning prayer."

Now, since we all agree that this scenario is not going to occur, I have an alternate suggestion.

Do it to yourself, to your own prayers. Interrupt yourself. Ask, "Where am I going with this? What am I seeking from the Lord? Or am I just filling the space with religious words, trying to make this worship service impressive to someone other than the Lord?"

We church people have created categories of prayers. We have invocations and benedictions. In between, we have pastoral prayers and offertory prayers. And, in most of our churches, that's about it.

I have one more suggestion: how about prayers of faith?

The Same Problems in Prayer as They

One of the lies of the enemy is that you are different, that others are more spiritual than you and find spiritual disciplines easy.

You're the only one with these problems in prayer.

Others get up in the morning eager to spend an hour with the Lord in prayer; you're the only one who has to drag yourself over to a chair and open the Bible and force yourself to pray.

Others pray smoothly and eloquently and always know what to say; you're the only one who stumbles along haltingly as though you were just learning to speak or were trying on a foreign tongue.

Others never are plagued by doubt and offer up these magnificent sacrifices of praise and intercession that Heaven welcomes, values as jewels, and immediately rewards; you're the only person who fights back the doubts as you pray and wonders whether the whole business is accomplishing anything.

Others see answers to their prayers as a matter of routine; you're the only one who doesn't.

Way wrong. Not so at all.

Satan is a liar and the father of lies.

The fact of the matter is that those holy people you admire a lot for their piety and resent a little for their religiosity fight the same battles you do. They encounter the same temptations, struggle with the same difficulties, and know the same doubts about prayer's effectiveness.

You're not so different.

You're definitely not fighting battles in your walk with the Lord others have not faced, or more likely, are struggling with at this very moment.

In my yesterday's reading, I came across reminders of this from two of the Christian faith's heroes, Elisabeth Elliot and C. S. Lewis.

Bored While Praying

Hey, if your prayers are boring you, how do you think the Almighty feels?

In the introduction to his book on prayer, "Invading the Privacy of God," Cecil Murphey begins, "Prayer bores me and I sometimes wonder why I'm doing it."

"There! I said it in print," he continues.

For years Murphey admits he has vacillated between excitement and boredom in his prayer life. He writes, "I've read dozens (literally!) of books on the subject; learned four different methods for praying the Lord's Prayer; embraced techniques for praying the Psalms; recited the Jesus Prayer ('Lord Jesus Christ, be merciful to me, a sinner') for nearly an hour at a time; taken lessons on meditation techniques; praised my way out of despair; sung hymns of petition; and like a lot of others, I've used the Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication (ACTS) method of prayer."

And did all that work for him? "Yes -- sometimes and for a while."

At the best of times, Murphey has "felt such a closeness to Jesus Christ that it seemed I could actually feel a hand wrap itself around mine." And at other times, "I've fallen asleep on my knees, or I've prayed for four minutes that felt like two hours."

At first, he confesses, he rebuked himself for being bored during prayer. He chided himself to "get past the boredom, press on!"

The best solution he has found to the problem of being bored while praying was to use different methods in his prayers. After all, Murphey says, "there is no one method of prayer. We can approach God in many ways."

I agree completely.

The times when I've felt bored while praying, I have confessed what seems so elementary as to be silly: it's my problem and not God's. I mean, imagine walking into the control-central of Heaven where the Ruler of the Universe sits enthroned -- and being bored. (Okay, I can imagine some teenagers pulling it off. But we're talking about normal people.)

The problem is mine.

How to Pray When You Feel Unworthy

If we were required to be worthy of entering the Lord's presence before our prayers were heard, Heaven would never hear a peep out of me.

When the young Martin Luther knelt to pray, a sense of shame often overwhelmed him. He was unworthy to approach the Lord and knew it. Some scriptures in particular, instead of assisting him, only added to his misery.

"Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart...." (Psalm 24:4a)

That let Luther out--as it does me, and I suspect you, too. Who among us is innocent, who has not "lifted up his soul to an idol, nor sworn deceitfully"? (Psalm 24:4b)

Philip Yancey says as a young monk Luther would spend hours trying to identify every stray thought and sin in order to confess it. "No matter how thorough his confession, as he knelt to pray he felt himself rejected by a righteous God."

The breakthrough came, Yancey says in "Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?" when Luther saw that in Jesus Christ God was pouring out grace and forgiveness to the foulest of sinners, the least worthy.

Thereafter, Luther recognized feelings of unworthiness and shame for what they were, agents of the devil which he rejected and handed to the Lord in gratitude.

It is indeed true that we are all unworthy. Without even understanding all its apocalyptic ramifications, the poorest of believers will read in Revelation 5 and say, "Yes, yes."

"I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, 'Who is worthy to open the scroll and to loose its seals?" John says, "I wept much, because no one was found worthy to open and read the scroll or to look at it." And then, shortly, he hears the angelic chorus intoning, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain...."

I am unworthy; Christ is all-worthy.

It's one thing to know that and another to live it, to believe it in our heart of hearts, and to feel it.

How to Pray When You're Too Tired to Pray

"Lord, I'm Tired. Amen." That's the caption on the most popular cartoon I ever produced. It has been clipped and pinned to bulletin boards in many places. Apparently, I'm not the only one who sometimes feels too tired to pray.

