Believing Prayer

The New York Time’s ethicist received the following from an anonymous reader:

I have an 85-year-old neighbor who is a sweet friend and caring person. My issue is that she is very religious and I’m not at all. She prays for me and says it in person, texts, and emails for even the most minor of situations. I’ve told her my view of religion and that she doesn’t need to pray for me. She said she has to, otherwise she’s not following the Bible. I’m trying to ignore this but it’s really bothering me that she can’t respect my wishes.

“The Ethicist” responded:

I’m glad that you’ve been honest with each other about your very different views concerning prayer. But… if you don’t think these prayers will do you any good, you presumably also don’t think they’ll do you any harm. By contrast, she thinks that you’ll be worse off without them, and that praying for you is her duty.

The only reason you give for objecting to her prayers is that she has failed to comply with your wishes. Yet I don’t find that she has thereby treated you with disrespect… So, you’re not entitled to insist that she stop including you in her prayers. What you can fairly ask is simply that she refrain from informing you about them. Still, instead of requiring that your octogenarian neighbor change her ways, I wonder whether you might change yours — and learn to accept this woman for who she is, hearing her prayers as a sincere expression of her loving feelings toward you.

The morning after Hurricane Helene pummeled the eastern seaboard of the U.S., Thomas Witherspoon inspected the damage to his western North Carolina home. The night before, he listened to the wind whip down trees and snap power lines along the two-mile access road connecting his family to their few neighbors in Buncombe County.

Like the tens of thousands of other North Carolina residents, the power to Witherspoon’s neighborhood was completely out. It was impossible to communicate with the house down the road, let alone anyone several miles away. Unable to send text messages or make phone calls, radio became the one form of communication left in rural North Carolina. After fixing what he could on his own property, Witherspoon, a lifelong amateur radio enthusiast, began distributing handheld radios to his neighbors.

There are more than one million licensed radio amateurs in the U.S. like Witherspoon, according to an FCC spokesperson. Some amateur radio bands are short bands, reaching only small communities of people, while others cover hundreds and even thousands of miles. When communication infrastructure fails, like cellular networks, the FCC allows for amateur radio operators to assist in recovery efforts.

“Amateur radio is one of those things you get into because of your love of radio communications and the technical aspects of it or the community and the challenges that you can overcome,” Witherspoon says. “It's a lot of fun, but underlying all of that is this prime directive with amateur radio that it’s always there as emergency communications when all else fails.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In times of disaster or tragedy, when all else fails, God is always accessible through prayer. He is attentive to our needs, possesses infinite resources, and offers comfort through his Word, as expressed in: Psalm 34:6 “This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.” 1 Peter 3:12 “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer.

Imagine the thrill of opening your mailbox and finding a crisp, white envelope waiting for you. The anticipation builds as you tear it open, as you discover a check nestled inside. It's more than just a piece of paper; it's a tangible promise that money is waiting you when you cash it. The check might be from an employer, a tax refund, or an unexpected birthday gift from a grandparent.

While writing checks may be less popular than it used to be, 54% of Americans still wrote a check in the past year. In fact, according to a recent survey by GOBankingRates, 17% of Americans are still writing checks on a monthly basis — and 23% of Gen X Americans are still sending checks on a monthly basis. In 2021 the Federal Reserve reported $27.23 trillion in checks were written.

Now suppose in the busyness of life you forgot about the check or misplaced it, only to find it months later. You begin to wonder, is this thing still any good? If grandma had sent cash, there would be no question, since cash is always valuable. But, how long is a check good for? The check was a promise of cash, but is the promise still any good?

Most old checks aren't valid forever. A personal check is generally good for at least six months. If you don't deposit a check right away, you may not receive the money even if your bank agrees to accept the check. That's because the account the check was drawn on may have been closed or not have insufficient funds to back the check.

