Campus Alpha
Week 4: Why & How Should I Pray?
Jamie Haith Duration: 32’36”
10:00:00
WHY & HOW SHOULD I PRAY?
10:00:06
What is prayer? I think prayer is rather like the easy meal for which I became
famous at university: tuna and baked bean curry. A can of tuna, can of baked
beans, three spoons of curry powder—mix, heat and serve. Awesome! I don’t
know why you’re reacting like that!
10:00:20
Tuna & Baked Bean Curry
10:00:31
And you may well be wondering how on earth is that like prayer? I’ll tell you! Are
you ready? No real recipe, utterly unique to the individual, deeply satisfying—
dare I say, life-changing! You know, you can mock, but I bet you go home and
try it. We could even have it next week, if you like! Actually, hands up: who
would like…? Okay. One or two!
10:00:57
Okay, so if it’s not actually like prayer in itself, then at least eating it will get you
praying, I’m sure! Whilst tuna and baked bean curry seems to be taking a little
while to catch on with the population at large (which I find very odd), it would
appear that prayer is actually quite popular.
10:01:16
For about three years up until a couple of years ago, I was a hospital chaplain. I
was a church minister on duty, walking around the wards in my priest shirt (and
trousers, obviously!) just trying to kind of meet the needs of any patients that
were there and help out whatever way I could. And what was interesting to me
was that probably—I don’t know, rough guess—20 per cent of the people that
you would talk to would actually want to be talking about God: converse about
‘Is there a God?’ and all that sort of thing.
HTB—STUDENT ALPHA
04) Why & How Should I Pray?—Jamie Haith
2010
1/17
10:01:47
But the vast majority, if you want a statistic, 99 per cent (there you go) would
actually welcome the offer and receive prayer. Now, you say, ‘Hang on, these
are people who are in hospital. They’re at the lowest point and they’re scared.
They need comfort. They’re suffering. Of course they’re going to pray.’ But
surveys have shown that in the UK, here in the UK at least, in what is
predominantly a sceptical, secular country, 75 per cent of people surveyed say
that—you know, not just people in hospital; generally in the population—they
admit to praying at least once a week.
10:02:26
Why is that? I believe it’s because deep down inside all of us there is this drive,
this need to be connected to something bigger, higher, deeper: I believe that’s
God. And I think it makes sense: that if God does exist—and for most people
that concept is at least a possibility—and if he created everything, if God
created everything, then surely we would want to talk to him about it all.
10:03:08
But when you pray, go into your room,
close the door and pray to your Father,
who is unseen. Then your Father, who
sees what is done in secret, will reward
you.
Matthew 6:6
10:03:02
And that’s it, really: prayer is talking to God. Jesus said this: ‘When you pray, go
into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then
your Father, who sees what’s done in secret, will reward you.’
10:03:20
Why do we pray? We pray because Jesus did, and he taught us to do the same.
That’s the first reason. He doesn’t start there by saying, ‘If you pray, go into your
room’; he says ‘when’. He assumes that we will. And in a way, it’s very natural
for human beings to pray. We were created for this relationship.
10:03:40
Second reason why we pray is because that’s how we develop this relationship
with God. We don’t just step into this relationship and then that’s it; that prayer
is the way that we develop that relationship. ‘Go into your room, close the door,
pray to your Father...’ ‘Pray to your Father’—this idea your Father will hear you.
Prayer is all about deepening that relationship, your relationship with your Father.
HTB—STUDENT ALPHA
04) Why & How Should I Pray?—Jamie Haith
2010
2/17
10:04:03
I also love the assumption there that we can pray at any time—you just make
the decision. Jesus doesn’t say, ‘When you pray, go to the Temple at the
appointed time.’ You know, he’s not saying you need to be kneeling in a church
building on a special Sunday hour: that’s the only place you can pray. Just make
a decision, and pray! Constant access to God. Constant access to talk to him.
10:04:34
For through him we both have access to
the Father by one Spirit.
Ephesians 2:18
10:04:31
In Ephesians 2:18, we read this: ‘through him’ [through Jesus] ‘we both’ [and
that’s talking about the Jews and non-Jews, Gentiles] – ‘through him we both
have access to the Father by one Spirit.’ Any time, we can just draw alongside
and talk to him, be with him.
