Helping with Prayer

You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many. 

2 Corinthians 1:11

Maybe I already mentioned this verse to you this week. I just want help you understand what prayer is. Prayer is communicating with God. And in communicating with God, we hear from him most clearly through his word, and we speak in response. Throughout the Christian life, we grow in this communication where it is less about communication and more about communing where we know the presence of our Lord in our lives as we meditate on his word. Another clear aspect of prayer is praise. It is probably the most common act of prayer in scripture. All of the psalms are prayers. Most of our songs that we sing in Church are prayers. So our praise is an essential part of our prayers. Third, we’ll also see in the Psalms words of confession. Psalm 51 is the most famous prayer admitting our sinful nature and our need of God. 

All of these things frame prayer in a way that we might not have thought prayer was for. Our world is tempted to think of prayer simply as asking God for help. This isn’t a bad instinct, but it is incomplete. Christian prayer flowing from communication, praise, and confession is grounded prayer, and only in this wholistic prayer do we see the value of praying for things and people. If we don’t pray wholistically, out of a relationship with God, we often end up making of God as a wishmaker. In other words, we pray to get what we want. The problem comes when we don’t get what we want. What happens then? If we’ve not cultivated a life of communion with God, then we might imagine God is not there. Or he is silent. But when we cultivate a life of devotion when we rise and sit, when we go to bed and wake up, we understand that we are not the center of the universe. God in his providence (his-seeing into the future) and ordination (his ordering of the world) is at work, and we are not the center of all salvation history, but he is at work through us. He will meet us in our prayers, but he will not always answer them in the way we want. He will answer it in the way that is for our good. And look here, this is where 2 Corinthians 1:11 is so interesting: Paul mentions, ‘You also must help us by prayer…’ Wow. We pray, and through our weak words help others. 

When we think of someone who is gifted with ‘helping,’ we think of a person who is able-bodied, strong, servant hearted, jumps on a dime to do whatever is needed to help out. But then here, we see that someone who is a prayer is a helper. That means the person who is homebound can be gifted with helping as they pray for others. And we can pray for our missionary friends who are in Spain to help them, and we can pray for our brother who had to visit the hospital and help him in his time of need. And we all then give thanks for that help. So don’t give up hope: cultivate in your whole live a life of prayer as you seek to know and love our Lord more and as you seek to help our brothers and sisters around the world.