The bottom line is that cashing a check promptly ensures that you can access the funds without issues, such as the check bouncing or having it go stale.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This would make a good introduction to a sermon on the enduring promises of God which never go out of date, or cannot be redeemed because of insufficient funds or the account being closed. God will never refuse to honor his promises (Rom. 9:6-8, 2 Cor. 1:20). But it is a good idea to claim God’s promises promptly to begin enjoying his gift to you.

The US has long ranked high among the world’s nations in its level of religious belief. But the Pew Research Center examined just what 80 percent of Americans actually mean when they say they “believe in God.”

Here’s what its survey of more than 4,700 adults found:

56% of Americans believe in God “as described in the Bible.”

97% God is all-loving

94% God is all-knowing

86% God is all-powerful

God determines what happens in my life…

43% All of the time

28% Most of the time

16% Some of the time

6% Hardly ever

6% Never

Talking with God…

56% I talk to God and God does not talk back

39% I talk to God and God talks back

Ajanay Barnes and her roommate were craving ice cream one night, they used the grocery-shopping app Instacart to load up a basket at Walmart. They asked for strawberry shortcake ice cream. They received sausage, egg, and cheese breakfast rolls. After delivery, Instacart issued a refund. The breakfast rolls are uneaten in Ms. Barnes’s freezer. She said, “I was craving this one specific ice cream. I guess Walmart had other plans.”

Global supply chains are in turmoil and supermarket shelves are looking sparse. So, order packers are winging it. Roses swapped for bell peppers. A thermometer switched for mac and cheese. A rapid COVID test traded for Halls lozenges.

An Instacart spokeswoman said high demand and supply-chain issues have troubled many of its grocery partners. Instacart gives replacement recommendations, the spokeswoman said. Online shoppers have been left amused, puzzled, and annoyed. Rhett Mitter said, “As there’s been different supply-chain issues and shortages, you notice some weird, weird substitutions.”

Mr. Mitter said he needed horseradish to make a sauce for shrimp with his wife, Jenna. Despite ordering it from Whole Foods, the product wasn’t available. The substitute delivered? Beets. She said, “We joked about it. You can’t make cocktail sauce with Ketchup and beets.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Delivery services are making some off-the-wall substitutions. But God never substitutes inferior products in answer to our prayer requests and there is never any supply issues with God. “If his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? (Matt 7:7-11; Luke 11:11-13). If God does substitute it is for our good and “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Eph. 3:20).

Author Skye Jethani tells the story of how Billy Graham modeled praying continually:

In 1982, the Today show in New York City scheduled an interview with Reverend Billy Graham. When he arrived at the studio, one of the program’s producers informed Graham’s assistant that a private room had been set aside for the reverend for prayer before the broadcast.

The assistant thanked the producer for the thoughtful gesture, but told him that Mr. Graham would not need the room. The producer was a bit shocked that a world-famous Christian leader would not wish to pray before being interviewed on live national television.

Graham’s assistant responded, “Mr. Graham started praying when he got up this morning, he prayed while eating breakfast, he prayed on the way over in the car, and he’ll probably be praying all the way through the interview.”

Dr. David H. Rosmarin, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School argues that “Psychiatry Needs to Get Right with God.” That’s the title of his recent article in Scientific American, Rosmarin writes:

Nearly 60 percent of psychiatric patients want to discuss spirituality in the context of their treatment. Yet we rarely provide such an opportunity. … Of more than 90,000 active projects within the National Institutes of Health, fewer than 20 mention spirituality anywhere in the abstract, and only one project contains this term in its title.

In the wake of COVID-19, Rosmarin observed our hunger for a connection with God and the church. In the early days of the pandemic, Jeanet Bentzen of the University of Copenhagen examined Google searches for the word “prayer” in 95 countries. She identified that they hit an all-time global high in March 2020, and increases occurred in lockstep with the number of COVID-19 cases identified in each country.

