Intercessory Prayer

And I will admit at the beginning of this— well, let me say we're continuing maybe a couple more out of the book of James. It's just a fascinating book, and there is a section in there, it's rather short, it's on your handout, that insists that intercessory prayer, prayer for someone else, from you on their behalf will work and it's effective, and do it. I don't understand prayer. I think I'm coming at this lesson with the question about how it works, and I'll conclude at the end with my own point of view, but I see. Prayer is an instruction that we read about throughout the 66 books of the Bible. There must be something to it. Prayer is— this kind of prayer— I, I just don't understand how this works. I'm going to give you positive and then negative feelings, and then you can make up your mind about how, how you want to go forward with it. and we'll talk in general just about prayer by its definition. There are a number of different kinds of prayers. Terry Hamrick did a series of lessons some many years ago, and he concluded that prayer happens to confirm our relationship with God. We have a relationship. Prayer is a confirmation of that exchange that happens during prayer. Prayer requires a relationship. There is no reason to pray if you don't already have an established relationship with God. We are good with prayer as long as we are good in our relationships. You can measure your— the depth of your relationships with your family and your friends, and the closer that relationship is, the more we seem to get from the idea of communicating with God through prayer. There are a number of kinds of prayer. I've given you a few on the handout. There's prayers that I get well from My sore thumb, if I had one. There are prayers to seek help in a process that I'm engaged in or a problem that I'm dealing with. There's prayers just to understand what's happening. God, something's going on and I, I don't comprehend why I'm in this situation. Help me understand. what's happening. Intercessory prayer is very important to pray for the health or well-being of someone else. There's prayers to seek courage, give me the ability to— I know what to do, but I lack the courage to go forward with it. Any other kinds of prayers that you can think of?

Thankfulness, that's by far my greatest thing.

Okay, gratitude, yeah.

Well, I'm constantly, you know, thankful for—

Yeah, I don't know if it's in this lesson or not, but somewhere I read in preparing this, one of the best prayers you can pray is just thank you.

For all our blessings, for all of creation.

Yeah, yeah. Anyway, there's various kinds and there's methods. You can pray out loud, or you can pray silently. There's a labyrinth outside the chapel door that is defined as walking prayers, as you go through the labyrinth praying as you get towards the center closer to God. Lectio Divina. Lectio Divina is not one that you hear a lot about, but I remember that being discussed.

What does it mean?

It's an ancient form of Christian practice of slow, powerfully prayerful scripture reading to communicate with God. It's slow, careful thought of reading texts, and from that you become closer to God. I'm not a master at that at all. There can be head prayer without the heart. Sometimes I think we use prayer as bookends, you know, we say, okay, the meeting's over, let's close with prayer, and then there's a certain language that a lot of these public prayers adopt. Sometimes those escape me. It's almost like a required language you use as close as meeting, and there's certain things that you try to pray for at the close of the meeting to absorb that. Public prayer lots of times adopts a certain vocabulary. And I hope there is thought behind that, but they sort of run together when you think about it. I think prayer is dependent on what we think about how God works. We have different layers of understanding of who and what God is, We have layers about who we are and what we are to do, and based on your understanding of how God works and how you relate to God will affect the kind of prayers you pray for. I'm trying to think of a super example of that, but if you don't— if God has defined everything that's going to happen and when it's going to happen, You think you're going to change his mind? So if you believe that God has pre-wired and we're all walking the little cattle chute that's designed us, I don't know what prayer does. Although if you say God knows what's happened in the past, but he doesn't— he he hasn't defined the future, then God, this is what I would like for that to happen, could you please bring that into reality for me or for us? That's a different relationship. However you envision God's role is going to determine how your prayers are worded and what your sense of it is. Intercessory prayer is difficult. We do it, and I will continue to do it because the Bible says to do it, but exactly how it works, I'm not sure. Let me say a few words about the book of James, and then we'll get back into the effectiveness of prayer. There's not a single picture of proper faith and life in the New Testament When you read the book of Luke, Jesus is in the role of a servant. If you read Matthew, he's— Jesus is a new Moses leading people as Moses did. In the book of John, he's described as the Logos, and you'll have to look that up to decide how you want to define the Logos, but the power of the Spirit behind God. There's a difference between early and late Paul. They're really written to 2 different kinds of people, but you see Paul evolving in his theology. So if you read early Paul, you get one point of view about God, and you read late Paul, you see, okay, it's not quite like the same, it's a little different. After we get out of the Bible, there's books by Augustine and Martin Luther and Calvin, Trinity ideas involved. Southern Baptist Convention didn't suit churches like ours, and we formed the CBF, which has a slightly different interpretation of what we think is important in the Bible. But God does continue to speak to us, and the Holy Spirit is at work in all of our lives. Our theology evolves, and so does our understanding. I think the prayers I prayed at age 20 are different than the ones I pray now. My theology has changed, my understanding of how God works has changed, so my prayers change. James may be the brother of Jesus, the head of the Jerusalem church, martyred probably around 60 AD. His teaching is very similar to Jesus, but he only mentions Jesus 2 times in his book. Most of the book parallels the gospel writers, and he seems very acquainted with what Jesus said and taught. It's written in excellent Greek. I think that raises a question about the authorship because James was not a Greek linguist as far as we know. If we look at the difference between the role of Jesus, like In Matthew, he's quoted as saying, I was hungry— I mean, he's telling a story in Matthew. I was hungry, you gave me food, thirsty, and you gave me something to drink, naked, sick, and in prison, you did so and so. Is that an insistence on work or faith?

