We Pray. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24. 04/21/24
We Pray
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
Rev. Dr. Rhonda Blevins
April 21, 2024
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil. May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely, and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.
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Not my sister, not my mother, but it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.
Not my father, not my brother, but it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.
It’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.
The first time I ever heard this African American spiritual, I was a college kid—my student ministry group had traveled to Charleston, South Carolina on a spring break mission trip. Our work during the daytime was manual labor at a Christian camp that, if I remember correctly, had once been a plantation. But the highlight of the trip, for me, was worshipping with a predominantly African American congregation. And one of the songs they sang that day, was “It’s Me, O Lord, Standing In the Need of Prayer.”
I loved the lively tune and memorable lyrics! And from time to time, I think about that song—about its origin on some plantation in the American South among enslaved people desperate for hope beyond their present reality. And like so many other spirituals, I imagine that the singing of this song in solidarity with one another made the long, grueling days of picking cotton a little more bearable.
Something else that stands out to me about the song lyrics is the humility infusing the refrain:
Not my sister, not my mother, but it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.
Humility. Humility admits, “I’M the one who needs prayer. I’M the needy one.” Humility.
Saint Teresa of Avila suggests that any authentic prayer begins with humility. And if you think about her idea, it makes perfect sense. Prayer reminds the ego, “You’re not in charge. You’re not in control. You are not the center of the universe.” Therefore, the ego doesn’t like prayer at all. Prayer may be “The Soul’s Sincere Desire,” but it’s the ego’s worst nightmare.
HOW do we pray? We pray with humility.
Which brings me to the third “Core Commitment” that members and friends of Chapel by the Sea identified back in January.
During these ten weeks, we’re taking a deep dive with all ten of the “Core Commitments.” We started two weeks ago with: “We welcome and include all people.” Last week we looked at: “We gather weekly for worship and fellowship.” Today brings us to: “We pray for one another and our world.”
Each of these core commitments is how we put feet to our “missional aspiration”—you’ve memorized it by now, right? RIGHT?!?
Chapel by the Sea aspires to be a beacon of God’s love, inviting people into a vibrant life with Christ.
How do we go about living into this missional aspiration? Well for starters, we “We welcome and include all people” and “We gather weekly for worship and fellowship.” And “We pray for one another and our world.”
One Sunday at a church in South Georgia, there was a little boy who was misbehaving—the child was cute, for sure, but disruptive and boisterous. So the boy’s daddy grabbed him up, slung him under his arm, and started walking down the aisle to the exit. The boy, powerless under his father’s grip, yelled out so the whole church could hear: “Y’all pray for me now!”
This little boy knew the power of prayer! So let’s talk about prayer, shall we?
We could easily do an entire series about prayer, and even with that, we wouldn’t be able to fully grasp prayer, because prayer is the language of the mystics. The more you learn and discover about prayer, the more there is to learn and discover.
So for today, we’re going to look at three facets of prayer, alliterated for each of memorization:
1. The attitude for prayer,
2. The aim of prayer, and
3. The approach to prayer.
The Attitude for Prayer
First up: the attitude for prayer. As we already discovered, humility is the place to begin any authentic prayer, according to St. Teresa of Avila.
Anne Lamott suggests there are really only three types of prayer: “Help!” “Thanks.” And “Wow!” To pray any of those three kinds of prayers with any degree of sincerity, humility is requisite.
Jesus had something to say about humility in prayer. In Luke 18:10-14, Jesus tells a parable, comparing the prayer life of a respected religious leader with a despised tax collector:
“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Humility before God—the attitude for prayer.
The Aim of Prayer
Now that we know the attitude with which we must approach any sincere prayer, let’s talk about what prayer is, because I think most people have an understanding of the purpose of prayer that is far too limited.
What is prayer? Just for fun, I googled that very question. Want to hear what the top Google responses to that question were?
1. First up, Google gave me a couple of definitions: “a solemn request for help or expression of thanks addressed to God or an object of worship,” “a religious service, especially a regular one, at which people gather in order to pray together, “an earnest hope or wish.” I don’t disagree with these definitions, but I find them incomplete.
2. Then, the next four Google responses suggested that prayer is “communication with God.” Communication with God is part of prayer but is not the totality of prayer.
3. Finally, the fifth Google response gets a little closer to what I understand prayer to be: “Prayer is the spiritual hunger and thirst that leads to heart-to-heart connection with the living God.”