In the past year, American mental health sank to the lowest point in history: Incidence of mental disorders increased by 50 percent, compared with before the pandemic, alcohol and other substance abuse surged, and young adults were more than twice as likely to seriously consider suicide than they were in 2018. Yet the only group to see improvements in mental health during the past year were those who attended religious services at least weekly (virtually or in-person): 46 percent report “excellent” mental health today versus 42 percent one year ago.

George Wood was a superintendent of the US Assemblies of God. He shared the following story in a Preaching Today sermon:

When I was a boy, my sister left our home in Pennsylvania, and traveled to Central Bible College. She had a lifelong problem with her eyesight. She had 20 percent vision in one eye and 50 percent vision in the other, and wore thick, Coke-bottle glasses.

During a fall revival at Central Bible College, she had been praying at the altar and saw a vision of Jesus on the cross. She felt a voice, saying to her, "Doris, take off your glasses." In those years, if you wore glasses, you were prayed for on a regular basis—that you would be healed. My sister had had enough of that, so she said, "No."

Again, she felt the voice say to her, "Doris, take off your glasses."

Again, her response was, "No."

A third time, while she was having the vision of Jesus on the cross, she felt this voice say to her, "Doris, take off your glasses." She sensed it might be the Lord, so she prayed, "Lord, if I take these glasses off, I don't want to ever put them on again."

The vision disappeared, she opened her eyes, and she had perfect sight. It's been 50 years. She has never put on a pair of glasses to this day.

Author Anne Bokma left her fundamentalist Christian church in her 20s. She recently spent a full year investigating and experimenting with numerous forms of popular New Age spirituality, from yoga to witchcraft, magic mushrooms to death cafés.

Bokma recalls the time in her early 30s when she prayed really hard. She was eight months pregnant and in the hospital experiencing premature labor pains. A nurse waved the ultrasound wand over her belly and after many minutes of trying, could not detect a heartbeat. A doctor was called as Bokma and her husband started to panic. The doctor also could not find a heartbeat. Bokma immediately began “bargaining, begging and beseeching” God. She didn’t really believe in a supernatural entity who personally intervenes, “but this did not stop me from crying out for mercy in my hour of need.”

Bokma tells the rest of the story, showing that her prayer was never really sincere:

When all hope seems lost, praying means you’re at least doing something. After searching in vain for another couple of minutes, the doctor … picked up the cord attached to the ultrasound machine and dangled it in front of our eyes. It hadn’t been plugged in. Our baby was alive, though not because of divine intervention. This made me think about what Mark Twain must have meant when he said: “Under the circumstances, swearing seems more apt than prayer.” Some might have called this incident a miracle. We called her Ruby.

Dr. Helen Roseveare, missionary to the Congo, told the story of a mother on her mission station who died after giving birth to a premature baby. They tried to improvise an incubator, but the only hot water bottle they had was beyond repair. So, they prayed for the baby and for her little sister who was now an orphan. One of the girls responded, “Dear God, please send a hot water bottle today. Tomorrow will be too late. And dear Lord, send a doll for her sister so she won't feel so lonely.”

That afternoon a parcel arrived from England and the children watched as they opened it. To their surprise, under some clothing was a hot water bottle! Immediately the girl who had prayed dug deeper into the parcel. She was sure God would provide the doll she prayed for. And she was right! The Heavenly Father knew of the child's faith. Five months before that morning prayer, he had led a women’s church group to include both of those specific items.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Perhaps you have prayed many times for something. You have waited for the answer, but none has come. God knows your every need. be assured, an answer will come. “I will answer them before they even call to me. While they are still talking to me about their needs, I will go ahead and answer their prayers.” (Isa. 65:24)

In northeast Portland, Oregon, hope takes the form of a horse chestnut tree. It grows on the corner of Morris Street and 7th Avenue, and its branches are full of wishes. The tree grows on the property of Nicole Helprin, who first granted the tree its wishing status in 2013. Before leaving town, Helprin wrote out a few wishes and hung them on the tree, according to a story by a Portland news station. When she returned from her trip, the entire tree was covered in wishes like paper tinsel.