So, how does one pray when he's tired?

The very question presupposes that we are going to pray each day and even at a specific time. Otherwise, if a person has no time and place to pray, when he/she is tired, the thought of praying never enters their minds. They come home fatigued and drop into bed without a thought of needing to pray.

The short answer to the question is to bear in mind that the Father sees our tiredness and understands the limits on our spirituality at that moment. He knows. He understands. And He's okay by it.

We must forever do away with the image of the Heavenly Father sitting over us with a stopwatch or a clipboard to gauge the number of minutes we spend in prayer or the intensity with which we commune with Him.

"He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust." (Psalm 103:14)

How to Pray When You Don't Feel Like Praying

If there is a church on the planet which teaches young Christians and new believers how to pray, I've not heard of it. And yet, "Teach us to pray" (Luke 18:1) is one of the primary requests the twelve apostles had of the Lord Jesus. He clearly spent time teaching them to pray, both by His example and His instruction.

You would think this most basic of all Christian disciplines would be taught to every new believer and youngster growing up in the church.

The fact that any of us learn to pray at all is a tribute to dogged determination to acquire this skill in contacting the Almighty and connecting His will with our world.

In his book, "Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?" Philip Yancey points out that Jesus gave very few rules for prayer. "His teaching reduces down to three general principles: Keep it honest, keep it simple, and keep it up."

That's as good a starting place as we can find.

Prayer's Formula

If you have to have a formula for prayer -- and I'm not suggesting you do -- I have a suggestion, at least for the beginning. Consider this....

"Dear Lord,
In the wondrous name of Jesus,
Through the precious blood of Jesus,
For the glorious sake of Jesus,
I come to Thee...."

The first -- the name of Jesus -- is about Christ. Who He is and by implication, who we are.

The second -- the blood of Jesus -- is about the cross. What He did and thus how we got here.

The last -- the sake of Jesus -- is about the cause. What He wants and why we're here.

The first, the Name, is about the audacity of praying in the first place, our right be here. We enter the Holy of Holies through the Name that is above all other names. "For there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). "And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son." (John 14:13)

The second, the blood, is about the authority with which we enter this most sacred place in the universe. "We come boldly unto the throne of grace." "With His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption" (Hebrews 9:12). "...how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" (9:14)

The third, the sake, is about the authenticity with which we pray. This is not about us. It is "for thy sake." "Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven." "Have thine own way, Lord." "I delight to do thy will." "What would you have me to do?"

Now, by contrast....

Think of Prayer as Reminding God

In high school, J. L. Rice and I were the two first boys to ever take shorthand. We took it for two full years, thinking we would need it in college. We didn't, but for me, it was a wise choice since it paid my way through school and supported my family the first two years of marriage. (I worked as a secretary for a railroad company during college and for a cast iron pipe company for two years afterward.)

In Old Testament days, in the courts of kings like David and Solomon, among the officials serving the rulers was one called a "recorder." The Hebrew word is MAZKIR. It's a fascinating word.

Bear in mind that the consonants in Hebrew carry the freight. The ZKR--pronounced zah-kar--is the word for "remember." You will recall what a popular theme that was for prophets who brought sermons to God's people. "Remember, O Israel," they would begin. A friend of mine did his doctoral thesis on the use of "zakar" in the Old Testament. He had plenty of material to work with.

The word MZKR or MAZKIR adds a new dimension to "remember," and makes it "to cause to remember." That is, to remind.

A MAZKIR or court recorder was a person with an interesting assignment: he took notes (shorthand?) on what the king did in negotiations with other rulers or while issuing verdicts in court and he kept that information on file. The next time the king met with the other rulers or held court again, he called in his "mazkir" and asked him to bring him up to date, to remind him of what they did the last time. Kings need people to help them remember.

Okay, still with me here? This is where it gets good.

Putting Balance in Your Prayer Life

I saw a man jogging on the levee beside the Mississippi River this morning. As he approached, he seemed to be tilted slightly, running just a tad off balance. Then I realized one sleeve was hanging limply at his side. The absence of his left arm threw his body off balance.

Veteran Bible teacher Warren Wiersbe says there ought to be one more beatitude: "Blessed are the balanced."

When Rick Warren of Saddleback Church said the key issue of the 21st century church would be not church growth but church health, someone asked for his secret of church health. "In a word, balance," he said.

Rick Warren explained, "Your body has nine different systems (circulatory, respiratory, digestive, skeletal, etc). When these systems are all in balance, it produces health. But when your body gets out of balance, we call that 'disease.'"

He added, "Likewise when the body of Christ becomes unbalanced, disease occurs. Health and growth can only occur when everything is brought into balance."

In Matthew 6, our Lord showed His concern that the disciples find proper balance in their spiritual lives. On the one hand, they should not follow the example of religious hypocrites and theological play-actors who pray and give and fast in order to impress other people. On the other hand, they should avoid the practice of the pagans who pray for hours using chants and meaningless repetition in an attempt to impress God. Both are ditches to be avoided. In between these two extremes lies the "road," the path of balance.

In what we call "The Lord's Prayer" and our Catholic friends refer to as "The Our Father," Jesus gives a wonderful pattern for balance in the prayers of His people.

1. A balance between intimacy and community. "Our Father."

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.