Day #5: “Personal Prayer”
During 40 Days Praying Together we will be asking you to pray for three things. Today we will look at the third of those things.
(3.) Please commit to praying daily for an item in your personal life and ask others to join with you in prayer.
Here are some background thoughts on that prayer request.
James 4:2-10 You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? 6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
In the book of James we learn that there are some things that we don’t have due to our failure to ask in prayer. He wrote, “You do not have, because you do not ask.” Could it be that the bottleneck for God’s work in our lives is our failure to ask for things that we need? As we move toward Easter, let’s be intentional in asking for God to work in our lives.
It should be noted that there is more to James 4 than just the importance of saying a prayer. We don’t want to miss the rest of the context. First of all, he warns that there is the additional problem of “asking amiss.” That is, our prayer requests are not lined up with God and his kingdom, but with our own “passions.” How do we know if we are asking amiss? Well, one simple way to test this is to start praying. Many Christians have recognized that the process of committing to pray regularly for something often has the effect of forcing us to examine our motivations. As we pray repeatedly, we begin to ask the question… What are my real motives?
However, there is a second thing that James includes in his context of prayer. That is the importance of humility in accessing God’s spiritual power. God “gives grace to the humble.” Asking other people to pray for you is a huge step of humility. In the coming weeks we will dive deeper into the theology of group prayer. For now, we can observe that group prayer is humbling… and that is good. James promises, “humble yourself before the Lord and he will exalt you.”
After that brief admonition I would like to share two personal things. First of all, I would like to say that I have been attempting to live this challenge for the past week. Most mornings I have been praying on my own, and with Chrissie for our normal needs (family, ministry, etc.) In addition to that we are also praying for the first two requests, a building and renewal. In addition to that, I have made it my goal to pray with someone else each evening about some personal requests. One thing that I have been asking for in prayer is to sleep well. I’m in the midst of a very busy and active season and its been hard to unwind. But I am happy to report that the humbling act of asking someone (often one of my kids) to pray with me and for me at night has been producing some really powerful results.
There is a second way that this is important. The idea of a committed season of prayer has a long and important history in Pittsburgh and in my extended family history. During the 1950’s and 1960’s (and beyond) a local Pittsburgh ministry began to rise in prominence and received national attention. The Pittsburgh Experiment was an inter-denominational ministry that sought to bring spiritual vitality into the lives of ordinary citizens. One of the features of the ministry was a “30-Day Prayer Experiment.” This helped people to see the presence of God in their lives. The ministry brought transformation to many individuals and families in our region. It was associated with a spiritual renewal movement in Pittsburgh that birthed ministries like The Coalition for Christian Outreach, and Ligonier Ministries. The story of the Pittsburgh Experiment is featured in a chapter of a book on the religious history of Pittsburgh (See below.) Importantly for me, it changed the life of my Grandfather, Dwight Koerber. If you are interested in hearing that story, mostly from his memoirs, read the appendix below.
Appendix: The Pittsburgh Experiment and Dwight (Ike) Koerber Sr.
In his memoirs, my grandfather talked about the life changing significance of the Pittsburgh Experiment and the 30-Day Prayer Challenge. Having grown up in the church… actually, it was Greenfield Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), Ike came to faith through the influence of local church leaders. He committed his life to the Lord while a high school student on the same night that he met his future wife. They didn’t date immediately, but were married a few years after graduation. Then America entered WWII and he was deployed. After the war and their reunion, they moved from Pittsburgh before eventually returning. Life was hard and marital conflict emerged. During a time of real difficulty, Ike got connected with Rev. Sam Shoemaker, one of the leading pastors in the city. Sam encouraged him to love his wife patiently (good advice) and join a small group that was seeking to connect faith to everyday life (also good advice.) That group was connected to the emerging parachurch ministry called the Pittsburgh Experiment. This ministry would run parallel to some of the outbursts of spiritual renewal that would transform the entire region.