10:04:53
And it’s wonderful, the whole Trinity is involved there: the Holy Spirit gives us
access into the presence of the Father through what Jesus has done on the
cross, as we’ve been looking at in previous weeks.
10:05:04
I’m going to age myself now—not hard! I remember the days before ATMs,
before cash tills. I sound like a dinosaur now, don’t I! There was a time that if you
didn’t get your money out of the bank at 3 pm on a Friday afternoon, you would
have no money for the entire weekend—no cashola! And so there’d be this mad
rush at sort of just before 3 pm every Friday. Then ATMs and cash tills came in,
and you could just put your card into the machine 24/7, and the whole of the
riches of your bank account would be there on tap at the press of a button!
10:05:43
Now, we take that for granted. I very quickly grew to take that for granted—until
I went on the holiday of a lifetime with two of my best mates, Jez and Si. And we
went down to South Africa. And we got to go across to Namibia and into the
Namib Desert. It was the most fantastic trip! And we were going out one day into
the desert to look at sand dunes and rocks and things, and I thought, you know,
‘Okay, I’m going to take my camera, but I don’t want my wallet. But I want my
stuff to be safe. So I’ll just take my card out of my wallet and put it in my camera
case.’ What I thought I was going to find in the desert that I was going to use my
debit card thing for, I don’t know!
HTB—STUDENT ALPHA
04) Why & How Should I Pray?—Jamie Haith
2010
3/17
10:06:23
So there I am. And after the trip I get back and I’m going, ‘Where’s my debit
card? It’s gone! My credit card’s gone!’ And what must have happened was, I
was out sort of lightweight in the desert ready for action, and I must have
whipped out the camera to take a picture of a tree, and the credit card must
have gone at that point. And I hate losing things, but I especially... You know,
because I just want to know what happened to it. Do you ever wonder what
happened to something that you lost? And to this day, I’m convinced that that
credit card was dragged down into the burrow of a gerbil, where he uses it as a
little partition in his house! It’s the kind of thing I think about. He just sort of sits
and does his hair in the hologram in the morning. Okay, and so…!
10:07:11
But the point of telling you that is that for the rest of the holiday there was no
way I could get access to my money back in England; I had to just borrow
money off my friends the entire time—which was great, ‘cos I never paid it back.
No, I did!
10:07:24
And, you know, we take it for granted that we can just... You’ve got this money;
you can get access to it. And the Holy Spirit and this whole idea of prayer is a
little bit like that. We have constant access to God. It’s not just at specific times,
you know, that you can go and you can kneel down and you can pray. It’s
actually all the time, 24/7 we can pray.
10:07:48
It’s the most extraordinary thing. ‘Access’ is a wonderful word in the New
Testament. It’s because of Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, that we can access
and enjoy the presence of the Father—access the riches of his presence, if you
like.
10:08:02
That partition that we talked about before, that barrier, that wall—I brought a
book with me, actually: I could do it again. Do you remember that illustration:
this wall between us and God? Because of Jesus it’s gone. And Jesus says, ‘Go
on, just close the door. Pray to your Father,’ just like he did.
10:08:22
I was marvelling at that again. I was reading it earlier. It’s extraordinary: ‘Pray to
your Father’ in the quiet, in your bedroom. Just go, close the door, and talk to
him. Let me ask you: where are you at in life? Or to put it another way, who are
you when no one’s looking—when you’ve closed the bedroom door, you’re just
by yourself, when no one’s watching?
HTB—STUDENT ALPHA
04) Why & How Should I Pray?—Jamie Haith
2010
4/17
10:08:55
You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Psalm 139
10:08:52
Let me read you this from Psalm 139. It says:
Lord, you have searched me and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all of my ways.
10:09:07
You know, we can be totally ourselves with God, because he sees it all anyway!
When you read something like that, you know—and like Jesus said, he sees
what is done in secret: there is an awesomeness to that, there’s a fearfulness to
that. It’s like ‘Whoo!’ But there’s also a beauty to that, an extraordinary intimacy in
that—that we are completely known by God. You are known!
