Download - One...snowflakes, we frantically called and texted friends asking for prayer. My ’78 Land Cruiser has no air conditioning, so I soaked a scarf of Stasi’s in water and held it to

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Prayer That Works

June 26, 2012, was a simmering summer day in Colorado. Thermometers in Colorado Springs would report a record-

breaking high of 101°F— fueling concerns about a wildfire burning unchecked in the mountains west of town. Fire crews were spread thin, and drought conditions had prepped the hill-sides like tinder. Many worried eyes were turned toward the hills that day. Then, as if on some malevolent cue, winds started gust-ing to sixty- five miles an hour. (A thirty- five- mile- per- hour blast will almost knock you over, to give you some perspective; sixty- five miles per hour is considered a “violent storm” on the Beaufort Wind Scale.) Storm winds and flames on dry mountain terrain make for an unholy trinity.

The Waldo Canyon Fire jumped containment lines. Like the German blitzkrieg racing across Poland in 1939, it began sweep-ing east toward the city limits, unchecked and ravening. When all was said and done, 18,247 acres and 346 homes were consumed.

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M o v i n g M o u n ta i n s

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I was sitting at my desk that afternoon when a colleague walked in and said, “Have you seen this?” My instinctive reac-tion was to look to the mountains— our office windows face west— and I saw the vanguard of the fire cresting the last ridge before town. We’d been following the reports hour to hour; the fire had grown to 4,000 acres and was deemed only 5 percent contained. My neighborhood (we border the forest) had been placed on evacuation warning twice, and for days we watched the column of smoke rising over the mountains from the fire’s epicenter west of us, billowing to a height of thirty thousand feet like a thunderhead or the plume of a volcano, all orange and black and foreboding.

But the reports kept assuring us that the fire would move north and west and bypass town, so we went on with our lives— until I saw the advancing flames crest the ridge. I grabbed my phone as I walked out the door and called Stasi. “Pack up; I’m headed home.” “They haven’t given the evacuation notice,” she said. “It’s coming,” I told her. “The fire is coming. I can see it. I’m on my way.” Like a man running before an incoming tide, I liter-ally raced the fire home as it swept ridge after ridge. We grabbed the dog and a few belongings— it’s true, what they say, how little actually matters to you when it comes down to “the moment”— and said good- bye to everything else.

Our neighbors were the last to leave; they later told us that trees on the hill above our houses were exploding. Stuck in the traffic jams caused by the evacuation, ashes drifting down like snowflakes, we frantically called and texted friends asking for prayer. My ’78 Land Cruiser has no air conditioning, so I soaked a scarf of Stasi’s in water and held it to my mouth to prevent smoke inhalation while I made contingency plans should the fire catch up


P r ay e r T h at W o r k s

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to us; the winds were howling down the mountain now, driving the flames forward like the hounds of hell.

We took cover east of town with some dear friends and watched anxiously. It would be three more days of fire and smoke and shrouded hillsides till we heard the news— our home had been spared.

Bits and pieces of story began to trickle in, but it was the reports of the fire crews that left us speechless. A veteran fire chief and a handful of wildfire “hot shots” had gathered on our street to stand in wonder as they witnessed something they had never seen before. The one- hundred- foot wall of flame should have swept down our summer- crisp hillside and engulfed our home in a matter of seconds. But it did not. Every time the advancing fury approached our property line, it wavered, hesitated, and pulled back. The raging furnace would not cross our property line. It would advance, then retreat, advance, then retreat— though the winds were at its back and the fire had just covered miles in a manner of minutes. We realized it was at that same moment, three days earlier, that a friend had texted us,

I saw an angel, above your house, spreading its wings and

flapping them against the wind and the fire. I think you are

going to be okay.

When we finally were allowed back into the neighborhood, we found that the low- lying grass fire had burned right up to our porch. But the major assault had not crossed our property line. The aspen trees in our yard were still in their summer glory.

I know, I know— the story raises some difficulties; it touches the raw nerve of your own longing for rescue and your history



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of unanswered prayers. Other people were earnestly praying as the fire swept down— how come their homes weren’t spared? I don’t pretend to know the answer to that. Like you, I have my own story of prayers answered, prayers unanswered, and silence I can’t quite make sense of. This is not a story about my prayers at all. What I do know is this: every day, when I step out my door, I see up on the hill the outline of blackened tree stumps, and then, coming closer, after you cross our property line, green, living trees. One side looks like Mordor, the other, Eden. An irrefutable witness to the power of prayer.

A Disruptive But Hopeful Truth

Look, let’s go ahead and name the elephant in the room— some prayers work, and some prayers don’t. Why does that surprise and irritate us? Some diets work, but most don’t; no one is really sur-prised by that. We simply keep looking for the one that will work for us. Some investments produce, and others don’t; you look for the program that works for you. Some schools are effective while others fail badly; hopefully you can find the situation that is right for your child. There is a way things work. Can you name anything in life where this isn’t so?

