Pray (Part 4, The Disciple's Life)

[This is the fourth of a five-part series, The Disciple's Life, being shared on Wednesday nights with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, during Lent.]

1 Thessalonians 5:17
Luke 11:1-4

In Luke’s gospel, we’re told, “One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.’”

This is a strange passage for several reasons, I think.

One strange element is that, as faithful Biblical Jews, you’d think that Jesus’ disciples would need no instruction on prayer.

Another odd element here is the reason the unnamed disciple gives for asking Jesus to give instruction on prayer: because John the Baptist had taught his disciples, his students, how to pray.  Did the disciple think that Jesus had been remiss in not teaching them about prayer? Or was he motivated by competitive desire to keep up with John’s disciples?

Or was he simply impressed by the amount of time Jesus spent in prayer?

Or did he have a rising understanding of the fact that a disciple of Jesus should be a person of prayer?

We don’t know the answers to any of these questions, really.

But we do know that Jesus took the question seriously. The disciple invited Jesus to teach them on prayer and Jesus did.

Luke tells us: “He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.’” (Luke 11:2-5)

We commonly use variants of these words of Jesus in our public prayer. And that’s a good thing because, as Luther observed, if we genuinely pray the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, we will have prayed everything we are called to pray as Christians.

But I think that, as Christian disciples, we should also look at the Lord’s Prayer as a model for how a Christian is to pray, whenever we pray.

Often, we view prayer as presenting lists of requests to God. And God does want to hear our requests. That’s why, after teaching the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus goes on to say, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Luke 11:9) We should never be afraid of bringing anything to God.

But the prayer Jesus teaches also shows us that God doesn’t want just our prayer lists. The God we know in Jesus Christ wants a relationship with those who confess that Jesus is Lord. Through Jesus, God gives us the privilege of knowing Him as our Father.

God wants to do something else in our praying. Eugene Peterson, the Presbyterian pastor and Old Testament scholar who created The Message translation of the Bible, has written of prayer: “Prayer is the way we work our way out of the comfortable but cramped world of self and into the spacious world of God.”

When we reach up to God in worship, praise, and thanksgiving--when we reach up to our Father in prayer, when we truly pray, God alters our perspectives on life, death, the world, eternity, ourselves, our sin, our sisters and brothers in Christ, and everything else.

In prayer, God seeks to change us. Prayer is a two-way street. In response to God’s accessibility to us purchased by Christ’s death on the cross, we reach out to Him. But, as we move toward God, He moves toward us.

And when that happens, those who are desperate enough, helpless enough, and trusting enough will find themselves changed by God. As Christians “pray continually” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), even when they offer up the same prayer petitions repeatedly, as we do when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, God will change what they mean when they pray them.

The more that we interact with God in authentic, humble, submissive prayer, the more God’s viewpoint and our viewpoint will meld.

God will use the prayer of faithful Christian disciples to stretch us toward heaven so that God’s basic project in our lives--making us more like Christ--will be advanced.

So, be careful how much you pray, how earnestly you pray. God may turn your world upside down.

You may become less concerned about your own desires and more concerned with God’s will.

You may become less afraid of what this life and this world may throw at you and more sure that nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

You may find yourself less impressed by the baubles of this world and more enamored with the riches of God’s gracious kingdom.

You may start letting go of your stranglehold on this world and instead, hold onto Christ with everything in you.

The petitions Jesus urges on us in His prayer are, if we let them do their work on us, bound to blow our cramped little worlds to bits.

Consider the petitions that Jesus teaches us in the Lord's Prayer.

“Hallowed be your name.” So much of our lives is about getting ahead in the world, about having good credit, about having a good reputation. But our greatest concern, Jesus says, should be honoring God’s name. Jesus implores us to ask God to set us free of our worry over “I, me, mine.”

Then Jesus says to pray, “Your kingdom come.” In this petition, we ask that the God we know in Christ would rule over us, that He would call the shots in our lives. Here, we give God the keys to our lives and we become passengers, not drivers.

