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November 2006, Page 8.
Index of articles:
by subject,
by date.
In this issue:
(November 2006)
Be strong,
Remember me,
Don't wanna job,
Power of prayer?
In our “Questions to the Clergy” column we try to answer all questions, no matter how difficult, without hesitation or deviation ...
The power of prayer
Q. How do you reconcile a belief in the power of prayer with the fact that sometimes we pray and nothing seems to happen?
A. I think I might sum up my position as being: "I don't believe in the ‘power of prayer’ as such, but I do believe in the power of God."
Sometimes we imagine that our prayers put God into the position of being obliged to do what we ask. But they don't. The connection between our prayers and their results is not like that between a switch and a light bulb. God has the sovereign right to decide what he wants to do, irrespective of how often we have asked, or with what sincerity, or how many other Christians we have managed to recruit to try to persuade him to our point of view.
One of the strange things about my autistic son (Neil) is that he tends to see other people not as people, but rather as objects. He naturally assumes that if he speaks then I’m supposed do what he says, just like when he presses the 'start' button on the microwave and it starts. It is hard for him to see that I am a separate person and I don't necessarily do what he wants. I try to do what's in his best interests - but Neil and I often have different ideas of what his best interests are, particularly when it concerns foods which affect his behaviour. I wonder if we are sometimes a bit 'autistic' in our view of God and the effects of prayer?
When my other son (Peter) was born a lady in our church suggested that if I had more faith I'd pray about Peter’s Down's Syndrome and God would take it away. (Fortunately we clergy are pretty bomb-proofed against this type of comment - we've heard them enough to get thick skins!) My answer is, roughly speaking, that I don't have any difficulty believing that God could remove the Down's Syndrome from Peter if he wished (although how Peter would then still be Peter is a bit of a puzzle to me), but I don't see how my praying about it could compel God to remove the Down's Syndrome. It's right for me to pray, but God has the sovereign power to say 'no' to my prayer. God isn't answerable to me for his decisions. That may be tough, but it's reality.
I don't think the bible ever says that God is obliged to do what we say in prayer. Most of the verses on the subject hedge such promises about in various ways - that we pray "in Christ" (that's to say in line with Christ's wishes) or some other such caveat. Prayer is not a mechanism for getting God to fall in line with our will. Prayer is at least as much about getting us to fall in line with God's will.
John Hartley