“We do not even know how we ought to pray, but through our inarticulate groans the Spirit himself is pleading for us.”

(Romans 8:26-27)

David Jenkins, the Oxford Theologian, said, “the last things for a Christian are the miracles and petitionary prayer.”  I take it that Jenkins means by this that the hardest part of being a Christian is to accept as real the occurrence of miracles and the practice of petitionary prayer.  Jenkins thinks the Christian gets over all the other lower hurdles of Christian faith and practice much easier than these last two high hurdles.

I don’t know how this statement strikes you, but it shocked me when I first heard it:  “The last things for a Christian are the miracles and petitionary prayer.”  But then I thought of some of the times I’ve heard friends and relations of mine say in the midst of some very perplexing problem or distressing situation: “I don’t know how I ought to pray about this,” and their implication was either: “You pray for me,” or, “I’m not going to pray about it since it is too perplexing and knotty a problem.”

Some years ago, in that austere, grey citadel of Presbyterianism, St. Giles High Kirk in Edinburgh, I heard the pastor, preaching on prayer, say:  “Modern man does not believe that prayer is going to end the war in Vietnam, nor feed the starving in Biafra.  The pain of man is not to be removed by someone out there in space, but by some man skilled in medical science here.  Modern man does not really expect deliverance from personal guilt or social evils to come to him mysteriously from someone out there, but from the efforts of man.”

Whether I like to admit it or not, the way the tide seems to be running in our time is that the last things for the Christian are the miracles and petitionary prayer.

Of course the gospels represent Jesus as saying that we make a false antithesis when we determine to try either human effort or prayer.  St. Luke records Jesus as saying to His disciples in a parable “that men ought always to pray and not to faint.” (Luke 18:1)  And the parable he told was the most unpromising human analogy we could imagine – “The case of a poor woman without any standing or influence in the community appealing for redress to an unjust judge who “feared not God, neither regarded man.”  Could there be a more hopeless case?  She appealed many times but the judge would not move a finger to help her.  What more can she do?  She can do nothing, says Jesus, but appeal again, and yet again; until at last she tires him out and he says, “I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me,” or as may very likely be the true translation, “lest she end by scratching my eyes out.” Could there be a stronger statement of the efficacy of importunate prayer?

St. Luke tells us that the moral of this parable is that men ought always to pray and not to faint.  The word “faint” will, however, come to many people today as a surprise.  We are so apt to interpret the meaning of prayer as if Jesus had said men ought always to pray and not to work.  We have come to think of prayer as an alternative to effort.  We speak as if there were two contrasted ways of facing the evils of our mortal lot – we may either fold our hands and pray about them, or we may pull ourselves together and do what we can to mend them.  And standing as we do in the tradition of what the philosophers call “Western Activism,” you and I are almost sure to regard the latter as the nobler and manlier way.

“But it is quite plain that our Lord’s way of looking at prayer is as different from this as the night is from the day.  What He said was that men ought always to pray and not to faint, or, as the modern versions have it, not to lose heart.  He regarded prayer not as an alternative to effort, but as an accompaniment of effort and an alternative to despairing acquiescence and inaction.” (John Bailie — Christian Devotion)

St. Paul is in complete agreement with his Lord in this teaching on prayer.  We find the missionary apostle going a step farther in the 8^th chapter of his Roman letter, where he says that the persistent, importunate, never ceasing practice of prayer by the Christian is necessary in order that the Holy Spirit may be our teacher in prayer.  Listen to Paul: “The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness.  We do not even know how we ought to pray, but through our inarticulate groans the Spirit himself is pleading for us, and God who searches our inmost being knows what the Spirit means, because he pleads for God’s own people in God’s own way.” (Romans 8:26-28)

Therefore, when a person says to pastor or friend: “I don’t know how to pray about this, you pray for me,” the pastor or friend ought to pray with and for that person, not because the pastor or friend knows better how to pray, but because all people ought always to pray and not to faint.  But the one in perplexity or suffering ought not to cease his prayers simply because he doesn’t know how he ought to pray, for if he does he will be missing the most valuable ingredient in the human situation, namely the guidance, training and interpretation of the Holy Spirit who comes to our aid in the venture of prayer.

None if us, by ourselves, can pray aright  “We do not know what to ask for because we cannot see a day, or even an hour ahead, and because, even in any situation, we do not know what is best for us.  But pray we must, for prayer is the divine in us appealing to the God above us.  As St. Paul sees it, all we can do is to bring to God an inarticulate sigh of appeal, and the Holy Spirit will translate that sigh of ours to God. . . The Spirit is the interpreter of the prayers of people. The Spirit not only brings God to us but also brings us to God.  So often in prayer all words seem inadequate; so often when life is at its most bewildering, and its most wounding and heart-breaking, there is nothing but a dumb longing for God.  But that is prayer at its highest; and that is when the Spirit breaks in and interprets and translates our prayers to God.” (William Barclay, The Promise of the Spirit)

However, the ministry of the Sprit to us in prayer is not limited to the God directed side of interpreting our unutterable longings to God, but in that human-divine encounter the Holy Spirit is teaching us, maturing us and shaping us.  We cannot ever know the full reason for our Savior’s command that we be importunate in our prayers, tirelessly, shamelessly beseeching the Eternal, but there are some things which ought to be very clear to us as resulting from such petitionary faithfulness.