Jesus teaches us to pray, “Give us each our daily bread.” You have to get to the third petition before Jesus tells us to pray for ourselves. And even then, He doesn’t teach us to pray for security, ease, happiness, or wealth; He says to pray only for what we need to live today. This is a declaration of complete trust in the God. What would our lives be like if we prayed that God would give us only what we need and free us from worrying about everything else? We would worry less, enjoy our blessings more, and be, in Saint Paul’s phrase, “hilarious givers.”*

Jesus then teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.” (Luke 11:4) Prayer without confession of sin is as meaningless as prayer without faith in Christ or an awareness of our utter need of God. Jesus warns us elsewhere, “...every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” (Matthew 12:31) To blaspheme the Holy Spirit is to ignore Him when He is convicting us of a sin, to change the subject when, during our times of prayer, God is impressing upon us our need to repent. If we refuse to repent when the Holy Spirit is calling us to repent, we’re calling God a liar and we erect a wall between the grace of God and our lives. We must not take this petition lightly if we are to be Christ’s disciples. If the Holy Spirit convicts us for our sin, we need to repent.

Finally, Jesus teaches us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” James 1:13 warns us, “When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone…” So, what is Jesus teaching us to pray in this petition? Martin Luther says that Jesus is telling us to pray that God will “guard and protect us” from temptation, that we won’t be deceived by the temptations of “the devil, the world, and our sinful nature.” And, Luther says, in this petition we also ask God to prevent us from being deceived or led into “false belief, despair, and other great and shameful sins.”

Disciples pray.

Continually.

But as they do, they don’t try to change God.

Disciples pray, above all, to ask God to change them. To change us.

That takes courageous faith. May we never be afraid to truly, humbly, openly, expectantly pray.

More next week.

*Most English translations render the phrase in 2 Corinthians 9:7, as "cheerful givers." This is a good translation. But the Greek word translated as cheerful is ἱλαρός (hilaros) from which we get the English word hilarious.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. You're invited to worship with us on Sunday mornings at 8:45 am and 11:00 am. We're located at 667 Miamisburg-Centerville Road, Centerville, Ohio 45459.]

Prayer (Part 2, Reaching Up, Reaching In, Reaching Out)

[This was shared earlier this evening during midweek Lenten worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]

Hebrews 4:16
Matthew 7:7-8

During these midweek Lenten services, we’re considering what it means to be disciples of Jesus Christ.

You and I are called to be disciples of Christ in His Church, not members of a club that confers membership privileges, as though the Church were some religious version of Sam’s Club or the Rotary.

The term disciple is the English translation of a word used in the Greek of the New Testament to describe people who are followers of Jesus. That Greek word is mathetes, which translated at its most literal means student.

In first century Judea, when Jesus walked the earth, it was the custom for rabbis, teachers, to collect groups of students, or disciples, who would follow the rabbi as he taught and interacted with people from place to place.

This method is what Jesus used with His disciples to help them to grow into active participants in the Kingdom of God, which is ultimately what we’re called to be Christ’s disciples.

Remember how Jesus taught the disciples?

First, Jesus allowed them to observe Him as He preached, taught, brought healing, and cast out demons.

Second, Jesus would send the disciples out in groups of two, providing the disciples with mutual support and accountability, empowering them to duplicate His ministry in His name.

Third, Jesus brought His students--His disciples--back to reflect together on what they had learned from doing what they had previously observed Jesus doing.

At the end of His ministry on earth, after He had died and risen, as He was ascending to heaven, Jesus gave His disciples one last directive, a command we call the Great Commission, found in Matthew 28:19-20: “...go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you…”

The disciples were to replicate Jesus’ ministry repeatedly and empower others to do the same. The students were to become teachers. The disciples were to make more disciples.

And Christian disciples--right up to us today here at Living Water--have the same commission, to make disciples one life at a time time, person to person.

The fortunate thing is that we don’t do this in our own power! Jesus promises us in Matthew 28:20: “...I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

And at Pentecost, Jesus would send the Holy Spirit to His Church. The Holy Spirit, the Third Person of God, is the One by Whom Jesus uses disciples like us to make disciples.

