I subscribe to ‘A Slice Of Infinity’ from Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. I generally find their daily devotions ok – most of them are quite apologetic/exhortive in nature, which isn’t always the best thing to be reading on a daily basis.
However every now and then along comes a corker of a devotion – I don’t know if it’s just my mood or if the words I read really hit the nail on the head. Here is such one from today’s ‘Slice’.
–ooOOoo–
Does Prayer Work?
Betsy Childs
Every couple of years it seems that a new team of researchers decides to put prayer to the test. There is quite a bit of variety among the focuses of such studies, which range from examining the effectiveness of prayer on in vitro fertilization to the effectiveness of intercessory prayer for cardiac patients undergoing surgery; essentially, however, each asks the question, “Does Prayer Work?” The latest study of the kind has been conducted by researchers at Duke University Medical Center. Like many of its predecessors, this study found no conclusive evidence that prayer decreases medical complications or increases the life span of those patients observed.(1)
Should the negative results of these scientific studies deflate believers everywhere and make us more hesitant to expect answers to our prayers? Not at all. Bishop Tom Wright explains the problem inherent to this sort of study:
“[I]f God is God you can’t put him into a test-tube. Remember the children in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? When Lucy had got through the wardrobe into Narnia, the other children tried to test her claim by getting into the wardrobe themselves to see if there was a way through. There wasn’t. Only later on, when they got in one day to hide, did they find themselves in a snowy wood with a lamppost, a family of beavers, and the rumour of a lion called Aslan.”
“And one of the things they learned about Aslan was that he wasn’t a tame lion. You couldn’t get him to do tricks. He was powerful, wise, and loving, but not tame. The question was not, could you get Aslan to do things for you, but, could Aslan enlist you in his service?”(2)
Wright goes on to make the point that the correct question should not be “Does Prayer Work?” but “Does God Work?” We gravely underestimate the creator of the world when we view prayer as a technique that can be mastered to manipulate Him. The effectiveness of our prayers does not turn on how well we know how to pray but on how well we know the one to whom we are praying. A truly successful prayer is not one that has secured an affirmative answer to our petition, but one that has brought us closer to the one we’ve petitioned.
When we pray, we approach the throne of an omnipotent king. Such a thought should inspire so much awe in us that we nearly forget the cares that brought us there. Once we’ve made our request, we wait for the king’s answer, knowing that He has attended to us and need only give the word to fulfill our plea. But when He answers us, if He presents to us a different plan, we must bow to his will. By coming into the presence of the king, we have pledged ourselves to his service. We have opened the door to friendship with the Ancient of Days, a prospect both terrifying and exhilarating. Bishop Wright concludes, “Once you start doing business with Jesus, there’s no knowing where it will end. What do you want? Do you really want to ask Jesus, God’s anointed one, the Son of David, to start doing things in your life? Because once you do, there’s no going back.”
Prayer always works. But beware: through it God may work upon us in ways we would never have anticipated.
(1) http://www.dukehealth.org/news/9136
(2) A sermon for the Eucharist at Hamsterly on the Last Sunday after Trinity, 26 October 2003, by the Bishop of Durham.
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