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I am sure that each of you has read this statement many times: Prayer Changes Things. You have seen it painted on posters which adorn the walls of our Sunday-school rooms. You have seen it stamped on little metal plates, read it in the Bible, heard it from the pulpit, oh, so many times.
But do you believe it? Do you actually, honestly, believe that prayer changes things? Have you ever prayer change anything for you? Your attitudes, your circumstances, your obstacles, your fears?
This is the way the Master said it: "...for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and nothing shall be impossible unto you." Matthew 17:20
Now that is certainly one of the most audacious claims about faith ever spoken. Does it strike you as overstated? Have you ever wondered why Christ chose this particular image --moving mountains-- to illustrate the power of faith and prayer? He might have said something about mountain-climbing, but no, it is mountain-moving which is mentioned as the expression of a robust, virile and exuberant faith.
How it must grieve Him to see us go through life with such timid attitudes towards prayer. Constantly He was appalled at men's lack of faith...
For nearly two thousand years, Christ's words have challenged men to think big... to be bold for Him, to do audacious works in His name.
Yet too often we do not believe His promises. And sometimes when our prayers are answered, we do not believe even then. We charge it off to coincidence. We search for what we call a "logical" explanation, for we do not want to be thought peculiar. How He grieves over our lack of faith!
But prayer is the key to Christian growth. Through prayer, God sill works His miracles today just as He did when the first Christians had the audacity to think that they could conver the whole world.
Do you remember when the Roman ruler of Judea - Herod Agrippa - decided to stamp out the fanatical band of men who were followers of the crucified Galilean by throwing their leader, Peter, into prison?
Herod mounted a strong guard of soldiers to kepp Peter in prison until after the Feast of the Passover. Sixteen soldiers had charge of the prisoner. Two of them were chained to him, one on either side, and they occupied the cell with Him.
The others guarded the inner and outer doors of the prison, and Peter was secured. He could not escape.
Meanwhile, in a house in the city, in the home of Mary, the mother of John Mark, Peter's brethen were gathered. They were engaged in prayer. They had been praying all week.
They were praying in earnest, praying with passionate conviction for something specific. They were praying that Peter might be released from prison - that the Lord would somehow intervene on Peter's behalf. Peter was sorely missed. He was the leader.
Nearby in the prison - strange things were happening. Gates, chains, and guards could kepp out the friends and keep in prisoners, but they could not prevent the coming and going of the Lord's angels.
An angel of the Lord appeared at Peter's side as he lay asleep, and a light that was not of men filled the prison. Peter was commanded to rise up - the shackles fell from him, and he stood free of the chains that had bound him, whil his two guards continued to sleep. How was it done? We are not told. But the angels of God are not deterred by men. Led by the angel, Peter followed as one in a dream to the realization that he was a free man.
The church had been praying for a week that Peter might be liberated and restored to them. Here he was, liberated; the prayer was answered.
Still musing over the strange and wonderful thing that had happened, Peter walked through the streets, deserted and still, until he came to the house which served as a meeting place of the brethren. He knew he would find them there - praying!
Peter knocked for some time until a damsel came to the door, and hearing the voice of Peter, she became so overjoyed that she let him stand outside while she ran to the others with the good news that their leader was delivered unto them.
Upon being told that their prayer was answered, the refused to believe it told the girl that she was mad. But her story could not be changed. She insisted that Peter was outside.
They thought that it must be his ghost, because Peter was in prison - they knew - and although they had prayed earnestly that the Lord should set him free - they had not expected anything like this. Maybe Herod had already killed him! They thought of every possibility - save that they had gotten what they had been praying for.
The question naturally arises: Why were they praying at all? Their skepticism clearly demonstrated that they did not expect an answer.
We are not much better today after nineteen centuries of practice in the art of praying... Not much more expectant after two millenniums of answered petitions. We have not much more faith... perhaps not as much.
We are like the old lady whose view from her front porch was spoiled by an unsightly hill that not only had no beauty itself but also shut out much of the beauty that lay beyond.
The old lady wished again and again that the hill might be removed, and then she came upon the promise in Scripture, Mark 11:23,
She decided to try, and one night she prayed that the hill might be removed. Next morning when she arose, her first thought was to go to the window and look out to see whether or not the Lord in the night had moved the hill.
Her comment was most revealing, and revealed why her prayer - like most of ours - was unanswered. Said she, "Umph, well, it is still there, just as I expected."
We really do not believe in prayer. Even as we pray, we do not expect results... and we hardly know why we bother to pray at all.
I have seen what prayer can do on many levels. Take the matter of jobs - economic needs... down-to-earth things.
When I first landed in this country, at the Battery off Ellis Island, I had just enough money to last me two weeks. So I immediately went after a job in New York City. I was told that there were some openings in a steel construction job. Still another skyscraper was going up... When I applied, I was told that I could have a job on two conditions. The first was that I had to join a union. That was alright; I did not mind that. But then the hiring man added, "See that guy over there? The one with the plaid flannel shirt? You have to pay him fifty dollars."