I bring all of this up by way of background for tonight’s topic: prayer.

Jesus taught the disciples to pray after they observed how regularly He Himself prayed. They knew that prayer was important to Jesus. So, they asked Jesus to teach them to pray.

Now, Jesus’ disciples were religious people. I’m sure they had prayed before. But maybe in observing Jesus, they saw that prayer is more than what they’d previously thought it was.

So, Jesus gave them a pattern for prayer, what we call the Lord’s Prayer.

He also taught them: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7-8). This wasn’t a blank for self-centered prayer; Jesus elsewhere speaks of prayer needing to be offered in His name, meaning praying in ways that are consistent with the will and the character of God.

But what Jesus was saying to His disciples, including us, is that whatever is of concern to us is a concern to our Father in heaven.

And we should humbly and honestly lay our whole lives before God when we pray.

Personally, I usually spend time in the mornings praying to God. But I also pray to God all day long, in what some people call the "chink" in my schedule: between appointments or events, while preparing to do something, or when thoughts cross my mind.

I often pray things like: “Lord, grant that I will do nothing to dishonor You, but only glorify You by what I say, who I am, and what I do.”

Or, “Lord, give me the right words and the right silences in this meeting, in this visit, in this counseling session.”

Or, “God, protect my family and me from all danger and harm. Protect our characters and our reputations.”

Or, “Lord, help the MSM students or the First Communion students to know and love You more each day.”

Or, “Lord, give me the words You want me to speak in this message.”

“Jesus,” I prayed Sunday before last, when I was reeling from sinusitis, strep throat, and meds, “get me through the morning so that I call attention to You and not to myself.”

Paul says that disciples are to “pray without ceasing.”

Hebrews 4:16 tells Christ’s disciples: “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

Here at Living Water, we summarize the life of discipleship and the mission of our church in three components:

• Reaching up to God; 
• Reaching in to our sisters and brothers in Christ through mutual care, study, and accountability; and
• Reaching out to make new disciples of Christ through our witness and service in Christ’s name. 

But in truth, prayer is involved in all three of these elements of Christian discipleship.

In prayer, we reach up to God in surrender, worship, praise, and supplication.

In prayer, we reach in to pray for the needs of our congregation as a whole, for the entire Christian Church, and for our fellow disciples.

And no effort at reaching out to others to make disciples will have any impact unless we pray before, during, and after every encounter we have with those outside of Christ’s Church, who need the salvation and new life that only comes from Jesus. (My favorite place to witness for Christ these days is the deli counter at Kroger. Boar's Head meats are very popular, so there's lots of time for conversation.)

How we pray and what we say when we pray is not nearly important as that we pray and that when we pray, we come with both humility about ourselves and confidence in the grace and mercy of the One to Whom we pray.

And even when our confidence in God is battered or shaky, as happens to all of us, those who pray in Christ’s name will nonetheless find an utterly dependable God Who loves them passionately and totally.

We take comfort and power from God’s promises voiced through the apostle Paul in Romans 8:26-27, another great passage in what I think is the greatest chapter of the whole Bible: “We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.”

Jesus has taught we who are His disciples to pray. The prayer He has taught us shows us how to pray, with intimacy, confidence, concern for others, and repentant hearts.

But even when we find prayer difficult, whenever we lay ourselves before God’s throne of grace in Jesus’ name, our Teacher, our Lord, prays for us and with us. That’s a very comforting thought for me!

And at our most confused moments, the Holy Spirit takes our jumbled thoughts and emotions brought to God in the name of Jesus, and turns them into prayers that will eventually, inevitably, and eternally, work for the good of all who love Him.

Pray...about everything and for everyone!

That’s our privilege and our duty as disciples of Jesus Christ.

More on reaching up, reaching in, and reaching out next week.

Ash Wednesday: Lenten Disciplines for Life

[This was shared during the Ash Wednesday worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio on February 13. The Bible lesson was Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21.]

The sermon for tonight didn’t start out as a sermon.

It was going to be my presentation for this month’s women’s group. When the women’s group got snowed out, I posted it on my blog. Some of you have read it.