Works.

It's works. To get close to God, you've got to do things, you've got to be active to bring things into place that are benefiting somebody else. Then in the book of Romans chapter 3, Paul is talking about righteousness is achieved through faith in Jesus for all those who believe. You're justified by grace as a gift. Jesus just says, here, accept my grace. You don't have to do anything, just here it is. We are justified by faith apart from works prescribed in the law, and we receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. So we've got works, as a path, and Paul says it's faith through a path. James is very much works-oriented, that is his place. When? James attacks Paul's doctrine of justification by faith, and it's an attack on the reluctance of Christians to live up to their responsibilities. You aren't doing what How does

Romans 3 · chapter mention

he reconcile— I mean, to me, prayer is almost an ultimate act of faith, and yet— and James expects us to pray and he even says the prayer of faith will save the sick, and yet earlier in the book he pretty much denigrates faith without works.

He's saying you can attain God's will if you do the works. If you do the works, then you can have some effect what God's response is. In Paul, works is what you do after you've received grace. So Paul and James are at opposite sides on this idea of which comes first. James believes that prayer is very valuable. In chapter 4, he says, you do not have because you do not ask. It's almost implying that if you ask for it and you do the works, God's going to give it to you.

A little bit of Old Testament, I guess.

Yes, I think it is. I think it is. Let's look— listen to that passage that we're going to study, James 5:13-16. Fred, would you read that for us?

James 5:13–16

Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing God's— sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up, and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Amen. Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.

