St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church

Contact our Web Master

Discipleship: Knees for Prayer

Matthew 6:5-8

April 24, 2005

1. Glenn McDonald says there are two kinds of churches. One is the ABC Church. This church is alive and well in the United States. It commits itself to imitating corporations. More, and bigger, and best. A large majority of the congregations that call themselves Christian have these ABCs first and foremost in their minds. Attendance, Buildings, and Cash. The ABC church does not have time for prayer, because prayer does not produce results fast enough. Prayer doesn’t really work, these church people say. They are much too busy involved in their programs to pray.

2. But "prayer" is exactly the emphasis of the second kind of church, what McDonald calls the Disciple-making Church. This kind of church is more concerned with imitating Jesus than it is to imitating corporations, making disciples of Jesus than making headlines. Jesus spent much of his time in prayer, and disciple-making churches spend much of their time in prayer. Jesus did spend time teaching and healing and confronting and consoling, but his real ministry was to spend quality time with his Father, and teach his disciples to do the same. Sometimes Jesus prayed fervently, but he never prayed hurriedly or in a superficial manner. He prayed before he made major decisions (before going off into the wilderness for 40 days; before choosing the twelve disciples) and he prayed after major events (after his disciples left on a major mission trip; after the feeding of the 5,000). Rhythms of ‘asking for" and "thanking for" through prayer marked his life. Jesus prayed at specific times every day, on a regular basis. Jesus prayed the way most people eat. Do we wait until we are weak from hunger, no food for a week, at the point of fainting, then crawl to some fast-food place and cry out for some cheese fries? NO! We schedule certain times of the day to EAT. And we plan out our meals [some of us, anyway], carefully shop for just the right ingredients, cook it and place it just so on plates at the table. We plan DELICIOUS meals! And if we don’t plan them and cook them, we go out and find them! We love to eat! How we eat is the way Jesus prayed.

3. McDonald says any church that honestly wants to call itself "Christian" must break away from the ABCs and be reformed into the image of Jesus. As a guide, he identifies six keys to being an effective disciple of Jesus: A heart for Jesus alone; a mind transformed by God’s Word; arms of love, and the fourth key is prayer . . . "knees for prayer" is the tag McDonald gives this key. Prayer, what feeds our spirit. McDonald is pastor of Zion Presbyterian Church near Indianapolis. He surveyed members of his congregation about their own prayer habits. He asked them: "What barriers do you experience when you pray?" Here are some of the answers he received: Not enough time. Any of us relate to the time factor? Too many distractions. How many of us find a little time to pray, and then get distracted? The phone rings; the buzzer on the clothes dryer goes off. Another good one: It doesn’t seem like God answers my prayers, so I just don’t try any more. Has that been your experience? And here’s my favorite; I forget to pray. I am often better at forgetting than I am at remembering! Do any of you have very good intentions to pray, and simply forget? We’ve learned what we can do to prevent hunger pangs; oh that we could learn what to do to prevent "spirit" pangs!

4. How can we go about knocking down these barriers to prayer? Is there one easy thing we can do to get our act together? The answer to that question is one of those good news/bad news answers. The bad news is, "No, there is no quick and easy way to get our prayer life together." But the good news is God is a very big God! God can handle everything that is inside us. Even if (or when) our minds drift to thoughts we would rather no one knew we had, God is the only one who won’t be mortified. God will not tell us to go away and never come back; God will not suggest we find another religion, one that has something other than prayer at its center. And, the best news of all is we will get better! Little by little, as we simply present the ordinary details of our lives to God, as we make God more and more a part of our lives, we will discover one bright morning that we are part of God’s life!

5. Being part of God’s life puts God in charge of our lives. Whatever situation we face, we can either worry or we can pray. When we worry, we might as well tell God "We are in charge of the situation, thank you very much, and we don’t need your help." But when we think we’re in charge, our constant question is "What are we going to do?" However, when we pray as a congregation, our "What are we gonna do?" becomes "Please, God, help us to do what you want us do." Have you done that? Have you ever asked God to help you do want God wants done? The Labyrinth is the best way I’ve ever found to help me listen for God’s voice. I have heard God’s instructions to me walking the Labyrinth more than any other way.

6. Have you ever known someone who asked for God’s help? I’ll never ever forget the Christmas Eve that my daughter lay paralyzed in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit of St. Francis Hospital. Up until that point – about three weeks – I thought her doctor knew everything. He knew instantly that she had Guilliam Barre Syndrome, and he knew the only way to keep her alive was to do a tracheotomy and let the ventilator breathe for her until the paralysis went away. But the paralysis wasn’t going away. In fact, it was creeping higher and higher up her 10-year-old body. I thought he knew how to take care of it. But on Christmas Eve, I learned he didn’t know it all. He and his family came up to the ICU and asked us to come with them to the Chapel. We made a circle of joined hands, and he prayed "Dear God, I’m doing all I can, but I need your help. Help me know what I need to do." The very next day, Christmas Day, her paralysis began to reverse. And on Easter Day she took the first steps she’d taken in over four months. Dr. Mackey could have worried, but he chose instead to pray. And it made all the difference!

7. Paul wrote, "In everything, by prayer and petition, present your requests to God" (Philippians 4:6). But God is not Santa Claus! Praying for what we want is not about fulfilling our own personal wish list! Not everything we want is what God wants for us. Prayer is about placing our hearts within the heart of God. Unless we release the tight grip we have on our dreams, our desires, our ambitions, our life-long loves, God’s will cannot possibly be fulfilled for us. As we grow in prayer, the most wonderful thing happens – we will find that our prayers are less and less about our requests of God, and more and more about God’s requests for us. God has a job for each one of us to do, and is waiting for us to be quiet long enough for us to hear.

To navigate through the web site, click on the buttons at the top or on the side of the pages or on any links within the page.  Use your browser's Back button to return to the previous page if that page does not appear in the buttons available.  External hyperlinks should open in a new window - close it to return to this page.