Power of Prayer

This was published elsewhere but . . .



Part of the job description of a Vicar is ‘to pray for everyone’.

This is just part of the Ordinary of Priestly life - a powerful reminder of the significance of which can be found here - getting on with the ‘mundane’ task of praying for people.

No show, no howling or pleading, just praying, quietly, day after day. Praying for ‘those in need of a doctor’.

Just in the last few days I have been musing - again :)

Firstly on the extraordinary privilege of all of this, but secondly wishing that more might catch a vision of what is going on when we pray and how part of the power of prayer is ever so mundane that we might totally miss it.

The phrase, ‘The Power of Prayer’ is almost uniquely associated with ‘extraordinary manifestations’, but in so doing misses the most extraordinary manifestation of all, the physical transformation of the human heart. We don’t expect or perhaps want the power of prayer to be ‘simply’ a physiological effect. Somehow we think less of this, suspecting it may give our opponents more fuel if it were shown that such a link were true.

But heart is not just a metaphor in this regard. It is both spiritual and physical. We forget this. Hardness of heart has been shown unfailingly over the years to be both physical and spiritual. How many bitter folk die untimely due to coronary disease . . .

Prayer deals with the physical as much as the spiritual when we seek conversion. It is ’mundane’

I recently was called upon to pray in public for ‘an enemy’. I heard the sharp intake of breath and at the same time the words of Jesus ‘I have come for those in need of a doctor’ I have come for those in need of prayer. And I wondered as I prayed how we might view the enemy differently if instead of criticising them, we prayed for them. If we saw how we would be dealing not only with the priestly, but also the medical and . . . mused on how our own hard heartedness might be healed and we might ourselves enjoy more years of this earthly gift of life

Imagine having a terrible enemy - someone whose name you could barley bring to your lips - and then imagine praying for them, asking God to bless them, asking God for their good and not their ill . . . it takes only the smallest act of the imagination to see how in so doing our hearts would be changed, and richly so.

Perhaps that is why so few do

Perhaps that is why we still like to think ‘it’s the Vicar’s job’

It is an extraordinary privilege - I just wish more would join in. The change might well be something to behold

The King's Speech - 'To Be or Not to Be'?

There is something very wonderful about going to a movie which everyone has raved about, a long time after its release. That is the cinema is very quiet and none of The Wittertainment Code of Conduct is being broken in any way, whatsoever - BLISS!

And That Bliss I experienced last night as I finally got to watch 'The Kings Speech' but, profoundly grateful as I was for the quiet ( I have to say that viewing a film has never in my experience been such an uninterrupted experience as it was last night ) Bliss was not the predominant emotion I experienced, rather a very profound connection to 'George' through this compelling and for me utterly moving film.

Not thank God, because I stammer (and the film leaves one in no doubt about the pain of this affliction), but because of that crippling Fear that he exuded throughout, especially at moments where he was required to Speak.

I was left wondering a great deal about why I do not write, about why I only blog occasionally. I read prolifically, blogs included and am seemingly surrounded by the erudite the witty and the wise, in much the same way that Bertie is surrounded by the socially confident.

Many people are telling him to 'spit it out' - to relax, and I think of the good number of friends and other well-wishers who have said 'You Must write - there is so much that you have to say that needs to be heard'.

. . . but, like Bertie, I too am afraid. For him it was the performance of words written by others. (It is noticeable how the two Speeches which bookend the film are not his own words, his own voice. There is a Glorious moment in Westminster Abbey with Lionel, in which he shouts out 'because I have a voice!'. . . and one was left thinking whether part of his difficulty was rooted in his life circumstance that from birth he was living a life in which he had no say - he was speaking that which was required of him). Whereas for me the Fear is of the Performance of my own words, my own voice.

Or is it?

Am I like Bertie, afraid of my own shadow?
How much is writing, Life?
Or is it rather a half life?

Is this avoidance of writing, of publishing really 'fleeing from Life', as someone once suggested? Is the significance of Life to be measured in words written when The Life wrote nothing, yet Writ Large?

Or is it a sense that deep down I have my own Story, my own Voice which must be Enacted rather than written?

I am very conscious of how carefully I edit my words, of how many times I check drafts before hitting 'PUBLISH POST' - like Bertie's cripplingly painful pause before getting a word out . . .

Yet when I 'walk down into the street' - there is no pause. there is no quest for perfectionism, all there Is is Life. There I can Breathe.

. . . it is no longer "our world"

am spending some concentrated time reading for a few days here in Parceval Hall, our wonderful Diocesan Retreat House. If I was a 'Desert Island' castaway and Aotearoa was my destination, then it would be a toss up which Luxury item I took with me, beer or this wonderful place hid high up in a small spur of Wharfedale.

