March 30, 2015
Asking for Prayer
I visited a church that is
self-described non-denominational, but their bent is Pentecostal, including faith
healing and talking in tongues. During
the service there was a lot of, “Raise your hands if you’re forgiven!” and “Shout
halleluiah if you are going to heaven.” At one point the pastor turned the
audience loose with instructions to pray with someone. Stephanie, a 20
something young lady, came up to me and ask, “Do you need prayer?” I was taken aback
and the first thing that came to mind was, “No, I don’t need prayer.” After her
quizzical look and I followed up, “Well … I can always use the prayers of others, I just don’t need anything specific right now.” I suppose I found the situation awkward
because rather than my asking for prayers, I was put on the spot to share a prayer
need. “Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him
sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should
call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the
name of the Lord” (James 13:13-14 NIV).
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Do we go to prayer meetings to pray? Or do we meet because many situations need prayer? I suppose some people go to pray while others go because they know needs. I’ve always avoided prayer meetings because I don’t see prayer as an objective, rather, I see things needing prayer as the objectives. But I also grew up in the Lord failing to see fellowship‘s production of prayer. So I never had many things I felt compelled to pray about. And certainly I was not going to pray just to pray nor ask anyone to pray for me just to ask someone to pray. I don’t like doing things unless I at least have the beginning of understanding about what I’m doing. And I loathe doing something just to be doing it. Had I been you at that Pentecostal meeting in my early twenties and single I might have overlooked these tendencies and prayed with Stephanie. I guess there’s an exception for everything.
-----Christ’s body seems to be on earth to do His stuff, make truth known, convince the lost to be found, building up one another, taking care of ourselves and others, and such things. Life is a process of fusing effort inside our realms of ability to do these things with happenstance beyond it. To me, prayer is about those happenstances meeting my efforts, and my efforts authenticating my prayers. I could pray for myself because I could authenticate those prayers with proper effort. But praying about situations for which I had no way to make effort left me feeling like I was just praying to be praying. I did not understand what authenticated those prayers.
-----Until I began to understand the Biblical concept of “blessing”. This word occurs in the RSV only 459 times. So maybe it isn’t the most important concept there, but it rises close to the top. It always interested me that God blessed His creation AND God said be fruitful etc. “Blessing” is more than a word expressing fuzzy, warm thoughts and feelings and attitudes. It is a concept about being. God “…blessed Abraham in all things.” (Gen 24:1) To bless is more than to merely pronounce goodness upon something. It is to desire it upon something. And wherever desire crosses one’s own possibilities effort is produced, else desire is falsified. Therefore, to bless is not only to pronounce goodness, but it is also to do whatever goodness is possible towards those desires of the blessing. Blessing is a process in which desire and effort interplay in whatever amounts a situation might offer to produce pronouncement or action. This is where I found what authenticates my prayer for others - blessing them, since prayer is simply an action of effort beyond one’s possibilities to do with his own hands.
-----I think I might be able to feel like a natural part of a real prayer meeting now.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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