Broken Prayer

Three theologians were having a deep theological discussion while they were walking down the street one day. They were talking about prayer. More specifically, they were talking about the most effective positions of prayer. The discussion got pretty intense so they actually stopped there on the sidewalk to try and make their points. It just so happened that they stopped underneath a telephone pole where a lineman was up in the air working on the cable. Now, I’ve been there. There’s something interesting that happens when you’re up in the air. You can clearly hear every word that’s spoken on the ground. Well, this is what he heard. He heard the first theologian make the case that the key to powerful prayer was in the position of the hands. He said he always held his hands together and pointed them upward as a form of worship. The second theologian disagreed with him. He said that the only position of real prayer was always on your knees. The third theologian said they were both wrong. He put on his most pious expression and said that the only position worth its salt was to pray while stretched out flat on your face. The lineman finally had enough of the self-righteous theologians, so he threw in his two-cents worth. He said, “Fellas, the most powerful prayer I ever prayed wasn’t when I had my hands folded the right way. It wasn’t when I was bowed on my knees. And it wasn’t when I was laying on the floor. The most powerful prayer I ever prayed was when I was dangling upside down by my heels from a power pole, suspended forty feet above the ground.” I can understand exactly what he’s talking about. Prayer is an amazing thing, isn’t it? Hebrews 4:16 tells us that because Jesus is our eternal Great High Priest, we can come boldly before His throne of grace in prayer. Why? So we can obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Mercy and grace. Mercy from God to keep us from the punishment and judgment we deserve. And the grace of God that gives us the righteousness and blessings and gifts we don’t deserve. In that verse, the writer of Hebrews uses the words “us” and “we”. “Let us come boldly”, “that we may obtain mercy and find grace.” That’s one way that prayer is a lot like our Christian life. As 21st century American Christians, we have a hard time getting the concept of “us” and “we”. So much of our American heritage is wrapped up in the whole idea of “rugged individualism” that it has warped our idea of what it means to be a Christian. It has made the focus of Christianity almost solely on the idea of Jesus being our personal savior. To be a Christian means that I’m saved. It means that I have a personal, one-on-one relationship with Jesus. I’m saved, I’m going to heaven, that’s the extent of it. Well, that’s all true, but it certainly isn’t the extent of it. As Christians, we live in the understanding that Jesus both saves us as individuals and He saves us into His body. He is our personal Savior, therefore we are a part of His corporate body called the church. Because of the nature of our salvation being both personal and corporate, that is the nature of our prayer as well. Yes, we as individual Christians are to come boldly before the throne of grace in prayer. But we as the corporate body of Christ are also to come boldly before the throne of grace in prayer too. Now, how does that happen?