10:09:31
This is so far removed from the sort of dry rules, restrictive religious practices
that we kind of think of when we think of Christianity. This is a dynamic, pure
friendship with God—the relationship for which we were created. It’s where we
find the very meaning, the very purpose of our lives.
10:09:50
We pray because Jesus told us to. We also pray because that’s how this
relationship develops. Third reason we pray is because Jesus says there are
rewards to prayer: ‘Then your Father, who sees what’s done in secret, will
reward you.’
10:10:05
And the greatest reward, the most extraordinary natural consequence, if you
like, of prayer is that when we pray, we experience God’s love. We experience
his presence.
10:10:19
In his presence there is fullness of joy...
Psalm 16:11
HTB—STUDENT ALPHA
04) Why & How Should I Pray?—Jamie Haith
2010
5/17
10:10:17
Psalm 16 says this: ‘In his presence’—in the presence of God—‘there is fullness
of joy…’ ‘In his presence there is fullness of joy.’ What that’s getting at is this
idea that no matter what the circumstances that we are living through, joy is still
available. Joy is not happiness. There’s a difference, there’s a distinction there.
Happiness, if you like, is reliant upon the happenings—and that can be good or
bad, for anyone. Joy, what this is talking about, ‘fullness of joy’ that comes from
knowing God’s presence. And you can know that in good times and bad—and
actually especially in the difficult times.
10:11:09
Do not be anxious about anything, but
in everything, by prayer and petition,
with thanksgiving, present your
requests to God.
10:11:17
And the peace of God, which
transcends all understanding, will
guard your hearts and your minds in
Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:6
10:11:03
So often we go about carrying guilt and anxiety and fear. St Paul says: ‘Don’t be
anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with
thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And’—what’s the reward of that?—
‘the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and
minds in Christ Jesus.’
10:11:26
Prayer brings profound peace, brings deep spiritual fulfilment, contentment. As
we pray we find that the spiritual thirst that we have, that we all have, is
satisfied. And what I’ve found is that prayer changes me. Prayer changes us.
10:11:49
But prayer not only changes us; it also changes situations. Now, I think it’s worth
saying here: I don’t think it’s possible to prove to the cynic, to the sceptic: ‘Okay,
here’s a list of answered prayers. There you go—proof that God exists!’ I don’t
think it would work like that. Having said that, I have seen a lot of, if you like,
coincidences when I have prayed. And all of my experience leads me to actually
in balance, believe, yes, prayer is real and it works. It changes things.
HTB—STUDENT ALPHA
04) Why & How Should I Pray?—Jamie Haith
2010
6/17
10:12:22
One of the most sort of obvious examples to me, I remember, a few years ago.
My wife and I were driving around in this beaten-up old car, Ford Orion—so like
you’re holding it together as we drove down the road, it was one of those kind of
cars! And we didn’t really have enough money to get a new car, and yet this
thing was falling apart and we needed to get around.
10:12:44
And my wife was over on the east coast visiting her sister, and she phoned me
up and she said, ‘The car has died. It is dead! The breakdown people, they’ve
fixed it, they’ve said that it’ll do a few more miles, but it really needs to be
scrapped.’ I was like, ‘Oh, great!’ So I said, ‘Okay, come to church tonight.’ It
was a Wednesday. I said, ‘Come to the Alpha course tonight,’ because she
wasn’t on it, but I said, ‘Drive up’—it was before we had kids, and so we didn’t
leave the kids at home! And she drove in. And I said, ‘Well, what we’ll do is we’ll
drive up to your parents up north, and we’ll go to a car auction. We’ll gather
together whatever money we have, see what we can buy.’
10:13:22
And so she comes along to the church that evening. At church, of course we’re
praying! We’re like, ‘Lord, we haven’t got the money for a new car. What are we
going to do?’ And at that church that night this woman comes up to me, who I
didn’t really know that well, I have to be honest. And she said to me, she goes:
‘Have you got a car?’ And I’m thinking, ‘It’s rubbish! Do I say – I’ve got to be
honest – “yeah, we’ve got a car”?’ And she says, ‘Well, I don’t know what it is,
but I was praying and I feel like I should give you mine!’ And I’m like... ‘What is
it?’ No, no, I wasn’t! No, I was! And so she says, ‘Would you like it?’ And I’m
like, ‘I can’t believe it! Just prayed, we’ve been praying. But the timing of this!
