The first brown paper grocery bag appeared in America in 1883. By 1982 Supermarkets purchased 25 million bags yearly. That versatile paper bag endured that first century because no one found a more convenient way of carrying groceries.1
It has
been more than two millennia since Jesus walked Palestinian paths and no one
has yet improved on life as Jesus lived it. He practiced a life of prayer that that
modeled positive living. He maximized life by
exercising positive faith while also exposing the false faces of bad religion.
Jesus pronounced woe on the Pharisees for failing to discern the difference between their slick-talk and doing a photo-op walking (Mt. 23:3-7, 13). The Pharisees were experts in public promotion of faith, but they failed to discern, recognize, and reveal God (14-22, 23). When we compare their walk with their talk, they merit nothing more than a failing grade (25-33).
Meanwhile, Jesus invited his disciples to personalize their prayer lives. By modeling an effective prayer life, Jesus helped his disciples integrate internally what they experienced following him daily and this brought personal transformation. Observing Him, they learned to tap into His power source and experience personal transformation.
Empowerment comes through Spiritual Formation. Prayer led Dietrich Bonhoeffer to the empowerment he needed for coping with Adolph Hitler’s atheism. Prayer became his “supreme instance of the hidden character of the Christian life.”
Real prayer
provides “the antithesis of self-display.” Bonhoeffer found that praying men
“ceased to know themselves and know only God whom they call upon.” Rather than taking
immediate aim at having a direct effect on the world, Bonhoeffer concluded
prayer should be “addressed to God alone, and is therefore the perfect example
of undemonstrative action.”1
While some
pray only in late-night emergencies and on weekends--when rates are cheapest, Bonhoeffer
experienced prayer as a way out of the basement of hypocrisy and dishonesty, and
a means of climbing up the ladder to a higher level of character.
Renewal comes through personal Restructuring. Jesus challenged his disciples to power-up their lives. He invited them to pray as they avoided the example of the Pharisees. Prayer is much more than a Sunday suit we put on to wear for public display, but removing it when in private. A. H. McNeile called prayer a “developing life. . .an expanding. . .a deepening. . .a heightening” and “intensifying of the whole being” McNeile found in prayer an encounter with God that offered a private place for personal restructuring.
For the Pharisee, prayer provided a beautiful appearance for impressing observers, but it remained little more than a memorial to the dead within (Mt. 23:27). Genuine prayer peels the outer layers of one’s appearance and discards all self-justification. It meets the God who transforms our attitudes and converts our unholy habits into positive practices of justice, mercy and grace.
A Youth
Pastor challenged his group to pray for missions--fifteen minutes daily. His
warnings of unseen costs prompted them to wonder “What could it cost to pray?” Pointing
to William Carey and David Brainerd, this committed leader noted that Carey
prayed for the conversion of the world and it cost him a lifetime of service.
It cost his supporters years of support--finance and prayer. Brainerd prayed
for the Indians and it cost him two years of sacrifice, and his life.
Authenticity comes Through personal Discipleship. The benefits of prayer far offset the costs of prayer. When we pray, God authenticates our lives with love that enables us to love offensive neighbors and even our enemies. Without doing it for us, He fortifies, sustains and maintains our resistance. He allows for opportunities of spiritual development and growth in grace while we build additional muscle-tone, resist temptations, and endure our growing pains.
“In
short,” wrote Otho Jennings, “God through the death of His Son upon the Cross
has made ample provision that we should be holy; but the acceptance of free
will of these provisions is the sole responsibility of men”2
While the
Pharisees paraded their virtues in public, their dress suits advertised their
faith to their gathered admirers. Their relationships, however, reduced others,
as they refused to compromise, unwilling “to lift a finger” or ease a burden
(23:4). They gave God their leftovers, but they had their reward.
Integrity is the result of a transparent life with God. Prayer played a vital role in the public and private life of both Jesus and the Pharisees. Jesus made prayer personal in both his public life and his private life. In public, the Pharisees displayed pretentious oaths, well-measured gifts, and carefully-crafted photo-ops; in private they lived skin deep.
Jesus
advised us to go into our rooms, close the door and meet God privately. He
invited us to bare our hearts and souls and allow God to bore into the core of
our being and strip off our false faces and experience true integrity that
makes public prayer a corporate sharing (Mt. 6:6). Such personal encounters with
God will eliminate the short-circuiting brought on by material values and
gravity‘s external pull.
Prayer rises
above human reasoning and earthly circumstance. Prayer lubricates life with
grace. Prayer confesses the fear that causes us to shrink from new truth.
Prayer overcomes that mediocrity that settles for the status quo. Thus, we can pray: “O God of Truth;
deliver me from the pride that thinks it has all the truth.”
By agreeing
with God, we experience transformation and
escape the attractions of prying eyes, wagging tongues, and empty minds.
A certain
prominent church installed an expensive organ, which refused to play the very
first Sunday. The Pastor sent an emergency call that quickly brought the mechanic.
The skillful mechanic soon found the reason for the power shortage and he forwarded
this note to the organist: “After prayer the power will be on.”
Jesus connected to the power fond in prayer and invited the disciples to flip the switch, pull the stops, and play the music. Like those common grocery bags we use for carrying our groceries home from the store, we have still not found anything better for powering up our prayer lives; after all this time, we have found nothing to substitute for a life of prayer.
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1 From a 1982 news story interviewing Tim McKenna of Union Camp Corporation.
2 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship. (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1st paperback ed. 1963) p. 181.
3 Kenneth Geiger, Insights Into Holiness, vol. 2. (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 1964), p. 154
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