At that point, I did some quick thinking and praying. And I decided that bribing someone to give me a job, indeed buying a job, was not right.
That was not what I understood by Americanism. If I really believed Jesus when He promised, "But seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you..." Matt. 6:33 then I had to fulfill my part of the bargain. And I did not believe that bribery had any place in the Kingdom or was a part of His righteousness.
So I did not take the steel construction job. Instead I left New York City for New Jersey. There I got a job with a gas and electric company. We were putting down four-inch conduits across the Hudson Tubes into Kearny and West New York.
My next job was assisting a molder in a Paterson foundry. But during these months I was praying, asking God to show me what He wanted me to do in this country. I could not really believe that He brought me from Scotland to the United States to dig my way across New Jersey or to fire a blast furnace.
Then came a letter from David R. Wood in Birmingham, Alabama. Dave had been a boyhood friend of mine in Scotland and had emigrated the year before to the United States. Dave wanted me to come to Birmingham. He himself had found warm friends in the South, and he was sure that he could get me a job on the Birmingham News.
One Sunday afternoo I went out on the back stoop with Dave's letter in my hand. It was a hot August afternoon in Elizabeth, New Jersey. How can I ever forget? And I prayed, I asked the Chief for directions. What did He want me to do? Was I supposed to go south?
I received the answer clearly, as clearly as my directions had come to leave Scotland... "Yes, this is it. This is your next step. Go south and go immediately."
I went immediately - on a bus - with borrowed money. And indeed that was the right step. For, like Dave, I too found friends in the South - and a job and opening doors and a way to go to seminary, a wonderful new life, the life God planned for me.
You cannot have experiences like that and doubt any longer that God can move mountains - even in our day. Maybe you do not believe that prayer changes things, but I can assure you that I, and many other like me, know better. Prayer changes us... and changes other people... and changes circumstances.
Too many people today have an attitude of skepticism... or disillusionment or disappointment or frank incredulity.
The people who say "I prayed... and it didn't work" too often conclude therefore that prayer is unavailing, or that the prayer was not heard at all... or that if He heard, God did not care.
Now there is a great mystery here, and I would not for one moment make light of it. There is such a thing as unanswered prayer. The Bible tells us of some of them, and there are those among you who have addressed sincere petitions that are as yet unanswered.
Let us face this mystery honestly. I cannot explain it - and it would be glib and dishonest of me to try.
I can only say that there are times when God must say "No" to our petitions, just as fathers and mothers at times refuse the petitions of their own children.
Let me make the point by modern analogy. When you flick the electric-light switch in your room and the light does not come on, do you immediately conclude that it is not the nature of electricity to light up rooms? Or that electricity plays favorites and just does not like you enough to give you light... therefore you will have no further use for electricity - you are through? No, of course not. You know immediately that there must be some rational explanations for the failure of the light... a faulty connection, a broken switch, a blown fuse, or a burned-out bulb.
If you have prayed - and nothing happened - did you immediately conclude that prayer does not work? Or that God does not care about you anyway? Or that He can't be expected to know anything about your insignificant problems and affairs? Or bother about them if He did?
Did it ever occur to you that there might be another explanation? Have you ever thought that maybe you had a faulty connection - were not plugged in properly to that source of divine power and love? I can hear you say: "What do you mean by 'not plugged in properly'? What more can one do than just pray?" Well, think again of plugging into a socket. You have to be sure that there is nothing wrong with the plug itself. I could have exposed wires - it could have a short-circuit - and the result would be either a blown fuse... sparks and a shock... or nothing at all.
We can and often do short-circuit our prayers by faults within ourselves - wrong attitudes like resentment... feelings of self-pity... envy and pride... or wrong actions.
We had better get this straight - we can't go on living a life of self-will and self-indulgence, in and out of jams, and send up a quick prayer for help and expect God to fix it all up, so that we can go on as before.
I like this definition from the Presbyterian Shorter Catechism:
Most of us have not realized that anything which will glorify God is His will. And what Christ was telling us in the mountain-moving passage is that the circumference of things which will glorify God is wider than we think. And mountains are of wide circumferences!
Hence if moving a mountain will glorify God, then mountain-moving is within the province of God's will. And we can be sure that petitions concerning the physical and spiritual health and daily happiness of human beings are squarely at the center of that will.
How boldly we may pray and how absolutely certain we may be of the glory of God is well illustrated in the life of Martin Luther. In 1540, Luther's good friend Frederick Myconius lay dying. Luther received a farewell letter from his friend, written with a weak and trembling hand.
Immediately Luther sent back this reply:
The dying man had already lost the power of speech when the letter arrived, but within a short time he was well again. He survived Luther by two months!
Maybe you haven't known that there is a God who is ready and willing to do great things in you, and through you, and for you, in answer to your prayers. You will never know until you really ask God for something - something specific - and find out for yourself.
Is there a mountain in your life you would like removed? Nothing is impossible with God.
"Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full." Ask - with faith that God keeps His promises.
Ask with faith just the size of a grain of mustard seed. Try it out! Take the Lord up on His promises!
Try a little mountain-moving... and you'll find it the greatest adventure of your life.
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