We were just about to drive and go and get another car with what we...’ And she
gave us her car, and it was the most cool car, and it was brilliant for years to
come—until we had to get a really naff family car. But there you go, so it’s a sad
tale!
10:14:29
But, you know, that’s a wonderful story. But I’m not alone in that. I’ve heard story after
story after story of people saying the same thing about God’s provision and God
hearing and changing situations, whatever those situations might be. But I would
say, you know, don’t take my word for it—talk to God yourself, see what happens!
10:14:47
But the big question is does God always answer prayer? Actually, I believe the
answer to that question is yes. Because at the heart of prayer—the ultimate
answer, if you like—is knowing God better. And so that is always a yes.
HTB—STUDENT ALPHA
04) Why & How Should I Pray?—Jamie Haith
2010
7/17
Experiencing him more deeply.
10:15:20
Parking Ticket
10:15:07
And I think God does answer prayer practically as well, but we don’t always get
what we want. It may not be the answer that we’re looking for. If you return to
your car and it’s been parked badly and you’ve got a parking ticket attached to
it, there’s no point sort of standing there and praying, ‘Lord, let this parking ticket
turn into a very large banknote right now!’ It’s not going to happen! It’s obvious
that’s not going to happen.
10:15:32
But there are also heartbroken, profoundly painful prayers that never seem to
get an answer, and that is really hard for us to understand. On the face of it, it
makes no sense. Why wouldn’t that happen, if I’m asking, it makes sense for it
to happen, it would make life better for all involved. And I know that I have many
questions, unanswered prayers, which I will have to wait till heaven, see God
face to face, to get them answered. And when those difficult dark times come—
which they do—the prayer is then that we would simply be able to keep praying,
that we’d be able to simply keep communicating, keep trusting.
10:16:20
When a train goes through a tunnel and
it gets dark, you don’t throw away the
ticket and jump off. You sit still and
trust the engineer.
Corrie Ten Boom
10:16:16
As the writer and speaker, the late Corrie Ten Boom puts it, she says: ‘When a
train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and
jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.’ You sit still and trust. There’s often
no reason we can see. We just need to trust. But that’s still prayer.
10:16:54
Barrier
10:16:43
But also, the New Testament tells us that there are some things that can
actually stop our prayers from being effective—for example, unconfessed sin:
things wrong in our lives that can cause a barrier between us and God. Don’t
misunderstand me: Jesus is the friend of sinners. If we had to be perfect before
HTB—STUDENT ALPHA
04) Why & How Should I Pray?—Jamie Haith
2010
8/17
we could pray, then none of us would ever pray—we wouldn’t be able to.
10:17:05
Jesus died on the cross for each one of us so that we could be totally forgiven.
Just to do that illustration again: you know, that partition that we saw, Jesus has
taken that onto himself so we can enjoy this relationship with God. But what
tends to happen is that we just, you know, choose to wander off from time to
time and do our own thing from time to time, and then it’s like we grab that
partition back off him and we say, ‘Ah, just going to do this!’
10:17:41
If I had cherished sin in my heart,
the Lord would not have listened…
Psalm 66:18
10:17:33
And we can no longer tune into God’s voice in our heart. We drag that partition
back into ourselves. The writer of the 66th psalm says: ‘If I’d cherished sin in my
heart, the Lord would not have heard me.’ Maybe it should say, ‘The Lord could
not have heard me’, because there’s this partition in the way.
10:18:03
You don’t have because you don’t ask
God. When you ask, you do not receive,
because you ask with wrong motives,
that you may spend what you get on
your pleasures.
James 4:3
10:17:49
What’s the solution? We just say: ‘Sorry. Don’t want this any more. Please take
this!’ Likewise, if we have totally wrong motives for what we’re asking for, we
need to say sorry about that. James, the apostle James in his New Testament
letter, says: ‘You don’t have because you don’t ask God. And when you ask, you
don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what
you get on your pleasures.’