Well, he doesn't, doesn't hide his motive at all. You pray for it, it happens. Do it. If you're not doing it, you're not going to get the rewards that are available to you. I think on the handout I tried to define Prayer, as a working definition. Prayer purports to be the power by which something comes to pass which otherwise would not have taken place. Purports to be something that you bring into reality that wasn't going to happen if you didn't pray for it. That's pretty firm. Mm-hmm. There's a lot of contradictory text and advice about how God would react to this topic. Back in the Old Testament, Malachi says, I the Lord do not change. You can pray all you want to, but the Lord's got it figured out. He's gonna do what he wants to do, and I don't change. Then in Hosea, God is quoted as saying, my heart has changed, is changed within me, all of my compassion is aroused. So in the Old Testament, you've got an unchangeable God, no matter what you do, God's plan is going to work, and you've got in Hosea, God's heart was changed. My compassion came to the surface. Which one are you going to go with? You have to build that into your own theology. I've got a few remarks that rather famous people have spoken about. Origen was one of the early Old Testament— I mean, theologians after the Bible was written. He believed God is changeless. God could foresee how all we should choose, including the contents of our prayer. So he knows what we're going to pray. He's got already figured out what we're going to do, and he already knows exactly what his response is going to be. Immanuel Kant says it's absurd to think that one person's prayer might defect Deflect God's plans. Who am I to pray and say, God, don't do this? Oh, okay, I won't do it. Calvin said prayer is important because of the effect on the person praying. I'm gonna build on that. Prayer is important because of the effect it has on the person praying. Kurt Vonnegut, some of you know who he is. What good is prayer in such a predetermined world? Everything's following itself, its plan. Why pray? It's not going to make any difference. Before the Lord's Prayer, Jesus makes this comment. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. You don't need to pray, he knows. Every thought you have, he's aware of. So what are we to do? Take time to pray, or God, I'll just ride this out. You got the plan already written. I don't know what it is yet, but Let's go. In the New Testament, and I don't know if I've got this on your— no, I don't think I have. New Testament says, ask and it'll be given to you. Prayers offered in faith will make a sick person well. James said it would. The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to our prayers. God's listening for what our prayer is. You don't have it because God— you haven't asked God for it. You ask God, it'll happen. So that's New Testament's rationale about the effectiveness of prayer. What are we going to do? But in this text, in the James text that we did just read, No, this is not on your handout either. There are clear direct instructions: if you're suffering, pray; if you're cheerful, sing praise; if you're sick, call the elders, they have to respond. It's not like please come, no, you come, call the elders, let them pray and anoint you with oil. it'll be taken care of. Also in this text, prayers of faith will save the sick, the Lord will raise them up, sins will be forgiven. Now this is James talking. There's more instruction: confess your sins to one another. Judy, I need to tell you what I did last week, it's terrible. No, I'm not going to tell you. Pray for one another so that you may be healed. Then there's the comment, the prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. So James is pretty determined that that's what we have to do. We have to pray intercessory prayer, and if we pray, it'll work. Interpreter's Bible, which I use a lot, talks about the sick are to summon the elders— Yes. Implies a demand on the elders. Preacher, you come to my house now. We need to pray. It's not a request, it's a demand. Practices follow traditions of the time and those used by Jesus. James doesn't differentiate much between healing and salvation, and neither, neither Jesus. It's almost like it's the same thing. If you're sick, you pray, you'll be— your soul is saved. It's like One combined act of some kind. The logic of the world is to exclude the sick, the poor, the weak. We tend to isolate and alienate people that are ill or poor or deformed in some way. It's sort of a natural reflex. The sick are empowered To call the elders in and, you come, we'll do this. There's no more visible indicator of a church than how they work with and care for the children, the poor, the sick, the dying. I think our church does an excellent job in that. Do we seek our own survival or seek friendship with God by embracing all of man— of God's creation? Again, what's your relationship and what's your understanding? Where do you fit in this? Let me ask you a couple of questions, time for you to talk a little bit. What is your experience with intercessory prayer? Somebody brave, talk up.

I don't know. Such an experience, but I was always taught when I start a prayer to thank God first.

Start with gratitude.

Before I start asking or requesting. And when I do ask or request, I should always say please instead. Okay. Please heal John Smith, or, you know, Yeah, it's not a

demand,

it's a request. I was also taught that by doing it that way, I'm admitting that there's a higher power than myself.

Okay, all right.

And I should be thankful to that higher power.

Okay.

The higher power.

It's interesting what you're saying because you, you talked about the effect on somebody else and then you noticed what happens inside of you.

Right. I want to build on that.

I want to build on that. David, I think you had your hand or started this.

An experience where you might pray for one thing and God provides something else, and it turns out that that worked out better. A friend of mine a couple years ago was diagnosed with something, and he was going to pass, and I prayed for him to have a few more months.

Okay.

And it was almost like a greedy— in a way it was greedy. It was, I wanted to have a few more months when I could see him and stuff like that. And he passed within a week. And I thought, well, then he was that bad off. More months would have done nothing positive for him at all. So God provided.

Okay. Yeah. Well, I'm thinking something about Pat, and I think I'll leave off, skip that. Anybody else?