I damaged my elbow last summer doing some yard work. I ignored the problem for weeks until I was forced to see my physi-cal therapist. I went under the assumption that a couple visits ought to take care of my problem; after all, it was just a strain— it’s not like I broke it or something. Yet therapy took months, and I was so irritated by that. And it was irritated at me; that is, I kept irritating the muscle by using my elbow before it was healed. I



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kept aggravating it because I didn’t want to accommodate my life-style to account for the realities of a tiny muscle in my left elbow.

You know the irritation I speak of. Something adolescent in human nature just doesn’t like having to submit to the realities of the world around us (and within us). We want to eat whatever we feel like eating; then we are surprised and dismayed when our health collapses down the road. We want exercise or weight loss to come quickly and easily; we want it to fit neatly into our calen-dar. We want our friends to be good to us, without ever having to look at how our personalities impact them. We want our kids to “turn out” without making the sacrifices in our parenting styles that are required to fit their needs.

And so it is with prayer. We just want it to be simple and easy; we want it to go like this:

God is loving and powerful.We need his help.So we ask for help, as best we know how.The rest is up to him.After all— he’s God. He can do anything.

The problem is, sometimes he comes through, often he doesn’t, and we have no idea for the rhyme or reason why. We lose heart and abandon prayer. (And we feel hurt and justified in doing so.) We abandon the very treasure God has given us for not losing heart, for moving the “mountains” in front of us, bringing about the changes we so desperately want to see in our world.

The uncomfortable truth is this: that is a very naïve view of prayer, on a level with believing that all a marriage needs is love, or that we should base our foreign policy on belief in our fellow man.



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That simple view of prayer has crushed many a dear soul, because it ignores crucial facts. There is a way things work.

God is powerful, I ask for help, and now it’s up to him— it reminds me of a scene from the movie Patch Adams. Patch is a young medical student with a heart of gold; he wants to offer health care to the disenfranchised. He rallies a group of like- minded idealists, and they begin to chase their dreams. Then tragedy strikes; Patch’s girlfriend is murdered by a schizophrenic man who was among the outcasts they were trying to rescue. The scene then takes us to a cliff top; Patch is standing on the brink. The mood is ominous; it appears he is about to take his life. Patch is arguing with God. I like that part very much— he is reaching out; he is wrestling in the right place. Then he reveals his misunder standing of the world:

[Patch is looking up to heaven]

“Answer me please— tell me what you’re doing.”

[Silence.]

“Okay, let’s look at the logic: You create man. Man suffers

enormous amounts of pain. Man dies. Maybe you should have

had just a few more brainstorming sessions prior to creation.”

[A pause]

“You rested on the seventh day; maybe you should have

spent that day on compassion.”1

His understanding is incomplete— dangerously incomplete. It leaves out some awfully essential facts from that story:

“You create man. Man chooses to rebel against you. We hand

our lives, the earth, and the history of the human race over



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to the evil one. All our misery flows from this fact. But you

intervene— you sent your Son to redeem us, and restore us.

Now we find ourselves in an epic war for the human race and

the planet.”

Do you see what a difference those “omissions” make?! You cannot begin to understand something like murder or wildfire without those elements of the story. Nor can you understand why some prayers work while others don’t.

There Are Answers

Prayer sets up a terrible dilemma for us. We want to pray; it’s in our nature. We desperately want to believe that God will come through for us. But then . . . he doesn’t seem to, and where does that leave us?

I believe God is in the dilemma; I believe he wants us to push through to real answers, solid answers.

For one thing, this reality we find ourselves in is far more dynamic than most folks have been led to believe— especially people of faith. Like Patch, we hold dangerously incomplete understandings of our situation, such as,

God is all- powerful.He did not intervene.So it must not be his will to intervene.

Yes— God is sovereign. And in his sovereignty he created a world in which the choices of men and angels matter. Tremendously.



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He has granted to us “the dignity of causation,” as Pascal called it. Our choices have enormous consequences. We will have much more to say about this going forward, but prayer is not as simple as, “I asked; God didn’t come. I guess he doesn’t want to.”

We have embarked on the most exciting story possible, filled with danger, adventure, and wonders. There is nothing more hopeful than the thought that things can be different, we can move mountains, and we have some role in bringing that change about.

Maybe we can begin to find some answers, or at least a new way of looking at things, in a short story from the Old Testament. During the reign of King Ahab (circa 860 BC), the Middle East was leveled by a three- and- a- half- year drought. Crops failed; famine swept the land; herds of livestock were “put down” because there wasn’t a wild tuft of grass to keep them alive. It was a scene right out of the twentieth- century American dust bowl, or the more recent famines in Africa. But relief was close at hand; God spoke to the prophet Elijah that the time of the drought had come to an end: “After a long time, in the third year, the word of the lorD came to Elijah: ‘Go and present yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain on the land’ ” (1 Kings 18:1).