10:18:16
In other words, he’s saying: ‘Oh, Lord, let me win the lottery! It’s a big one this
week! Just give me those numbers right now!’ It’s not going to happen, because
you’re asking for the wrong thing.
HTB—STUDENT ALPHA
04) Why & How Should I Pray?—Jamie Haith
2010
9/17
10:18:29
Another reason for unanswered prayer: there might be things that we get wrong
—we misunderstand God’s plan for our lives. I don’t know what you think of
when you hear that God has a plan for your life. Does it sound a bit sort of
controlled and sort of frightening, this taking away my free will? I wholeheartedly
believe that God cares about the tiny things, the tiny details of our lives. But I
also believe that he gives us a great freedom as well.
10:19:11
Train Tracks
10:19:03
I like to think of it as the difference between train tracks and orienteering. You
know, train tracks, it’s just kind of one direction; it’s there, it’s laid out and you
can see it, and you’ve just got to go on it--and no free will.
10:19:18
Orienteering
10:19:17
Orienteering, on the other side: you’ve got your map; you’ve got your compass.
Kind of exciting. There are certain points that you have to get to, and they’re
important; but generally speaking there’s quite a wide-ranging freedom.
10:19:32
What’s more, as we read in Psalm 37, God promises us that he will give us the
heart’s desire to follow his plan. He will actually give us ‘the desires of our
hearts’ in the first place, and then fulfil them. So it’s a joy; it’s not a burden.
10:19:45
And what I find most helpful to keep in mind the whole time with this idea of
God’s plan for our lives is that his key priority is that you and I would look more
like Jesus every day. Just the moral character of Jesus. That, more than
anything, is God’s perfect plan for our lives.
10:20:18
How much more will your Father in heaven
give good gifts to those who ask him!
Matthew 7:11
10:20:05
And prayer is primarily this drawing of us closer to God, continuously coming
more into alignment with him. And God promises to listen and answer. Jesus
HTB—STUDENT ALPHA
04) Why & How Should I Pray?—Jamie Haith
2010
10/17
says this: ‘How much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those
who ask him!’
10:20:24
Now, sometimes—you know, God is a good Father, he wants to give—
sometimes the answer that he gives will be ‘no’. Now, that is an answer. We
struggle with it. Our beautiful second daughter, Thea, she’s three now. But when
she was a little bit younger she really got into this thing of climbing into washing
machines!
10:20:54
Thea
10:20:48
Now, you know, I don’t say ‘No’ to her because I don’t love her, but I’m a little bit
older and wiser—not much, but a bit—and I know that climbing into washing
machines is not a good idea! So when I say ‘No’ to her, it’s because from my
perspective it’s not a good thing! God sometimes does that to us: he says ‘No,’
for a number of different reasons. You know, it’s not good for you; it’s not good
for others—whatever it is. Sometimes he says: ‘Wait. Wait for my perfect
timing.’ My experience is he often does that—and he has to with me, because
I’m so impatient! But sometimes, you know, we never understand. We might
understand later why he says ‘No’ to us.
10:21:30
I can think of a couple of things in my life where I’ve prayed desperately for
something to change or to be different. For a particular job. When I first came to
London after university, I was desperate to become a children’s television
presenter. And I prayed and prayed and prayed, and there were all kinds of
opportunities, but it was like ‘God, shut the door’, if you want to use that kind of
expression. I suppose you could conclude that I was just a rubbish TV presenter
and it wasn’t divine intervention at all! But now I just look back and I know that
that was him, because it means that I’m here right now! And that was kind of
one facet of me; but God’s opened up so much more.
10:22:14
I think of it in terms of human relationships as well. I heard about Ruth Graham:
she’s been happily married to the American preacher Billy Graham now for over
fifty years. And she said this: ‘God has not always answered my prayers. If he
had, I would have married the wrong man several times.’
10:22:31
So with some things we don’t understand why God didn’t answer a particular
prayer in a way that we hoped he would, but with some things we’re never going
HTB—STUDENT ALPHA
04) Why & How Should I Pray?—Jamie Haith
2010
11/17
to know in this life why he didn’t answer the prayer. And that’s where trust kicks
in. And I cannot tell you how much peace that brings, just being able to trust in
Almighty God, who’s over it all.