Although I really wanted finally to get to grips with some foundational theology the lure of Kindle and conversations world wide have led me to read Introducing Missional Church.
[I first heard of one of the authors, Alan Roxburgh, during the best sermon I've ever heard from a Bishop - +Jim Bell of Knaresborough - in which a large, rich and outwardly successful church 'with one of the best mission statements I've ever read' was gently chided that in the light of the glory of God, it's vision was far to small - more anon . . .]

The book seems perfectly positioned for the current state of my psyche - there is enough here where I can nod and heartily concur, in order to anchor myself for those passages where changes in imagination and approach are called for. In other words, where I am seems, unlike the Man looking for Belfast, to be a good place to start from on the journey the authors describe.

I shall post some more, but for now I am wondering about imagination and about how Significant it is and how perhaps even those of us rooted in the significance of it for this Life in Christ we share - we do not fully comprehend its power.

For surely it must be true that there is no such thing as an unimaginative person, rather that we are are differently imagined. The World is Never as it seems, but we have our own deeply held views of how it should be which we often confuse for how it is.

For those who cling on to the past, that past is Real in their imagination, it is Present to them, and so the work to be done is not to enter into imagination, but to re-imagine, and I confess in reading 'Introducing Missional Church' - I too need to do some work in this area.
Moving On from where I am in my thinking is as much as challenge to me as it is to those for whom 1950's Britain and the kindly Patrician Vicar who knew everyone and where everyone went to church and all was well with the world.

Those 'at the forefront' are challenged by The Living God just as much as those dragging there heels as Bishop Jim seemed to suggest - or the world is not as it seems, it is not as it seems to any of us

In the words of Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon, 'it is no longer "our world" ', but of course it never was - it only ever was His - we all need renewal of our imaginations

Exercise unto Godliness

As some, perhaps both? of my readers are by now aware, my wife Sarah and I, together with our three youngest offspring are leaving the UK sometime next year to follow God’s call to Aotearoa -
‘The Land of the Long White Cloud’.

Already this has been a faith expanding call as we’ve contemplated leaving a land we have known cumulatively for over 100 years, family and good friends, to say nothing of our two church communities and then, having considered these things, taken a deep breath, turned and said ‘Yes’ to God.

Of course we travel on in God’s Grace towards new relationships, and already through the process of discerning this call they are being made.

One new friend sent me an email this morning, which spoke uncannily accurately to how we are feeling about all of this at present. She spoke of

‘the God who never lets us stand still and is always moving us on - sometimes further and faster than we might like!’

It was a reminder if one was needed that the life of faith is a life of growth, expanding ever more fully into all that we are created to be as children of God, as we are by the death and resurrection of Jesus set free from the old stories of sin and death which held us in bondage.

Growth and Learning, and this is always about entering the unknown, the new. As the disciples follow the call of Jesus it becomes increasingly clear that they do not know where they are heading but in obedience to him they step out in obedience into New Life and as they do, God hugely expands their lives and sight finally bringing this new human creation to full birth through the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost.

My new friend’s words at once spoke to me in different ways of two things.
Firstly as I read there was a sense of excitement, the excitement of being caught up in what this Living God whom we worship is at work doing.
Secondly I was reminded of a powerful illustration of what it means to live such a life of learning and growing into faith told by John Stackhouse of Regent College, Vancouver.
He likened the life of faith to learning to ski, and that life in God continually and necessarily throws us off balance so that we develop the muscles and instincts necessary for the Life he is calling us into. And indeed these challenges are often larger and come at us much faster ‘than we might like’ because, as he said –

‘We are learning to ski down the mountains of Aslan’s Land’

This New Life is vast and as Stackhouse said, ‘often overwhelming’, but that should not surprise us for it is the very Life of God we are being called into.

Brendan Manning wrote a wonderful book, the title of which was enough to persuade me to buy it – ‘The Furious Longing of God’. God’s Passionate desire for us, to live the lives we were always created to live, lives of pure faith, is like a Storm.
Furious as it is, it can often seem that His call is just too much.

When we were first called to New Zealand both Sarah and I responded by coming up with many reasons why we could not possibly go, but it became clear that it was God’s call and thus although we are learning to ski down the awe inspiring and oft terrifying Black runs of life in Christ, we know we are held in his Passionate embrace.
We go knowing that Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus – thus set free to Live into this new adventure.

Stackhouse finished his reflection on the Overwhelming of God thus:

‘What a faith, What a Life!’

Amen