I can’t tell you how many times I have had very disappointed people come to me after praying to God for something and then not receiving it. “But what about Jesus saying, ‘Ask and you shall receive’? Why didn’t it work for me?”

It reminds me of an old song by Sufjan Stevens, “Casimir Pulaski Day.” In it he sings about his friend who died from cancer.

Tuesday night at the Bible study
We lift our hands and pray over her body
But nothing ever happens.

It can be particularly poignant when we pray for something and it does not come to pass.

I remember hearing, “When you pray, ask for what you want.”

And I still believe that is an essential part of prayer— but just a small part. There is much more to prayer than simply asking God for what we hope for or what we want.

Richard Foster writes in Celebration of Discipline, “Perhaps the most astonishing characteristic of Jesus’ praying is that when he prayed for others he never concluded by saying, ‘If it be thy will.’ Nor did the apostles or prophets when they were praying for others. They were so immersed in the milieu of the Holy Spirit that when they encountered a specific situation, they knew what should be done. Their praying was so positive that it often took the form of a direct, authoritative command: ‘Walk,’ ‘Be well,’ ‘Stand up.’”

Can we pray with such a direct sense of authority?

I know that often I get caught in the vain repetitions of prayer and forget that at the heart of prayer is a deep communion with God. And core to communion with God is the relinquishing of our own will.

I love how Eugene Peterson paraphrases the Sermon on the Mount: “The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They’re full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don’t fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need.” (Matthew 6:7–9 The Message)

Yet here is the thing about prayer: it is effectual. And when we pray with God, we must first quiet our own inner chaos and listen to what Foster calls “the silent thunder of the Lord of hosts.”

This keeps things in perspective. And alongside this perspective, we can still remember that God invites us, through prayer, to effect real change in and around us.

Richard Foster writes in Celebration of Discipline, “To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives.”

Prayer starts with openness to, honesty with, and trust in God. The reason God answers prayer is because we ask.

And as we ask, we can use our words—and even our imaginations—to be in conversation with God. When we ask God for something for someone or for a situation in prayer, we are asking God to tell us what to do.

Some people wonder if “answers to prayer” are mere coincidences.

Archbishop William Temple once noted that coincidences occur much more frequently when he prays.

For folks in the Episcopal Church, we get grounded and rooted in prayer as the central act of our belief in God. And we don’t pray alone. Our prayer book brings us back into the life of prayer week after week. From our corporate prayer, we are strengthened to respond to God not just at church, but in all circumstances, without ceasing.

Foster encourages a practice of something he calls flash prayers, developed by Frank Laubach. Laubach proposed learning to live so that “to see anybody will be to pray; to hear anybody… may be to pray.”

What would it look like if you “flashed prayers” to God straight at people as you encountered them? It looks like this: you see someone, and inwardly ask for the joy of the Lord and a deeper awareness of God’s presence to rise up within every person you meet. Foster says he tried it and found that sometimes people offer no response, but other times people turn and smile, as if you had actually addressed them.

What if we all tried to practice these kinds of prayers? What might we learn about prayer if we shared our results?

Foster writes, “We could change the whole atmosphere of a nation if thousands of us would constantly throw a cloak of prayer around everyone in our circle of nearness.”

Prayer is not a technique for getting what we want, nor a ritual disclaimer of “if it is God’s will.” It is a relationship. As we relinquish our need to manage outcomes and instead learn to respond faithfully to God’s presence, prayer reshapes not only us, but the world we inhabit.

prayer