Prayer 5: Persistence Pays

Jason: I found 25 passages in the gospels where Jesus prayed or made reference to prayer. Two of the passages stood out. First is the Parable of the Persistent Widow in Luke 18:1-8:

Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart, saying, “In a certain city there was a judge who did not fear God and did not respect man. There was a widow in that city, and she kept coming to him, saying, ‘Give me legal protection from my opponent.’ For a while he was unwilling; but afterward he said to himself, ‘Even though I do not fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow bothers me, I will give her legal protection, otherwise by continually coming she will wear me out.’” And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge said; now, will not God bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over them? I tell you that He will bring about justice for them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”

The other passage is in Luke 9, the Transfiguration, which takes place while Jesus is praying.

What do these tell us about prayer?

Harry: I recall passages in the Old Testament where it seems that god expresses some exasperation that people keep pestering him. It strikes me as unsettling that god would require pestering before he will take action.

Don: I have the feeling that we need holy things, holy places, and holy days. They take us beyond ourselves. Moses, at the Burning Bush, encounters god in a way that is startling and edifying. God tells Moses to take off his shoes, because he is standing on hallowed ground. I wonder if prayer should be seen as an entree into such an holy space; I wonder if something happens during prayer that takes us into a different place, but one that we need to enter. If so, then prayer is not a pecuniary importuning of god for things, but a way of entering the holy. Another way of saying that is that prayer is the way by which people of faith can operationalize their faith and encounter god.

Kiran: Pew Research found that 70 percent of people of all generations pray, even if they don’t call themselves religious. In fact, one in four of those who pray said they are not religious. Why would they pray? A quote from Ellen White’s Steps to Christ (ch. 11, p. 98) says: “Unceasing PRAYER is the unbroken union of the soul with God, so that life from God flows into our life; and from our life, purity and holiness flow back to God.” I always thought prayer was about asking for something I want, but I realize now that there is something else to prayer. It’s a way in which god can keep our program—our mind—updated, as it were. God is concerned with our daily needs, but there seems to be a deeper purpose to prayer.

Harry: To me, prayer is reflection, a quiet time. It is also a holy time: I love ornate Catholic churches; the grander the better. It makes me feel I am in the presence of god and facilitates communication with him. I like the idea of having a holy time (like the Sabbath) or place (a Catholic church) to pray, because in the rush of day-to-day living it is hard to find a holy place and time, so it is hard to pray at all.

Jason: Many of the concepts we have discussed in this class are coming to bear on this topic of prayer. One of them was the notion of the inner light, which we discussed when studying the Transfiguration. If it was prayer that made it possible for the inner light of Jesus to become fully revealed at the moment of Transfiguration, that would supports Don’s contention that prayer can help us operationalize our relationship with god. To display one’s inner light is to display one’s relationship with god. Psalm 46 ends with the beautiful line: “Be still, and know that I am god.” To pray is to be still. I am by nature a fidgeter, physically and mentally, and find it hard to be still. But if I could, I believe the inner light would be more readily revealed in me; that my ego would be suppressed. But is prayer essential for these things?

Harry: I need something that grabs my attention and leads, or even forces, me to be still. An ornate cathedral works. But the drab surroundings of daily life do not encourage or facilitate stillness—prayer—in me. When I am still, it is wonderful, but it does not happen often. Perhaps I need to build a temple in my back yard! Such a place may be just a conduit, a starting point, but it is no less valuable for that reason.

Kiran: Private daily prayer is so essential for me that I have even used bathrooms as my “temple”! Often I start to pray with the intention of getting god to change something or someone else for me, but then I end up with the feeling that my prayer has changed me. When my sister, who was a Christian, became engaged to a Hindu man, I prayed God for many days to prevent the marriage. He did not, so I accepted that god’s will was done and from that point I ceased to be bitter about it.

David: It would seem that prayer is not just a matter of recitation, of expression. You can’t just toss out “Give us our daily bread!” and expect anything to happen. There has to be effort involved, in my opinion, because effort engenders concentration, and concentration is key to the effectiveness of prayer. The persistence of the woman in the parable is a form of effort. She was focused, she was single-minded, on her prayer. Focus is achieved through what Harry calls “getting in the zone” and the Buddhists call meditation. It involves emptying the mind so that one can be receptive to the answer, whatever it may be. Reaching the inner light is not as simple as flicking a switch; one has to work at it.