But it says what I want to share with you on this Ash Wednesday, as we begin the often misunderstood and misused season of Lent.

But, even if this is a re-run for you, you may notice things you didn’t catch when you read it on the blog.

Plus, like a DVD of a movie or TV show, there are a few added special features. In any case, I hope you find it helpful.

Many people use Lent to align themselves with Christ. They do this through the adoption of what are called spiritual disciplines. Lenten disciplines can be good, strengthening faith and helping us to love God and love others more faithfully.

But like many good things, we human beings have a way of messing up the whole idea of Lenten disciplines.

"I'm going to give up chocolate," some will announce.

"I'm not drinking beer during Lent," others might say.

"I've decided to give up cussing until Easter," they might say.

But, here's the deal: If something is getting in the way of our being Christians, isn't it also worth asking God to help us get rid of it, not just during Lent, but through our whole lives? Why is something bad during Lent, but not bad the rest of the year?


And, if something we add to our lives as our Lenten discipline helps us grow closer to Christ and to live in a more Christ-like way during Lent, can't it do the same things all year long?

If, this Lenten season, you're giving up chocolate just to lose weight, or giving up beer to please a spouse, or giving up cussing to make yourself more acceptable to some people, your "giving up" is meaningless from God's perspective.

Under such circumstances, you're not undertaking these disciplines to honor God, but as part of a self-improvement kick!

Self improvement is fine. But we shouldn’t claim anything we do just for self-improvement as a spiritual discipline, as something we’re doing for God.

Otherwise, we risk being the kinds of people Jesus condemns in tonight’s Gospel lesson:

• People who practice piety just to be seen as pious, religious people; 
• People who give to charity to be seen by others as generous;
• People who pray so that others will think they’re faithful; 
• People who fast in order to get kudos for others for being heroically self-sacrificing.

But if your intent is to grow closer to Christ and more like Christ through your discipline, it can be a very good thing.

Our Ash Wednesday liturgy mentions four disciplines most closely associated with Lent. These four disciplines might be ones you'll want to consider adopting this year.

But don’t adopt  them with the attitude that, "I'll give them up after Lent." Use Lent as a time to integrate these disciplines into your life, for keeps.

The first Lenten discipline the liturgy mentions is repentance.

Repentance gets a bad rap. It's often seen as a humiliating exercise in which we make ourselves miserable for our sin.

Confession and sorrow for sin are parts of authentic repentance, but the main words used in the Bible for repent tell a fuller story. Simply put, repentance is changing the direction of our lives, changing our minds to think more like God. We refuse to walk away from Christ and instead, turn around to walk toward Him and the way of life He has pioneered for us. [See Hebrews 2:10-13 and Hebrews 12:1-2.]

Knowing that Christ has died to save us from paying the price for our own sins, we ask God for the power to live a life in which the will of God is our highest priority.

Repentance can be a painful thing because it means owning up to our sins, imperfections, and need of God.

But repentance is also a joyful thing because through it, God gives us forgiveness, fresh starts, and the power of the Holy Spirit to help us live the life God has made for all who believe in Jesus.

Christians who choose repentance for their Lenten discipline would do well to adopt the prayer of King David, found in Psalm 139:23-24: “Search me, O God...See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” When we repent, we ask God to show us our errors and change the course our lives are taking, steering us toward Christ and new life!

A second discipline mentioned in our Ash Wednesday liturgy is fasting. Fasting can mean simply doing away with things that get in the way of our following Christ or living life God's way. It may also mean doing without some things that aren’t bad in themselves--things like food, hours on the computer or watching TV, going to sporting events, window shopping at the mall--that keep us from prayer, worship, reading Scripture, attending to our primary relationships, or serving others.

I always suggest replacing the thing from which a person fasts with a positive, God-honoring activity. When we vacate a bad habit, it leaves a hole in our lives and schedules. It’s too tempting to indulge the behavior from which you’re fasting if you don’t have something good to take its place. If you've decided, for example, to give up watching television one night a week, you'll be able to follow through on your discipline and imbue it with some meaning beyond being a forty-day stunt of your will, if you use your usual TV time volunteering at a food bank.