Finally, the heavens were going to relent; rain was coming; a real gully- washer was headed their way, a genuine biblical deluge— the kind that sinks ox carts up to their axles in mud and gives the kids a week off school. But before it could all happen— and this is the first fascinating wrinkle in the story— Elijah had to pray it would rain. Now, why is that? Why didn’t God simply send the rain? We don’t know; we have to stick with the story . . .

Elijah climbed to the top of Carmel, bent down to the ground

and put his face between his knees. “Go and look toward the



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sea,” he told his servant. And he went up and looked. “There is

nothing there,” he said. Seven times Elijah said, “Go back.” The

seventh time the servant reported, “A cloud as small as a man’s

hand is rising from the sea.” So Elijah said, “Go and tell Ahab,

‘Hitch up your chariot and go down before the rain stops you.’ ”

Meanwhile, the sky grew black with clouds, the wind rose, a

heavy rain came on and Ahab rode off to Jezreel. (vv. 42–45)

I love this narrative; it is so practical, and immensely helpful when it comes to understanding prayer and how it works. God is going to come through alright, but he insists on involving Elijah’s prayers. It reminds me of Augustine’s line, “Without God, we cannot, and without us, he will not.” We find ourselves in the sort of universe where prayer plays a crucial role, sometimes, the deciding role. Our choices matter.

Next, Elijah doesn’t just take a quick whack at it; no little “cut- flower” prayers here, as Eugene Peterson calls them. No little “Jesus, be with us today” prayers. Elijah is determined to see results. He bows, and prays, and then sends his manservant to see if it’s working— is it having any effect? I love his posture, his willingness to give it a go, see what happens, and then adjust himself to the results. The servant comes back and reports that the sky is bleak and empty, just as it has been for years, barren as old Sarai’s womb. This is the point at which most of us give up, but the old prophet sticks at it; he has another go and sends his man to have a second look. Nothing. So he takes his cloak off, puts his shoulder to the wheel, and gives it yet another try. He’s not letting the evidence discourage him.

Six more times he sticks with it. By now the rest of us would have bailed down to Starbucks to commiserate about “the dark



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night of the soul,” and what to do with “the silence of God.” Not this old Israelite— he’s still up on the mountain, persevering. After eight rounds of prayer— and rounds really does feel like the right word by this point; you get the feeling they are like rounds in the ring, full of sweat and grit and a real going at it— after the eighth bell the servant says, “Well . . . there’s a puff of cloud on the horizon, not any bigger than your fist” and that’s all it takes; the storm is on its way.

Contrast this with a story Anne Lamott shared in her auto-biographical book Traveling Mercies. She was recounting her somewhat justified paranoia over possible melanoma (her father died from melanoma) and a six- week wait to get a biopsy done. Anne had returned home from her dermatologist and was pray-ing: “So I wrote God a note on a scrap of paper. It said, ‘I am a little anxious. Help me remember that you are with me even now. I am going to take my sticky fingers off the control panel until I hear from you.’ Then I folded up the note and put it in the drawer of the table next to my bed as if it were God’s In box.”2

Now, I like Anne Lamott very much; I think it is a touching story, so true to our humanity. But it is just not helpful when it comes to prayer. Whose prayers do you think are more likely to see results— Elijah’s or Lamott’s? If you were going to ask one of the two of them to pray for someone you love, who would you choose?

So let’s be honest— some prayers work, and some prayers don’t. We might be embarrassed to admit that, but you know it’s true. If you are interested in prayer at all, you are interested in prayer that works. That kind of prayer is the focus of this book. Which brings us back to Elijah the Tishbite. There is an over-looked passage late in the New Testament that is going to begin



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to connect some dots for us in a wild way. It comes from the book of James, and he brings us back around to the old man praying on the mountain: “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops” (5:16–18).

The brother of Jesus was giving his readers a tutorial on the subject of prayer. (He had seen some serious demonstrations of prayer, we might recall, growing up around the man who turned a boy’s lunch into an all- you- can- eat buffet for five thousand.) James pointed to the famous drought story I just cited, then made a staggering connection— you are no different than Elijah. That was his purpose in using the phrase, “Elijah was a man just like us.” James was trying to disarm that religious posture that so often poisons the value of biblical stories: Well, sure, that was so- and- so [in this case Elijah] and they were different than us. Nope. Not the case. Actually, James makes it very clear: Elijah was a human being just like you.

In other words, you can do it too.I’m not going to try and convince you that you ought to pray.

If the struggles of those you love, the heartache of the world, or your own dreams, desires, and afflictions do not move you, noth-ing I say here would be more compelling.

What I can do is put a far, far more effective understanding of prayer in your hands, together with enough applications that you begin to get a feel for how things work. There is a way things work. But first, let’s lift off our hearts a few of those dangerous misunderstandings in the way we look at God and prayer.