Jason: Does the object of focus of our prayer matter? If Kiran had been sufficiently focused on praying that his sister not marry a Hindu, would she not have? Or is it the focus, the concentration itself, rather than the object of the focus, that matters?

David: Kiran’s experience would suggest that it is the focus, not the request, that matters. His prayer was persistent, and it was answered. It was indeed effective, but not in the way he expected: It brought him peace and grace through the acceptance that god’s will was being done.

Don: If our actions affect the course of events of our lives, then focused prayer—which requires action, at least of the mind—must logically affect the course of our lives. If our lives were predetermined, then it would not matter what we did because whatever we did would be predetermined.

Jason: If focused prayer always takes us to some sort of understanding of the will of god or the mind of god, if it reveals the inner light, then we would really be in a position to influence the course of our lives, to “move mountains” as the passage we discussed last week said we could. We would be able to do miraculous things, not because we choose to do miraculous things but because we have surrendered to and are aligned with the will of god; and it is god, not us, who then performs the miracles. We empty ourselves so that the will of god can fill us and act through us.

David: The Harry who has just effectively prayed is a different Harry from the Harry who has not just effectively prayed. Any actions he takes following effective, focused prayer will probably be calmer, at least, and probably therefore more effective in themselves. But it’s Harry’s choice to pray in the first place. He does not have to do it. He has free will. It is not predetermined that Harry will pray.

Harry: If you do not brush your teeth, you will probably develop cavities. If you do not pray, you may end up hating your Hindu brother-in-law. I agree with Jay: We can move mountains through prayer. People of all different faiths (and, though they might not admit or realize it, people of non-faith) pray. All that is needed is to focus, to meditate. And when we do, we are all equal in our faith; we are one.

Don: A few days ago, the BBC TV news showed additional footage from the massacre at the mall in Kenya. The gunmen were shown casually shooting people to death, then stepping aside to perform their obligatory Moslem prayers. It gave me pause to wonder to what extent I too am too cavalier about my prayer life.

David: I had a similar feeling in Saudi Arabia, when people would leave me in the middle of a meeting about medical technology to go pray, then return and resume the discussion as though nothing had happened. I wondered, how effective could their prayer have been? Is ritual prayer real prayer?

Harry: It is easy to see why people would turn atheist when they see ritual prayer in action as at the Kenya Mall. Real prayer can take place anywhere, but it is an intensely personal affair.

Michael: Prayer prayed as a duty, as ritual, is not necessarily real, focused, personal prayer. Prior to the Lord’s Prayer, as the disciples’ question implies, there was apparently no specific prayer ritual; it was a matter between the individual and god.

Kiran: I once visited a Pentecostal service and found the prayer so stylized it was hard to communicate with god. My uncle taught me to pray by taking a walk in the park and talking to god as though he were walking with me. That felt much more real and meaningful.

Don: Mankind has a compelling need to seek something that transcends humanity. Through god’s grace, the Burning Bush was not consumed by the fire, as it should have been. Entering, like Moses, into a holy space of grace, where the unnatural occurs, where the unordinary exists, and where the unexpected pertains is the result of real prayer. It does not come easily. It takes persistence, effort, single-mindedness and focus.

Harry: The result is about making the world a better place by loving our neighbors, by preventing the fires of hatred and contempt from consuming the holy bush of compassion and care.

David: I agree with all that has been said, but the problem is that this kind of prayer, which offers grace as the payoff, is a tougher sell than “prosperity prayer,” which offers greenbacks.

Jason: Scripture has distinct instructions to pray, on the one hand, that god’s will be done and, on the other, that whatever you want will be done for you. In our discussions so far, it seems to me we have still not reconciled this contradiction. Is one right and the other wrong, and therefore they are irreconcilable and scripture is not to be trusted? Or are both right, and reconcilable, and therefore scripture is reliable? There is, no question, a tension in the scripture in this regard. Perhaps we need to broaden our perspective, to see an even bigger picture, in order to reconcile the contradiction and release the tension. I love the “Thy will be done” and god’s grace argument. But the argument for “prosperity prayer” is still very much alive, and even has some evidence to back it up.

Don: So we need to work on this some more! Each week, we do seem to accrue some small additional snippet of understanding. We may never reach the complete answer, but we may reach one that brings us peace.

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