10:22:52
So if all of that is by way of reasoning why we pray, what about the nuts and
bolts: when, how do we pray? As I’ve said, prayer is simply talking to our Father,
enjoying that relationship. There are no rules; you just talk, you just be yourself.
10:23:10
And pray in the Spirit on all occasions
with all kinds of prayers and requests.
Ephesians 6:18
10:23:08
The New Testament encourages us to pray always: Pray in the Spirit on all
occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. You don’t have to be in church
to pray; you can be praying on the bus, you can be praying when you go out for
a jog, you can pray anywhere. You don’t have to pray out loud to pray—if you’re
sitting on the bus, it might be a good idea not to pray out loud! If you’re out
jogging, you know, you don’t have to close your eyes to pray—if you’re out
jogging, it’s probably a good idea as well not to close your eyes!
10:23:37
You know, it’s also though quite useful, I think, to have set times of prayer set
aside every day, starting the day reading the Bible and praying. Just hanging
out in conversation with God.
10:23:53
Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth
agree about anything you ask for, it will be
done for you by my Father in heaven.
Matthew 18:19
10:23:49
And not just on your own, either—you know, it’s great to pray together. Jesus
said: ‘I tell you the truth, if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for,
it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.’ You know, wow! Really? What’s
he getting at there? I think at the very least he’s saying that there’s a special
power when we pray together.
10:24:10
And as the weeks progress, you know, it’d be great if in our groups we could
HTB—STUDENT ALPHA
04) Why & How Should I Pray?—Jamie Haith
2010
12/17
just start to pray—even tonight, maybe.
10:24:19
But what about the how question—how do we actually do it? How do we pray?
Basically just talk. But if you want something a bit more structured, one pattern
for prayer is the superb model that Jesus has given us in the Lord’s Prayer. You
can break it down into a fantastic structure--if that’s the way you work--for your
prayer time. In Matthew 6, this is what Jesus said:
10:24:40
This, then, is how you should pray:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come...
Matthew 6:9–10
10:24:39
‘This, then, is how you should pray: Our Father in heaven…’ And that’s, you
know, ‘our Father in heaven’: that’s just a case of basking in the presence of
God, enjoying his love, thanking him. Reminding ourselves that he is ruler over
everything. He is in heaven, he sees it all, but he is also our Father—it’s that
close and intimate.
10:25:00
‘Hallowed be your name… Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.’
That’s praying that God’s name will be honoured in society, rather than just be
used as a swear word. It focuses the mind: you know, ‘Lord, how can I honour
you today with my life?’
10:25:15
‘Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come…’ God’s kingdom is God’s rule
and reign. That’s prayer that God’s kingdom, his rule, would be in our lives and
the lives of our families.
10:25:26
I read of a young mother called Monica, who was a Christian woman, who was
having real problems with her rebellious teenage son. He was lazy, badtempered, a cheat, a liar. Later on, he became very respectable as a lawyer, but
he was driven by money and dominated by worldly ambition. And his morals
were very loose—he lived with several different women; he had a son by one of
them. And then he joined a religious cult—he got into all sorts of weird practices.
HTB—STUDENT ALPHA
04) Why & How Should I Pray?—Jamie Haith
2010
13/17
And throughout this time, Monica, his mother, just continued to pray, ‘Your
kingdom come, your kingdom come in his life.’
10:26:03
And one day the Lord gave her a vision of her son, and in this vision she saw
the light of Jesus on him, and how his face transformed, and he was smiling at
her with this intense joy. And so she continued to pray for him. It was nine years
before her son finally gave his life to Christ, at the age of twenty-eight.
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St. Augustine
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That man’s name was Augustine—St Augustine, converted in 386 AD, ordained
in 391, bishop in 396, perhaps the greatest-ever theologian in the worldwide
church. And St Augustine always attributed his conversion to those prayers of
his mother: ‘Your kingdom come.’ And her prayers changed the course of history.
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…your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
as we forgive those who sin against us…
Matthew 6:10–12
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What about ‘your will be done’? Now, that’s asking that God’s will, his perfect
will in our lives, ‘his good and pleasing, perfect will’, would be in our lives and
beyond —yielding every day, saying: ‘I want what you want. I don’t want what I
want.’