Soon, they embarked on a 30-Day Prayer Experiment. They called it an experiment, because they were playfully asking the question, What if we just took God’s promises seriously? What if we asked for things we needed and looked for his answer? The members of their small group committed to daily prayer and shared their requests together in a transparency uncommon for those days. The motto of the Prayer Experiment was, When We Pray, Sometimes God Changes Our Circumstances, and Sometimes He Changes Us. As you read some of his words from his memoirs, I think that you will see both of those dynamics in play.
“Sam then called a friend and arranged for Sis (my Grandma) and me to get involved in a new prayer group program that stressed application of one’s Christian commitment…called the Pittsburgh Experiment….It is bottomed on the premise that Jesus Christ is the answer to the world’s problems, but that Christianity has not been tried and found wanting – it just hadn’t really been tried… I was amazed at the openness and candor of a lot of our new friends who, in small group, confessed sins to each other as well as to the Lord. We met in homes and downtown business sites, such as the Oliver Building where I worked. One time we were discussing the Biblical admonition to “pray without ceasing” and decided to conduct a 30-Day Prayer Experiment. We had concluded that a good business man knows how to delegate – to turn matters we can’t really handle over to a specialist who can. Let me tell you some of the results.
Ike went on to share some anecdotes of his friends who began to experience the dynamic realities of seeing God at work in their lives. He wrote about two stories regarding himself which I will share here.
In addition to hassles with my wife… I’d been having problems at work – in the Chamber of Commerce. I was mighty bitter over the fact that someone had been brought in from New York to fill a job I was supposed to get. And I felt bitter toward the new man, which only affected my own work product. I considered myself despitefully used, so my friends challenged me to pray for the new man, Sherm. I felt that he was the one who should be praying, but I went through the motions, and soon I was praying for him in earnest, and able to function creatively in my job. I stayed on for a year or so before accepting another job that also permitted me to engage in the general practice of law. A couple of years later, Sherm was given the opportunity (with a foot behind him) to resign from the executive V.P. job and return to New York. I’d never shared with him my ill-will that I had once felt toward him or about the prayer experiment, but about 5 years after he left town I was moved to write to him about it and ask him to forgive my smallness and distrust. He wrote a beautiful letter in return, thanking me for a healing touch from the Lord. Two weeks later Sherm died unexpectedly. I’m so glad I finally responded to the Spirit’s nudging in that relational matter.
I think you can see both elements of changed circumstances and changed heart in that story. The second story narrates the beginning of a powerful new ministry. It also connects with a thread of his personal story. Having grown up in a home where his father was a binge drinking alcoholic who frequently brought shame on the family, Ike had often lived in the shadow of this shame.
When I left the Chamber of Commerce I accepted a job managing a coal trade association and began practicing law. However, my specialty was transportation law and that constituted most of my practice. I didn’t experience much of a sense of fulfillment. I had prayed for help and guidance, but was getting no answers. Finally, I prayed, “Lord, I’m available. Use me anyway you want to.” The next day I got a call from the Bar Association asking me to represent a prisoner in a post-conviction case. (The courts at that time were flooded with such cases due to the celebrated Gideon v. Wainwright decision of the Supreme Court, so they were glad to have anybody to help clear the docket.) That was only the beginning of a long series of events over twenty years that led to the formation of a program at the State Correctional Institution in Pittsburgh. It involved one-to-one relationships between inmates and Christian businessmen. Not strings, just bonds of love. The program was called “Alpha” – a new beginning and it is bottomed on the promise that for rehabilitation to be effective, change must come from the heart. And this heart change is most permanently brought about by the regenerative power of Jesus Christ. I was really gung-ho on the program and felt a special kinship with those on the inside… all the society misfits. Most of them boozers and other addicts. We had a bunch of them live with our family for a couple of months after their release until they could find work and get settled…. This from a guy who had struggled so much growing up with the stigma of a father who was an alcoholic. The Lord works in strange ways but he really works.