Tom? I just comment that one— my problem with intercessory prayer is that I keep doing it, but I've never had an example of where I could tell it did anything.

Okay.

I mean, so the kind of things you ask for, or at least that I ask for— if this is your will, Lord, give these people peace to deal with what they're dealing with.

Okay.

all of those kinds of things, there's no way for me to see, did it really— did they get any peace because I prayed? Now, in my own life, of things I have asked for, I've felt like I've gotten answers to prayer. Sometimes not what I asked for, sometimes a whole lot better than what I asked for. Yeah. But I can tell what happened in my life.

Yeah.

But as far as what I've prayed for others. Of course, a lot of it's general prayers. I pray for all the people that are incarcerated under ICE and the tremendous injustice of the way they are facing and how terrible this seems to me, and please help them. Yeah. But there's no way for me to know. It's hard to measure. There may be individuals that maybe do get help, but there's no way to judge whether they're really getting what you're Anybody's getting what you're asking for.

Yeah, I agree.

Jesus taught us to love one another. That's one of those big things. Intercessory prayer is a form of expressing our love for other people, friends, acquaintances, people we know, and so forth. So I just, you know, pray and express love for one another, and then I don't try to keep score.

Okay, that's good. Uh-huh. All right, um, do you have any particular reaction to prayers that you prayed that you didn't get what you hoped for? Did you get mad or disappointed or—

Sad. Sad, not mad. Yeah.

Sad. Okay. Mary Caldwell did a sermon here many years ago, and he— she came up with 2 questions. Does prayer work? That is not equal to the statement, does prayer matter? And dwell on that. That's a very important Those are 2 important questions. Does prayer work? I don't know. I hope so. Does prayer matter? Yes, it does. Fred's example about— well, no, Elaine's example about starting reflecting about how she felt after doing the intercessory prayer. Prayer changes the person who does the praying. I can measure that, I can feel that inside me when I pray for somebody else. When we ask if prayer matters, we're asking if that prayer makes a difference. For sure, your intercessory prayer for someone else changes you. How? What possible change could it make in me by my praying for the return to health of somebody far away? Does that make any sense at all? No.

Well, like you were saying earlier, it reestablishes or deepens your own relationship with God.