A third discipline mentioned each Ash Wednesday is prayer. Prayer is conversation with God. Of course, believers should, as the Bible teaches, "pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:17). But focused times of prayer, at set times each day, become our special appointments with God, deepening our faith, giving our lives both peace and direction.

One point about these special prayer times I would make is to be certain that you always begin your prayers by reading a chapter from the Bible or a devotion based on a passage of Scripture. Since prayer is conversation with God, it's good to let God get in the first word. Otherwise, our prayers can devolve into monologues about our wants and our feelings.

Psalm 37:4 gives us the priority our prayers should reflect: “Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Put God first. When you do that, your desires will change. God’s priorities will become your priorities. What you pray for will change. God and you will be moving in the same direction. And you’ll find God empowering you to do things outside of your comfort zone.

My buddy Steve Sjogren has a new book out called, Heaven’s Lessons. There, Steve tells about his going to a Best Buy one day, looking for an accessory for his iPhone. He saw a sales clerk who, Steve says, didn’t look different from anybody else there.

But some time before this shopping trip, Steve had been praying that God would help him to do whatever God wanted him to do. Steve assumed that God would help him to do things he was comfortable doing.

As he stood in the Best Buy though, he sensed God telling him, “If you approach that salesman and offer to pray for him, I’ll give you one of my prayers to pray.” That seemed crazy to Steve, walking up to a stranger and offering to pray with him! But then he thought he was probably never going to see this guy again and if things got weird, he could just skip going to Best Buy and shop online for a few months.

Steve walked over to the guy and said, “You obviously don’t know me, and I don’t know you, but sometimes I pray for people, and good things happen. I feel like I’m supposed to pray for you for ten seconds. Would that be all right?”

The guy looked around, evidently to see if the coast was clear, and told Steve, “Yeah, go for it.” Steve closed his eyes and touched the guy’s arm. As he did, he got a clear mental picture of this Best Buy employee sitting in a medical school classroom, wearing a white smock, his initials embroidered on the pocket. Steve prayed, “Lord, on his first day of medical school, show him that he didn’t get there by his own hard work, but by the favor you gave him as his grandmother prayed for him.”

The prayer was over. But when Steve looked up at this guy, “his eyes were wide open. His jaw had dropped. His nose was running, and tears dripped down his cheeks.” “How did you know about me trying to get into medical school?” he asked. “Who are you?” Steve explained, “I’m just a guy who sometimes prays for people.” This young man later became a Christian, a member of Steve’s church, and a doctor.

We aren’t all going to be used by God in the exact same ways God uses Steve when he prays. But when we pray God’s way, delighting in the Lord, putting ourselves at the disposal of God for His purposes and not our own, God will give us the desires of our hearts. And what could anyone desire more than to be a partner with God in fulfilling His plans for the world?

A fourth Lenten discipline is doing works of love. Jesus says that whenever we have cared for those the world regards as "the least of these,” we actually serve Him (Matthew 25:31-46).

There is no place in the world that can’t be made better by the love of God. And there’s no end to what God will empower us to do to pass along the love God gives through Jesus Christ.

One work of love we may undertake is reaching out to a family member who has been ostracized from the family.

Another might be participating in a kindness outreach.

Another, picking up groceries for a homebound neighbor.

It might be doing something many of you often do, sending a card to a shut-in.

Whatever the work of love you do, if it's done in the Name of Jesus Christ, you'll find that what started out as something you thought you were doing to benefit others will, miraculously, benefit you, freeing your from your slavery to yourself, turning you out toward the wider world. You will feel and you will be more alive for it.

Jesus says, "Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for My sake will find it" (Matthew 10:39).

Now, if in what I’ve said (or ever said) I've come across as some "expert" either on Lenten disciplines or on being a Christian, let me close by saying that I am a sinner in daily need of Christ's forgiveness and help to live as the human being I was created by God to be.