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Give us this day our daily bread. This is, you know, a little bit like that car
illustration—it’s just from the big things to the small things, just saying: ‘Look, I
need your strength, I need your provision. I don’t want to be all self-sufficient.’
God is interested in all of our lives, as a loving parent. He loves you. He wants
the best for you.
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‘Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.’ Forgive the things
that I’ve done wrong as I forgive others—there’s a virtuous circle here in Jesus’
HTB—STUDENT ALPHA
04) Why & How Should I Pray?—Jamie Haith
2010
14/17
teaching. The more we understand that we are forgiven, the more we want to
forgive. Forgiving people is not so that we earn forgiveness; it’s a sign that we
have been forgiven ourselves.
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But there’s a question: where do you draw the line with that? I remember going
out onto the streets of London and doing some vox pops like the ones we saw
earlier and asking the question: ‘Should you forgive someone?’ And the
response that kept coming back time and time again was: ‘Depends what
they’ve done.’ ‘Depends what they’ve done.’ Is that right? What’s the most awful
thing that you can think of, the most unforgivable person or thing? For many of
us I think the first thing we would think of would be the Holocaust, World War II.
Let me read you this:
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Ravensbrück
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In Holland in 1944, a Dutchwoman by the name of Corrie Ten Boom was arrested
and imprisoned with her family for hiding Jews from the Nazis. Corrie and her
sister Betsie ended up finally in the notorious Ravensbrück concentration camp in
Germany, where Corrie’s sister Betsie died. Before she died, Betsie told Corrie:
‘There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.’
After the war, Corrie’s writing and speaking focused on the Christian gospel,
with a special emphasis on forgiveness. She tells the story of how, after she’d
been teaching in Germany in 1947, she was approached by one of the cruellest
former Ravensbrück camp guards. This is what happened:
It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former SS man who had
stood guard at the shower room door in the processing centre at Ravensbrück.
He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. He came up to
me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing: ‘How grateful I am for your
message, Fraulein,’ he said, ‘to think that, as you say, He has washed my sins
away!’ His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often
the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side. Even as the angry, vengeful
thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them: Jesus Christ had died for this
man. Was I going to ask for more?
‘Lord Jesus,’ I prayed, ‘Forgive me, and help me to forgive him.’ I tried to smile. I
struggled to raise my hand—I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of
warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer: ‘Jesus, I cannot forgive him.
Give me your forgiveness.’ As I took his hand, the most incredible thing happened:
from my shoulder, along my arm, and through my hand, a current seemed to pass
from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost
overwhelmed me. And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness, any more
than on our goodness, that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells
us to love our enemies, He gives along with the command the love itself.
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10:29:53
HTB—STUDENT ALPHA
04) Why & How Should I Pray?—Jamie Haith
2010
15/17
10:30:49
If we really experience God’s forgiveness ourselves—forgiveness which, let’s
face it, we need daily—we will want to extend that to others. Sometimes it’s very
hard—it’s an act of the will. But then you find God’s love and healing floods in
after and transforms us.
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…and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
Matthew 6:13
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‘Forgive us our sins, as we forgive others. Lead us not into temptation, but
deliver us from the evil one.’ God doesn’t tempt us. He is in control, though, of
how much we are tempted. We all have weak areas, and for each of us here it will
be something different, many things different: beer, or greed, pride, or cynicism,
lust, gossip. And if we know our weakness, we can ask for protection specifically
and particularly in that area, as well as taking practical steps to avoid it.
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So that’s the Lord’s Prayer as recorded in Matthew’s Gospel given by Jesus. It’s
one model you could use. But my prayer is that each of us in our own way would
experience the presence of God and would begin to have a greater confidence
in talking to God as well. Aligning ourselves more closely, more deeply with him.
Allowing him to change us and to change the world. Amen!
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HTB—STUDENT ALPHA
04) Why & How Should I Pray?—Jamie Haith
2010
16/17
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HTB—STUDENT ALPHA
04) Why & How Should I Pray?—Jamie Haith
2010
17/17