After that, Helprin posted instructions to the tree on a wooden clipboard. The note read, “This is a wishing tree. Please find a blank tag. Write your wish for you, a loved one, the neighborhood, etc.” Some wishes posted on the tree include, “I am wishing for … a year full of crepes,” “I wish for everlasting love,” “I wish for everyone to have what they need,” “I wish my dad was nice,” and “I wish to find my purpose and love for life again.”

Since then, the tree’s branches are never bare of wishes. The tree seems unaffected by its status as a stockpile of yearning. Sometimes, the tags blow off its branches and scatter around the neighborhood, perhaps an indication that they’ve just come true.

People of all ages scribble out desires, both public and private, and hang the tags on the tree in hopes that some greater power will fulfill them. But the majority seem to do with love--wishing for new love or longevity in the love they have. All the wishes are anonymous, making it easy to write something down and walk away.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Attributes of God; Love of God; Omniscience of God; Prayer to God – People have great longings and unmet needs but can only wish for fulfillment. The Christian has a loving Father in heaven who constantly hears our prayers and can do “far more than all we ask or imagine (Eph. 3:20-21).”

Good vibes have abounded over a viral video of two high school football players kneeling in prayer after the game. And while football players praying isn’t quite as novel a sight as it used to be, the jerseys told the story. Instead of teammates, the two young men had been opponents on the field.

Wide receiver Gage Smith had just led Sherman High School to a rousing victory over Mesquite West. But afterward, he knelt to pray with Mesquite’s Ty Jordan, whose mother was battling cancer. The two opponents had known each other from having played on a select 7-on-7 squad, and the final score was the last thing on either of their minds.

Smith said, “When you're playing the game, you're playing to win, and the other team is the enemy. But afterward, you still have respect for the other opponent. Football brings people together in so many different ways, and that was just one example of it that night.”

Possible Preaching Angle: We embody the love of Jesus when we can overlook petty differences to serve each other in times of need.

As is her role as police dispatcher and call-taker, Antonia Bundy answered the call and rendered help where it was needed. But her caller presented an unusual request.

“You had a bad day at school?” she asked the young boy on the line. “Yeah, I just called to tell you that.”

Nine times out of ten, such an admission might be met with a scolding for wasting police resources. But for Bundy, something seemed different enough to take a different tack.

''When he told me he was having a bad day and I asked him what was troubling him he told me that he had homework," Bundy explained in a local TV interview. "And at that point, I was able to determine that it was more of a 'I need help with homework' than an actual emergency."

Fortunately, Bundy was cheerfully up-to-the-task. "I've always been good at math. All the way through high school I enjoyed it. So it was something I was very happy I could help him with." Bundy walked him through an arithmetic problem, calling it a nice break in her busy day.

As it turns out, her decision not to scold the child paid off, as he seemed to be aware that his problem did not qualify as an emergency.

"I'm sorry for calling you,” he said. “But I really needed help."

Bundy’s response?

"You're fine. We're always here to help."

Potential Preaching Angles:

No request is too small for God, and if we are God’s creation, God will take care of us, so let’s have the boldness of children and ask God for what we need.

The marketing team at Lakeside Shopping Centre are accustomed to the difficulty of getting the attention of a fickle shopping public. But recently, they vowed to do the impossible.

As part of a Christmas promotion, Lakeside’s research indicated that 11 percent of area parents had at least one impossible-to-buy gift request from their children. They took stock of many of those requests (things like “a pencil that does my homework for me” or “a trampoline to the moon”), then tasked five prominent British inventors to solve one of these seemingly impossible requests. Their resulting creations will be part of a massive giveaway.

So if a child wants to become a LEGO figure, certified LEGO builder Duncan Titmarsh will be at the ready. Confectioners at Smith & Sinclair have designed a suite of Wonka-esque candies that taste like a holiday dinner. And seamstress Charlotte Denn created a dress that can, with the pull of a string, turn its wearer into a princess.

