Reflection of the Week - 16th May 2023

By Tim Littleford

Posted May 16, 2023 in Faith

The Necessity of Prayer

It has been my incapacity to help the one that I love the most in this world that has driven me to pray.

For a long time I didn't really understand the necessity of prayer. Why pray if what God wants to happen will happen? Why pray if it doesn't impact the actual world and people we actually live with? Why pray if it's only akin to mindfulness and meditation? And very honestly, why pray when God does not always give me what I want?

I have carried these questions in my mind and body for most of my life. But then I came face to face with the suffering of the one that I love and my illusion of being in control completely shattered. This world is dense, dark and mysterious and really, we are barely in control of even our own bodies. My idolatrous assumption that if I just worked harder or found the right answer then mountains would move, came up against an impossible barrier. I came to the end of myself. So I went to the only one whose business was mountain moving. I began, through tears and on my knees, to contend in prayer.

And I discovered the necessity of prayer.

Because God is actually there, and God is a person in which I can get to know. God is not like an unknowable cosmic autocrat, God is like a parent who desires a relationship with us. If God was not there, and was not knowable, why do any of this? Why play ‘church?’ It's meaningless.

But God is there, calling each of us by name, desiring to converse with us. To speak and to listen. To sit with us in our joys and sufferings. Evelyn Underhill once said, ‘God holds you when you cannot hold him.’

My love still suffers, and I don't understand or know why.

But can I tell you, God has never been so close to me in my whole life. Jesus said in Matthew 7:

‘Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.’

I am asking, seeking and knocking and doors are opening all over the place, except the one I really, really want to be opened. You can bet God and I are having a robust conversation about this.

But the fact that I can approach the God of the universe like a child, stubborn to get what he wants, is a blessing beyond comprehension. God is not afraid of a little wrestle.

Prayer increases our imagination of what is possible in this life. The fact that we can speak with the God who holds the universe - the fact that the God of the universe holds us - should shatter our categories of what can and can't be done.

Dead things can be made alive. Lost things can be found again. Injustice can be put right. The Church can be made new again.

Arnold D. Hunt in his history of Methodism in SA said:

‘The expectation of recurring revivals of religion was common to all the Methodist bodies. It was natural that such a hope should beat strongly throughout Methodism. It was believed that what had happened in the days of Wesley could be repeated.’

Do we still have that hopeful expectation? Do we still pray that what happened in the days of Wesley would be repeated here in South Australia in 2023?

There is a global movement of non-stop prayer blooming right now, the spiritual heritage of the same Moravians that so catalysed Wesley and Methodism. This movement is called 24/7 Prayer. 24-7 Prayer is an international, interdenominational prayer movement, with a vision to revive the church and rewire the culture through non-stop night and day prayer.

What could God do with us, the Uniting Church in South Australia, if we got on our knees day and night and contended with God in prayer for life, justice and renewal?

After all, in the words of Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury:

‘We're not just the Rotary Club with a pointy roof … that's why prayer must come first. Without prayer there will be no renewal of the church, and without a renewal of the church, there is very little hope for the world.’

References:

The Spiritual Formation of Evelyn Underhill - Robyn Wrigley-Carr, Page 96

This Side Of Heaven - Arnold D. Hunt, Page 22

Justin Welby, https://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/

24/7 Prayer at https://www.24-7prayer.com/.

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