I am, like you, a disciple. That word disciple translates the Greek New Testament word, mathetes, and it means student. I’m a student learning what it means to follow Jesus.

And if you’re like me, a sinner learning to follow Jesus, you might consider adopting one of these four Lenten disciplines--repentance, fasting, prayer, works of love--this year.

Your Lenten discipline could do a lot more than reshape your waistline; it could reshape your soul.

It could change your life not just your Lent, but for eternity. Amen

Flash Prayers

[This is the article I've written for the April newsletter of the congregation I serve as pastor, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]

And [Jesus] said, “Woe also to you lawyers! For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not lift a finger to ease them.” (Luke 11:46)

Let’s be clear: In this passage, Jesus wasn't addressing lawyers like those we know today. The lawyers He criticized were experts in not only Biblical commands, but also in the hundreds of human-created laws that were produced in the centuries before Jesus showed up. Pharisees and lawyers (also known as scribes) loved to lay the burdens of these laws on others, Jesus is saying, but they were none too keen to help anyone with the burdens these laws imposed.

I’ve been thinking about that during the Lenten season this year. On Wednesday nights during Lent, we’ve been focusing on prayer by taking a close look at the model prayer Jesus taught, the Lord’s Prayer. (You can find the prayer, presented in slightly different forms in Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4.)

Of course, one of my aims during Lent has been to encourage people to pray more.

But I haven’t wanted and I don’t want to tell people, “You’ve got to pray in a certain way.” If I lay more burdens on people, I’m no better than the scribes and Pharisees Jesus criticized.

The great news is that we Christians don’t have to pray (though Jesus does command prayer), but that we get to pray. Through prayer, we can be drawn closer to God, praise and thank God, confess our sins, and make requests, among other things.

But not everybody should or can pray in the same way.

I have a friend who’s a committed follower of Jesus. He also has ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). I tease him that his brain has synaptic connections where I don’t even have brains!

For Joe (not his real name) to be forced to spend an hour every morning in prayer with a journal in hand would be torture. His mind would flit in a million different directions. He wouldn’t get much praying done. In the end, he would only resent God. Joe isn’t going to pray the way some “experts” (modern day versions of the “lawyers” Jesus criticized) say they should.

Joe’s challenge—and the challenge of every Christian—is to learn how to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) in ways consistent with their own personalities and circumstances.

In his wonderful book, Prayer: The Mightiest Force in the World, the late missionary and educator, Frank Laubach, talked about how he offered “flash prayers.” Walking down a street, he might see a man who looked despondent; Laubach would silently pray, “God help that man.” In India, where he lived and worked for years, he might see a young mother and her brood of children; Laubach would ask God to encourage them. He might see a beautiful sunset or healthy vegetables in the market and simply thank God for these blessings.

Laubach also suggested that Christians could offer these “flash prayers” throughout their days: when waking in the morning, when taking a shower, and in all the brief in-between times in our daily schedules. By this method, we can cover our world and our lives in prayer.

As Laubach describes flash praying, it can even be a lot of fun. He remembers sitting in the back pew of a Mumbai church’s sanctuary one Easter Sunday. He had expected to be inspired and encouraged. Instead, the preacher gave a sermon, which Laubach said, “was hopelessly bad.” What could Laubach do for the poor congregation suffering through this sermon? He decided to pray for all the people he saw sitting in front of him, looking at the backs of their heads as he did so.

As Laubach tells it: “To my astonished joy, every person, almost the moment I prayed, either turned, or bowed his head, or passed his hand over the back of his head. I have never before nor since experienced such a one-hundred per cent response.”

That last sentence should be a cautionary note. We shouldn’t ape what Laubach did on that particular Easter Sunday. He admits that the response he got that day was unique. (Besides, who wants to be burdened with new prayer laws?)

But I do think there’s an important principle to be gleaned from his experience and from his “flash prayers.”

You can pray all day long in Jesus’ Name, in the silence of your heart, no matter what you’re doing at work, at home, with friends, at the ball game, or wherever. And when you do offer prayers like these, God will hear your prayers. I promise.

Try it.

Blessings in Christ,
Pastor Mark