“It’s a lovely truth that children and even adults will sometimes put impossible gifts on their Christmas lists,” said marketing manager Ben Leeson. “At…Lakeside you’ll find all your Christmas presents – even the seemingly impossible ones.”

Potential Preaching Angles:

1) These inventions are impressive, but at Christmas God did something truly impossible—he became human, walked among us, and died for our sins. In doing so, he met the deepest need of our heart, a need much deeper than just a new toy or gift. 2) God's boundless divine creativity means even the things we seek that appear impossible are doable for him. Earthly acts of innovation or ingenuity are mere foreshadowing of God, who not only created the heavens and the earth, but will one day create a new heaven and a new earth.

David Fitch shares how the prayers of a church vanquished Satan's grip on a neighborhood:

In 2010 a group of eight people from two churches felt called to the Detroit Boulevard neighborhood of Sacramento. It was known as one of the most notorious crime-ridden neighborhoods in all of Sacramento. Each house in that neighborhood was a place of danger. Nonetheless this group of eight decided to walk through the neighborhood praying over each home and praying for the presence of Christ to reign over violence, addiction, and satanic oppression. They began walking through the neighborhood, praying over each home and rebuking the demonic strongholds of addiction and violence.

One of the eight, former Sacramento police officer and gang detective Michael Xiong, reported that "each time we prayed over the houses, we felt the weight of oppression becoming lighter." A woman from one of the houses confronted them. When she discovered they were praying for the community, she asked for healing, and God healed her.

The group soon physically moved into the neighborhood and started what they called Detroit Life Church. A couple years later a local newspaper, the Sacramento Bee, reported that there were no homicides, robberies, or sex crimes, and only one assault in Detroit Boulevard between 2013 and 2014. Detroit Boulevard had been transformed by a small group of people who began their ministry in the neighborhood by praying around houses, streets, and parks for the power of Satan to be vanquished. Kingdom prayer in body is what it means to be faithfully present to his presence in the world.

Charles Galbreath, a pastor of Clarendon Road Church in Brooklyn, tells the story of a black man gunned down by police in his neighborhood. Anger seethed in the neighborhood. Frustration from years of racial oppression was about to erupt in violence. Many people lined up to march down the main street while police gathered, expecting violence.

Charles and a group of pastors rushed to the gathering place and found themselves caught in the middle between the police and the people. Tensions were rising. Insults were being hurled across the divide. One side picked up rocks, the other side clutched their guns. The pastors feared for their lives; bullets could fly at any moment.

Galbreath said that some of the pastors spontaneously walked into the middle of the street between the two warring parties, bowed their heads, and started to pray. They implored God to visit this place. As Charles tells it, slowly the tension died down, the people put down the rocks, and the police took their hands off their holsters. Those who cared stayed. And without a shot fired or rock thrown, conversations began and God's presence appeared that night in that community. It was the beginning of something new God was doing to bring justice and reconciliation to a street corner.

Possible Preaching Angles: David Fitch adds, "Kingdom prayer does not remove us from the world but places us firmly in the middle of it even in the most violent, awkward, and hopeless circumstances, kingdom prayer open space for God's presence and strengthens those praying to walk faithfully in that presence."

Robert Morgan writes that as President William McKinley lay dying from an assassin's bullet in Buffalo, New York, in 1901, the Lord's Prayer was on his lips. Prayer had been a lifelong practice that guided McKinley through his political career and into the presidency. McKinley had been born into a devout Christian home fifty-eight years before, and born again at age fourteen. According to his pastor, A. D. Morton, young McKinley stood up during a youth meeting and said, "I have sinned; I want to be a Christian ... I give myself to the Savior who has done so much for me."

McKinley's mother, a woman of deep prayer, taught him to pray by example and encouragement, but his greatest lessons in prayer were forged under the pressures of his duties as President of the United States. One of his heaviest decisions arose in 1898 regarding the status of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. One day, a delegation of church leaders came to the White House, and McKinley told them how he had decided to resolve the crisis in the Philippines.