Prayer isn’t just communication with God, prayer is communion with God. The word communion is derived from the Latin words “com” which means “with or together” and “unus” with means “oneness or unity.” Prayer isn’t just communication with God, prayer is communion with God—a union or oneness with Divinity.
My husband and I will be married 19 years in December. Occasionally we talk to one another. J We are married when we are talking and we are married even when we are not talking. Like marriage, prayer is not just something we do—prayer is a posture, an orientation, a way of life, a state of being. Sometimes it involves communication. All of the time, prayer is a state of being for the simple fact that “we live and move and have our being” in the Eternal Godhead (Acts 17:28).
Recognizing that prayer is more than communication, but communion with God—oneness, unity—I want to suggest that the aim of prayer is alignment with God. That’s what we’re doing when we pray, “Thy will be done.” Alignment with God was the aim of Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Not my will but thine be done.”
No, our egos don’t like it. Our egos have their own agenda. But the aim of prayer is alignment with God and God’s agenda.
Alignment with God—the aim of prayer.
The Approach to Prayer
No Bible verse has helped me more in my prayer life than the scripture we read together earlier—one of the shortest verses in the Bible—1 Thessalonians 5:17: “Pray without ceasing.”
As someone who has long struggled with the more solitary spiritual practices, 1 Thessalonians 5:17 makes it quite clear that our very lives can be a form of prayer when a person continually walks with God.
In one of the most beloved devotional books of all time, My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers writes about “Friendship With God.”
[Friendship with God] means being so intimately in touch with God that you never even need to ask [God] to show you [God’s] will. It is evidence of a level of intimacy which confirms that you are nearing the final stage of your discipline in the life of faith. When you have a right-standing relationship with God, you have a life of freedom, liberty, and delight; you are God’s will.
That kind of intimacy with God that Chambers describes is praying “without ceasing.” That’s when your entire life becomes one living, embodied prayer.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes what it means to “pray without ceasing” in his book, Life Together:
[Prayer] includes the whole day, and in doing so, it does not hinder the work; it promotes [work], affirms [work], and lends [work] meaning and joy. Thus every word, every deed, every labor of the Christian becomes a prayer.
The way Bonhoeffer saw it, people of faith cannot separate out times when we’re praying from times when we’re not praying. All of life is a prayer! When we begin to embody the timeless wisdom of praying “without ceasing,” the way we understand the nature of God begins to shift as well. God is not hanging out on some distant cloud listening to some prayers and ignoring others. God is present. Our lives are lived in God’s presence—the way we live our lives is a form of embodied prayer.
Forever in God—the approach to prayer.
Let’s review what we’ve considered about prayer so far: the attitude, the aim, and the approach—three prayer pointers that can transform your walk with God:
· Humility before God—the attitude for prayer.
· Alignment with God—the aim of prayer.
· Forever in God—the approach to prayer.
When this relationship with prayer becomes second nature for us as individuals, and we come together in community with other Christ-followers, like here at the Chapel, the natural byproduct then, is that “We pray for one another and our world.”
Sometimes we pray with words. All times we pray with our lives.
I close with a story from my 100 years of ministry:
One of the joys of ministry is getting to perform weddings for couples starting out their lives together. As is the custom, usually right before the ceremony begins, I often find myself hanging out with the groom and groomsmen. Occasionally, particularly if the wedding party is known to me, I will invite the groom and groomsmen to pray with me before walking out to receive the bride. I’ll lead the prayer, asking God to bless the ceremony and the marriage.
Once during the wedding of some dear friends, I was hanging out with the groom and groomsmen per usual, and I offered to say a prayer. I said my sincere, yet brief prayer—and then the best man wanted to pray aloud after me. So he started his prayer. And he prayed. And he prayed. And he prayed. And he prayed. That best man prayed so long that we missed our cue to enter the sanctuary . . . and I had to interject at some point in his loquacious prayer, “Amen, let’s go!”
The moral of this story? There is a time for praying up. There is a time for showing up. The wise Christian will know the difference.
So whether you’re praying up or showing up remember these three prayer pointers:
Humility—the attitude.
Alignment—the aim.
Forever—the approach.
So my dear Chapel friends, let us pray for one another and our world! Sometimes with words. At all times, with our very lives.