For one thing, while we persevere our patience is strengthened.  Also, our motives are purified and our sympathies are broadened.  I once knew a mother praying for her son’s safety on the battlefield who found she was prompted by the Spirit to include in her petitions the names of other young men in like jeopardy, and the Spirit nudged her to offer her services for cheering and encouraging other men in uniform whom she could reach in her own city while her own son was far away and out of the reach of her hand.

But most important of all, as we remain faithful in petition we begin to listen to what God is saying to us in and through the situations we present to Him. St. Paul’s mysterious affliction called by him, “my thorn in the flesh,” was the subject of Paul’s repeated petitions.  The petition was not granted, but Paul says God did something better: He gave him the grace to accept it and to go on with his mission in life unencumbered by it.  This is how the Holy Spirit helps us in our prayers.

A cousin of John Baillie, that great Christian scholar whose book The Diary of Private Prayer has been such a blessing to thousands, observed that there were three focal points in the bookshelf lined study of that famous Scottish saint. One focal point was his desk where he sat to read and study and write his books and addresses.  Another focal point was his big leather chair where he sat for conference and conversation with students, colleagues and friends.  “The third focal point was the prayer bench by the window with its little pile of well worn versions of the scriptures and devotional books.  There, at the times he was sure to be alone, John Baillie read and thought and worshipped.  And through that daily faithful discipline of will and mind and soul it became true that the great theologian and church statesman was foremost a man holy and humble of heart.” (Isabel M. Forrester – Introduction to Christian Devotion)

Are not these the three focal points every real life ought to have: First that point where we bring our energies, creative capacities, and polished skills to bare upon the work of the world, second, that point where we meet people in interpersonal exchanges, giving and seeking help, which is on a little highesr level than the work-a-day world.  And finally, that point, the highest of all, which is the threshold of eternity, where we can be more or less open to the ultimate power of the universe – the Wholly Other, Perfect Truth, Righteousness and Love?

The teaching of the New Testament is that the treasures of the Spiritual Universe are available to us through the ministries of the Holy Spirit.  The New Life brought into this world through Christ is not completely ours now, though Christians have begun to enter into it.  Much of its glory waits to be revealed and experienced in another world, but we are able to begin to enjoy the first fruits of that glory.  We have received our first installment payment of that rich inheritance.  This is the Holy Spirit’s gift to us.

But these spiritual treasures of peace, wisdom, joy, the power to want the good and to be good, and to know how to pray are brought and delivered to us by the ministry of the Holy Spirit.  Have we failed to cash in on this available collateral because we have treated petitionary prayer as one of the last things for the Christian to get around to in this marvelous scientific age which is fast becoming the most incredible of apocalyptic times?

In Tennyson’s, Passing of Arthur, the defeated and dying King who has seen the bankruptcy of his kingdom, his marriage, his circle of friends, still affirms his faith in prayer, saying: “All that I ever learned in wife and friend is traitor to my peace; and all my realm, reels back into the beast, and is no more.  The old order changeth yielding place to new, and God fulfills himself in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world – Pray for my soul.  More things are wrought through prayer than this world dreams of.  Wherefore, let thy voice rise like a fountain… day and night, for what are men better than sheep or goats if, knowing God, they lift not hands in prayer.”

So, if about us the storms gather and the skies darken and we are constrained to cease praying because we know not what to pray, let us hold on to our petitionary prayers, not as an incredible last resort like the ship-wrecked sailors in Shakespeare’s Tempest, crying, “All lost, All lost, To prayers, To prayers.”  But rather let us steadfastly serenely continue in prayer because prayer remains man’s first, and last, and best hope of earth and heaven.

Let us bow in silent prayer.

Pastoral Prayer

Let us remember God’s promise to his servant King Solomon – “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their evil ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

O Lord our God, who hast given us this good land through the faith and courageous deeds of our Founding Fathers, we would humble ourselves in Thy Presence, confess the evil of our ways, and plead for Thy mercy.  We have been careless of our spiritual defenses.  We have gone after false gods.  We have trusted in our own wisdom which is folly; we have boasted in our righteousness which is nothing more than dirty rags; we have prided ourselves in our wealth which is worthless junk; and we have sought our security in our military might which is a tissue tiger before Thy omnipotent glory.

We implore Thee to send the cleansing fire of Thy Holy Spirit to purge us of all unworthiness.  Create in us clean hearts, O God, and renew a right spirit in every one of us, and guide us in a straight path by the light of Thy truth.

We pray for Thy church, O Lord, as she stands now confused about her mission, in conflict over small matters, shorn of her strength by her double mindedness, and face to face with a great new task.  Grant Thy church, O Lord, by Thy grace, renewal and power to become Thy saving instrument in all the world.

We pray for our nation, O Thou King of all Kingdoms, that our leaders may be lead of Thee and all our common life dedicated to the service of Thy will, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen