“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” (James 5:16)
My pastor once lamented from the pulpit that prayer was losing its appeal among Christians. It’s a sad commentary, but I agree with him.
My own Christian experience has convinced me that a lot of Christians do not avail themselves of the power and privilege of prayer. Stop and think about it. How often do you see a family in a restaurant stop and say grace before they dive into their meals? Have you ever stopped and prayed with a friend at work? When you tell someone that you’ve been praying about something, have you really prayed about it, or have you just been thinking about it? You see the world does everything it can to convince us that prayer belongs only m the home, the church, and maybe the funeral home. If you don’t believe it, just try to pray somewhere else, turn around, and look the reception you get.
This week, I missed an opportunity to pray for a friend. I was in the hospital with a family about whom I care. One of their loved ones was undergoing surgery and the air was rich with anxiety, doubt and fear. This family was in crisis. Can you think of a better place for prayer?
Just as we were about to leave, my wife turned to me and said: “Would you like to say a prayer?” Well, I looked at her ashamedly and said, “No, I don’t think I can.” Fortunately, my reluctance to pray did not stop my wife. She said a beautiful prayer and I soon saw God answer it.
Words cannot express the deep sense of guilt I had about my refusal to pray. I really care about this family and I honestly can’t think of a situation where prayer would be more appropriate. But I was afraid of what others might think when they saw me praying. You guessed it. I was very selfish, but God began to deal with me before I left that waiting room.
When we become Christians, there is a struggle between good and evil that is waged everyday in our Christian walk. Paul says in Romans 7:18: “…I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.” He continues, “So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being, I delight in God’s law, but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am!” (Romans 7:21-24)
I understand exactly what Paul means by that spiritual struggle that lurks within all of us. You see I’m really no different from any of you. In fact, a lot of you would have reacted the same way I did. Any Christian worth his weight in salt knows that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. (Matthew 26:41)
The only way to beat a habit is to replace it with another one. I believe prayer is a learned behavior. It’s not some supernatural quality that God gives us at salvation. It involves a relationship and just like any other relationship, it takes hard work, commitment, and to some extent, failure. After all, we usually don’t learn our greatest lessons from success.
I later retained to that hospital room and prayed with that family. However, this time we both were in crisis. Oh, I had already asked God to deal with me, but now I was asking Him to turn His attention to the needs of that family. And this time I wasn’t worried about who might have been watching. I finally learned to look up and not around, Paul says it another way: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing, and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2)
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