"The truth is, I didn't want the Philippines," he said. "I did not know what to do. … I sought counsel from all sides—Democrats as well as Republicans—but got little help. … I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight, and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it came to me this way."

McKinley relayed the strategy that developed in his mind as he prayed: that the Philippines should be taken seriously and helped, that the United States should "by God's grace do the very best we could by them as our fellow-men for whom Christ died." McKinley added, "And then I went to bed, and went to sleep and slept soundly."

One-quarter of all Americans believe that God cares about who wins the Super Bowl. That's according to a survey released in January 2017. That's slightly less than the number (28 percent) who believe God had "a major role" in placing Donald Trump in the White House.

This latest study follows the results of previous surveys with some of the same questions. According to a Religion News Service article, "In 2013, 27 percent of Americans said they believed God was involved in sports outcomes, and in 2015 that number was 26 percent." Of course there's a flip side to this: 20 percent of sports fans believe their teams have been "cursed" at some point. But not everyone thinks that God answers prayers in favor of their team. 73 percent of Americans believe that God doesn't intervene in the final score.

Sheldon Yellen manages a $1.5 billion company that operates in 31 countries and employs 7,000 people … all without a smartphone. The CEO of Belfor, a privately held property restoration company, only uses a flip phone. Belfor said, "You can't show and feel emotion, compassion, passion, or intent through a smartphone, through text."

Having a flip phone encourages phone conversations, the CEO said, which he strongly prefers to texting. "If someone has something to say to me, they know they can pick up the phone. I'll answer their question," he said. "I am approachable, and I can't convey that through a text."

Yellen said. "A young kid was trying to get a meeting with me and sell me a product. Finally after three months, he got his appointment. He's sitting across from me, and three times during the first 10 minutes this kid looks down at his smartphone and starts texting." Yellen told the young man: "I'm not trying to be rude or arrogant, but I think you're going to have to go. I'm not asking you to get down and bow, but you just spent so [much] of my time texting someone when you're sitting with me. You gotta go, and one day you're going to thank me."

Smartphones are not allowed at Belfor company meetings. There is an unspoken rule that no one brings in their phone. "My thinking is: Let's have our meeting; let's get on with it," Yellen said. "In a lot of situations, we have a basket in the room or outside the room for cellphones." Yellen added, "I want people to talk to me. I want them to hear my passion."

Possible Preaching Angles: 1) Prayer; Communication; Fatherhood of God; We have direct access to the Sovereign Lord of the universe and we can express our deepest need, our love, and thanksgiving at any time. He always gives us his full attention. 2) Pastor; Pastor's role; This is an excellent reminder for pastors to "live in the moment" and be approachable by their flock.

In his book It Happens After Prayer, Pastor H. B. Charles Jr. provides the following helpful illustration of why God often makes us wait for the answer to our prayers.

One hot afternoon, a certain woman walked to her neighbor's produce stand to buy grapes. The line was long. And each person seemed to get special attention. But she waited patiently. When she finally made it to the front of the line, the owner asked for her order. She asked for grapes. "Please excuse me for a minute," was the answer. Then the owner walked away and disappeared behind a building. For some reason, this rubbed the woman the wrong way. Everyone in line before her was greeted warmly. They were given special attention. And, most importantly, they were served immediately. But she was forced to wait. And when she got to the front of the line, she was forced to wait some more. She was offended. She felt the owner took her regular business for granted. The longer she waited, the angrier she became.

Finally, the produce stand owner reappeared. And with a big smile, he presented her with the most beautiful grapes she had ever seen. He invited her to taste them. She had never tasted grapes so good. As she turned to leave with her delicious grapes, he stopped her. "Oh yeah, I'm sorry I kept you waiting," said the farmer. "But I needed the time to get you my very best."

How long have you been in line waiting on God to get to your request? How long have you been waiting in line for God to meet a need, solve a problem, or open a door? Whatever you do, don't get out of line. And don't stop praying. Wait on God.