And yes, I agree, and it changes your relationship and how much you love the person you're praying for. If we truly love people, we will desire for them far more than is within our power to give them. And this will lead us to prayer. Intercession is a way of loving other people. It changes your attitude about how you reflect or relate to the person you're praying for. When we move from petition to intercession, we are shifting our center of gravity from our own needs to to the needs and concerns of somebody else. Well, why do we pray for it? You know, if we've got this terrible question, does prayer work, or okay, it's changing me, why do we do it? These are on your handout. We've been taught to do it ever since we were born, and if we were born with Christian parents, Wayne, you got to pray, you got to pray. We are built to want and need to pray. It's just instinctive within us. When tragedy hits, I want to pray. I've got to find some power, bring something to me so that I can survive this. We believe it matters. We need to find comfort as a result of that prayer. We know that we are changed simply by asking. God to will or do something. We believe the bonds of friendship are strengthened, and James promises it'll make a difference. James says it'll work. I think prayer to me is a mystery. There's so much I don't understand about prayer. Why pray if God Knows our needs before we pray. Jesus said he knows what's going on in your mind before you even start to pray. Why ask for healing when God should be ready and want people to be healed? If God loves that other person, why would he want them to be sick? He, he would normally want that other person to be healed. Prayer doesn't seem to make much sense, yet we are consistently told to pray. A prayer for healing enables us to be more sensitized to that person's needs. It transforms us. It brings us into a different level of care and concern for that other person. I think there's more than one kind of healing. We're mortal. All of us are going to die. Mm-hmm. But there are other kinds of healing that can happen even as death surrounds us. People can be healed from fear, from anger, from grief, from depression. There are lots of things that can happen as a form of healing that doesn't necessarily just mean the health of that other person. We can pray that the patient or those around us finds peace and joy and hope and love in the midst of the mortality that they are experiencing. Prayer is more than just asking for things. What Fred was saying, Master Eichhärt once said that even if all we did and all we prayed was thank you, that's enough. That's a complete prayer. We become more aware of the presence of God. We can think about our lives, assess where we're going. Even if we never ask God for anything, there's plenty of reasons to pray. Prayer is not a slot machine. Our job in prayer is to determine what God wants to happen. We aren't to try to bend God's will, but bend our will to what God's reason is. Gradually, we seek to be transformed into the image of Christ by doing that. Well, you know, there's lots of things in the Bible that encourage us to be generous. Maybe God urges that because that's good for us. There's a lot in the Bible about generosity. Maybe that's good for me. We are urged to pray for others. Again, maybe God urges that because it's good for us. I think prayer is primarily for our own benefit, not God's. The benefits we might get out of praying is it orders our thoughts and reduces the clutter and jumble in our minds. The right prayers help prepare us in— for difficult outcomes. It helps us to accept what happens. It can bring peace and comfort. Once I've prayed, it's sort of like I'm passing the responsibility now. Okay, God, you take care of this. I've done my part. I've said the prayer. I feel changed. Now you handle it. That's a big relief to know that you're not in charge, God is. I had some summary points from an old lesson that I think fit this situation, and I don't think they are on your handout. No, yes it is, it's on the very bottom. Prayer is not to inform God of what he doesn't know, but should be our request to participate in what happens in a positive way. I attended a Bible study Friday afternoon at Bella Vista, and at the end of it, we named all these people that we wanted prayer for, and the leader led that, and it's like he's telling God, oh, by the way, Mary Ann's not feeling well, would you— It's like you have the responsibility to tell— God didn't know? Oh, I didn't know Mary Ann was sick. No, that's— no, God knows. We're not informing God of things that he never thought of before. It's— Jesus said he knows before you even open your mouth. He already knows. We need to pray in spite of the results. One person said, I believe in God even if he is silent. My prayers are to try to discern God's perspective of events. Pray to be transformed to a different point of view. Donna Lewis taught me so much about this when we talked about prayer. It's trying to get our mind Settled on what God understands and the plan that's going. It's not to change God's mind, it's trying to get our mind settled with what is underway as part of God's plans. God is in your thoughts. You need to be open to that proximity. You have no thought that God hasn't already Absorbed and understood before you open your mouth for prayer. That's a good place to stop. What do you think? Are you going to pray intercessory prayers? I hope you do, but I'm not sure why.

David, one

thing when

you were talking about why do we pray, and when you think about it. As we grow up and we're exposed to movies and television, there are all these subtle and not so subtle uses of the word prayer. I mean, even right down to when the bad guy has his revolver on the good guy and he says, say your prayers. Yeah. There's movies where they constantly say, this is a good time for you to pray because we don't know what's So it's constantly being reinforced that way, even if it just kind of slides by as dialogue.

Yeah, yeah, you know, you see a lot of bad examples of how that phrase is used. That's right. I do earnestly believe that as we pray, we change ourselves. Whether it has a change on the effect of the outcome, I don't know. I just don't know. I hope it does, but I don't know, but I know it changes me, so I'm going to keep praying. Tom?

That was kind of a comment that I guess I was going to, that intercessory prayer, if nothing else, helps you think about the needs of other people rather than the needs of yourself, and that itself has to be worth something.

Yes.

But it is because of what it does for you, whether it does anything for them or not.

Yeah, yeah, it goes back to what I said. It all depends on what your understanding of how God works. If God's got it all worked out and everything is following a roadmap, he's not going to change his mind. But if you believe that God does have compassion and is going to be persuaded to change events, they're not set in stone, then, well, sure, I am going to pray. I'm going to plead my case if God hasn't determined already. So how you understand how God works is going to affect how you choose to pray. Prayer changes me, and that's what I put great heart in. Anything else? Next week I'm going to touch on another passage from James. It won't be— there's a blend of what something in Matthew and something in James, but again, it's what I would call a very controversial topic. I hope you come. I'll write more about it on Wednesday and let you know. Thank you.