Pray for Me

Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me,
    for in you my soul takes refuge; 
in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge,
    until the destroying storms pass by. I cry to God Most High,
    to God who fulfills his purpose for me.
He will send from heaven and save me.      from Ps. 57

 As a pastor, I frequently get "prayer requests."  People are going through some difficulty, or they know someone who is, and they ask me to pray for them.  I am more than happy to do so, and we also print people's names in our Sunday bulletin so that other church members can pray for them as well.  I do wonder, however, if our prayer patterns don't sometimes get a little off kilter.

We Presbyterians very intentionally do not have priests.  We believe in "the priesthood of all believers" and do not think pastors have any better access to God than other people. Because we pastors lead corporate worship, we often lead the congregation in prayer, often sharing prayer requests with the larger congregation in so doing, but that does not mean a prayer counts more when the pastor says it.

Another problem with our prayer patterns sometimes develops when it becomes primarily a divine request line.  Prayer should be a way that we draw close to God, the way we interact with God, engaging in kind of shared intimacy.  But sometimes it becomes little more than requests for favors, a formalized practice meant to get results. And this probably contributes to the idea that such requests are best left to the pros, the pastors.

But for me, the biggest issue with prayer is about trusting that it matters, that God is actually engaged in my life and the lives of others.  For me, prayer can become mostly inner soul searching.  All too often, I don't come to God with something concrete unless I'm at wits end and have no where else to turn.  Such prayers can have a "This probably won't help, but it can't hurt" sense about them, a little like buying a lottery ticket in the midst of a financial crisis.

I think I was so turned off by some Christians who seem to treat God as a genie in a bottle who always come through if you have enough faith, pray correctly, etc, that I avoid anything that sounds like them.  But when I cannot talk with God about what I feel that I need, what sort of relationship is that?  Perhaps God will have to help me realize that I don't need it after all, but such a conversation isn't likely to take place without my speaking up.

Perhaps this is where faith really comes in with regards to prayer.  It's not so much about God doing what we want if we have faith.  Rather it is about having enough faith truly to entrust our lives to God, to believe that God is intimately involved in them and impacts what happens in our lives.  Not that God is any sort of heavenly Santa Clause. Faith and prayer are about trusting that God acts to shape the trajectory of our lives and the events in them so that we begin to discover who we truly are and what our true purpose is.

And when I can trust that God acts in my life, then I can also trust that God acts in the lives of others, and so I will want to pray for them as well.  And so I'll pray for you, and I hope you'll pray for me.

Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.