When Words Are Hard to Come By
Matthew 6: 5-15
Roams 8: 26-27
Gettysburg Presbyterian Church
Rev. Daniel T. Hans
July 22, 2007

(1) His house filled with smoke from an electrical fire.  His lungs were so clogged with fumes he could not speck.  So how could he possibly call out for help?  (2) Sitting at the kitchen table planning their 50th anniversary trip, he grabbed his chest, fell off his chair and lay unconscious on the floor.  She knew it was a heart attack.  Yet, how could she call for help when the only sounds she could make were hysterical wails?  (3) She was home alone with her four-year-old when she tripped and fell down the basement stairs, breaking her leg.  Unable to walk and with a flight of stairs separating her from the phone, she cried to her son to call for help.  But how could a four-year-old do this when there were no neighbors nearby and when, in his own tearful confusion, he couldn’t remember his last name or address?

In each case, if someone could have just picked up the phone and dialed 911 that would have been enough.  The 911 emergency system connects instantly to a dispatcher.  Before the caller explains the emergency, a computer provides the dispatcher with the caller’s phone number, name and address.  As in the scenarios I painted, the caller might not be able to express in words the nature of the problem.  However the dispatcher doesn’t need the caller to say anything.  With knowledge of the source of the call, help is on the way.

Prayer can be likened to a 911 call.  We become immersed in a dilemma, a crisis.  We need help.  We want to call out to God, but we’re so choked with emotion we can’t express our thoughts or we’re so confused by circumstances we don’t know where to begin or we are praying to God for the first time and we simply don’t know what words to use.

God’s Spirit helps us in our weakness, in our deficiencies.  One deficiency is not knowing how to pray as we ought.  The phrase, “how to pray” can be misleading here.  The literal translation is “we don’t know what to pray for.”  Many times we simply don’t know what to pray for.

One barrier to prayer is the general sense of being overwhelmed by the needs and obstacles before us.  The Romans to whom Paul wrote weren’t sure what to pray for.  Should they pray that the persecuting emperor be overthrown or pray for strength to endure the persecution?  Should they pray that God would spare them from suffering or pray that God would teach them through suffering?  Our own weakness, our human limitation, prevents us from knowing how we should pray about specific situations.

There are three human weaknesses that hamper our praying.  First, there is our impatience.  For a long time I wondered why prayer seems more important to and more frequently practiced by older people than younger people.  I now think I know why this is so.  Typically, the older we get the more patient we become.  Impatience is fatal to prayer.  In a culture where we can obtain almost anything instantly, it is hard to sit and pray with no immediate answer coming.  In the hymn we just sang, we asked the Holy Spirit to “teach us the patience of unanswered prayer.” 
(Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart)

Second, to our impatience must be added our indifference.  We hear of a friend’s need.  We tell ourselves we should pray for that friend and try to do something to assist her.  Starting to pray, our mind wanders off our friend on to ourselves.  Our time for prayer is up before we get to praying for our friend.  If we truly felt this friend’s burden, if her struggles became our struggle, we might not be so easily distracted and we might be able to focus our prayers and action on her behalf.  Too often our hearts are not in our prayers.

A third weakness is ignorance.  We do not know how to articulate our prayers.  We cannot foresee the future and we don’t know God’s plans.  Therefore, it becomes difficult to know how to direct our requests.  An elderly parent is diagnosed with terminal cancer.  Do we pray for quick death to avoid suffering or pray for strength to endure agonizing treatment?  A couple is childless.  Do we pray for some new technology to reverse their infertility or pray for joy and purpose for them in their present state?

A marriage has become bitter and broken.  Do we pray for a divorce to end the living hell or pray for perseverance in the hope that things will improve?

We might pray that God would spare us from pain or bring a quick end to and unbearable situation; yet how can we be sure that the struggles do not have some greater purpose, unseen at present?  We do not always know what is best.  We believe that only God knows for only God sees the beginning and the end of all situations.  (And some theologians question whether God knows in advance the outcome of our specific situations.)  The human dilemma is that our weakness prevents us from knowing how to pray. 

The specific details of God’s will are not easy to discover especially in situations like the elderly parent with cancer, the childless couple, and the broken marriage.  For this reason we need patience and compassion in our praying.  Quick, calculated solutions to problems are seldom the will of God because God knows how personal and complex are the problems.

A concern that should be on the hearts of all of us is God’s will with respect to the war on terrorism and war in Iraq.  How should we pray and act about this situation?  Those who claim to know precisely what should be prayed for and done haven’t grasped the complex reality of today’s world.  The will of God in the war on terrorism is no simple, quick, black-and-white proposal.  Whatever is God’s will in the war in Iraq and however we pray about it, our prayers must not impatiently jump to conclusions based on personal biases.  Nor should our prayers about such significant concerns be offered in a detached, matter-of-fact manner.

Prayers about warfare may very well be the type that lack any specific words or clear direction. Here the promise of God’s Spirit helping us in our weakness can be strengthening for us.  The Spirit prays for us, shouldering the burdens that overwhelm us at those times when we are baffled by not knowing how to pray.  In such times the Spirit prays for us with sighs too deep for words.  Meaningful prayer can and does occur even when our mouths cannot form and our minds cannot find the words.  Sometimes, the most heart-felt and mind-full prayer is “Oh God, oh God” – nothing more yet nothing less.

In praying, don’t fall into the trap of the ministers who think prayer has to be a lot of flowery and flowing, pious and plentiful words.  Prayer is not our words addressing God’s mind.  Prayer is our hearts calling to God’s heart.  Sometimes there are no words – only feelings, tears, sighs.  Don’t give up on prayer when words don’t come or when we don’t know what to ask in prayer.  At this point of wordless feelings we are just beginning to pray.

I used to feel guilty when I couldn’t express by burdens and concerns clearly to God in times of prayer.  I used to think all my prayers should be the kind that could be recorded and published.  I used to believe I was wasting God’s time by merely sitting and thinking about a problem that I could not verbalize in prayer.  Now, by trying to let God’s Spirit to direct my prayers, when I feel lost in the traffic of life’s burdens, I know that:  Prayer can be feelings without words but prayer can never be words without feelings.

Our prayers begin in our hearts, not in our mouths.  Since God is the One who searches our hearts, God doesn’t need to hear our words to know our concerns.  For that reason:  Prayer can be feelings without words, but prayer can never be words without feelings.

A second practical thought is for those for whom the concept of prayer, the very idea of consciously communicating with God, is new and perplexing.  I share a story told by English WWII pilot James Whittaker in his book We Thought We Heard Angels.  He tells how the eight occupants of a plane survived their crash landing in the ocean.  For three weeks thereafter they floated in life rafts.  Several days into the ordeal, one of the eight prayed the Lord’s Prayer aloud.  He was the only one in the group who knew it.  However, from that point on, each day one of them would offer a prayer aloud on behalf of the group.  They didn’t begin their prayers with the customary formality and vocabulary used in church.  Concepts like Almighty God and Gracious Father were beyond their grasp.  They would open their prayers with words like “Old Man Above” or “You who watch over us”. Sometimes, they didn’t know what words to pray but that was alright too. God heard their intention for God searched their hearts.

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