The Power of Prayer

by Clarice Bowman and George Harper

Chapter I

Prayer and My Life

Do You Want to Learn How to Pray?

Let your heart make answer. For that question represents a crossroads of decision. The way you answer now may affect all the days of your life.

First let us look again at the words of that question, reading backwards:

Do you want to learn how to pray?

To pray ...

What does this four-letter verb suggest to you? Does it imply that there is a Power, a Being, a Somebody beyond ourselves and the created world, Whom we may call in reverential awe, God?

Does it tell you something about yourself: that you, and all the millions of others like you on this planet, are more than animal, that within you is a spark of divine flame that can respond to God and is restless until it does respond?

Does it suggest the astonishing possibility of communication between this God, with all His galaxies of worlds, and you, in all your smallness and unworthiness?

Does it convey the idea that prayer (a word for this communication) is active, both from the human end and from God's end? That there can be no prayer until someone prays? That prayer makes changes, both in things and in persons? That through prayer comes power?

How...

A veteran was relating a cruel experience. "We needed to pray. And oh, how we wanted to pray. But not one of us knew how."

"Science has put us in the know-how about handling our physical world," observes a youth, "but there must also be laws of the spiritual world that we need to discover and learn how to use."

The disciples, eye-witnesses to the power of prayer in Jesus' life, needed no urging. They wanted to pray. "Teach us how," they plead. (Luke 11:1)

To learn ...

The child learns the multiplication table before he can make mathematics serve him. The musician masters scales before he can express the soul of the composer in a concerto. The person who sets out to learn to pray finds himself growing in skills, understanding, and joy. The more he learns, the more he wants to learn. No one need ever stop learning.

Want...

God Who created His children with freedom for choice, waits to flash His secrets upon those who want.

You...

To each, the chance. No one is denied. Whosoever will may come (Rev. 22:17). An adventure all your own with God, awaits you whom He has created different from every other in the universe.

Do...

You are an active agent. There is a part for you to play in prayer; and a part God plays.

Do you want to learn how to pray?

Is the Case For or Against Prayer?

"If we develop our minds so as to be adequate for whatever comes, why should we need prayer?" asks a student.

Another takes pride in the achievements of science. "Didn't the mighty atom surrender to our genius?"

"Everybody knows that natural laws cannot be bent to the whims of people; why, then, should people pray?"

Others cite situations in which the non-praying person seemingly fared as well as the praying person. "Prayer made no difference," they conclude.

Some who are eager to be about the business of world rebuilding [after WWII] argue that they have no time for prayer. "That is for weaklings who are unwilling to dig foundations or chaperon cattle on relief boats," they say.

Others scoff, "What difference can a little thing like prayer make in the face of personal problems and world conditions so mixed up?"

Yet ... in the face of these and many additional arguments, people pray. All over the world people pray.

One reason they pray is that they are scared, just plain scared. "Mankind has reached its zenith," exulted the announcer reporting the first atom bomb. "Zenith?" The words have a strange hollow ring. The word "power" ought to be spoken with bated [reduced] breath all over the world. Atomic fission has released all peoples from old securities. Uncertain as little children in the dark, people cry, "Teach us to pray."

As individuals, people need to pray, too. No matter how self-sufficient we may count ourselves, there come times when, as Abraham Lincoln said, "The soul is driven to its knees because there is nowhere else to go." Let the conversation in a group get around to life's difficult experiences; you tell yours; the other fellow tells his; you'll find you've both prayed, or tried to. Your own powers were not enough. You found you couldn't cram for a crisis. You needed God.

Some have been led to pray because of the radiant witness of the power of prayer in another person's life. The number of prayer-filled, God-lit lives today is growing. They have something...

Hundreds are yearning secretly for a way of laying hold on spiritual resources they half-believe are there ...

Others want to learn more about prayer, because they have tasted a little. There was a time when they felt God's heart of love yearning over them as a parent over a hurt child. They felt contact. Something broke through their crust of selfishness, and made them depend upon God. They want more.

Others will say, with earnestness born of desperation, "If prayer can be a counter-active against forces now unleashed, let's have more of it!" They believe the fellows must be right who say that "it must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh." They agree with Einstein and others that the next advances must be in the realm of the spirit. They want to be there with the advance guard.

A young person wants to give his life in Christian service. But he wants to be able, when a person looks him in the eye and asks for help, to lead him to God.

"I don't believe mere human ingenuity alone can make the grade at the peace tables," remarks a thoughtful youth. "We need to pray."

Is the case for or against prayer? What is your personal verdict?

Questions and More Questions -

Persons who are in earnest about learning how to pray ask questions. They want to know about real prayer, not the "now-I-lay-me" formula outgrown, or thoughtlessly "repeated" phrases.

• "Would God be more likely to help me with this exam if I promised Him I'd give up smoking?"

• "When my brother was in the hospital, and I prayed so hard that his life would be spared, did my prayer make any difference? Wouldn't the surgeon's skill have been the same anyway?"

• "When I pray for someone far away, can my prayer possibly affect his life, if he doesn't know that I prayed for him?"

• "My days at school slide into routine and prayer usually gets left out, except when I get a better grade than I expected and something inside me says "Thank you," or when I need to ask divine intervention that the house mother of the fraternity house hasn't locked the door. Would you call these experiences prayer?"

• "Does God wait until somebody prays before releasing good gifts to people?"

• "This person lives a good life. This one does not. Both pray - or try to. Which prayer counts for more?"

• "I don't want to start something I'm not sure I can keep up. How do I know I wouldn't be like the disciples that couldn't watch with Jesus one hour?"

What questions have perplexed you about prayer? Bring them out into the open. There may be faith in honest doubt. Prepare to think, giving all your powers full play. Jesus said, "Love God ... with all thy mind" (Matt. 22:37). But don't forget to pray.

It All Grew Out of the Life of One Man

There is no other way to explain Christianity. Because Jesus was what He was the Christian fellowship began and grew. Track Christianity down to its source and you find Jesus the Christ.

It would seem, then, that the important thing to do would be to find the source of Jesus' life power. If we could do that, we would be at the heart of the most powerful movement in history. In a power age, we who search for power would have found the source of real power, power that shapes life and rules death. This is the greatest challenge that can be put to mankind.

And yet there is no secret or mystery to it all. The source of His power, He laid bare for all to see. He pleaded with men to use the same source. He said it was the simplest and most natural way in the world for that power to be attained. But men had been trained for generations to look for something mysterious and out of reach. They could not believe, except in small part, that such a wonderful thing could be true. Nor can we make ourselves believe it today. Jesus says the greatest thing is the simplest; we say it is hidden. It is time now that we take Him at His word, start on the plain facts that are obvious, and build a simple life like His that will move from the same source and in the same direction.

Would anything please God more than for us to live as Jesus did?

Is there any trick to it?

Is God trying to make it difficult for us to live that kind of life?

Would God make a world in which it is not possible to live completely His way of life?

If it is possible, then why can't we do it?

What are your answers?

If your answer is that God is not trying to play a joke on us; if your answer is that we can live as God says we must, then the question has to come, Why don't we?

You say, "This all sounds so simple it scares me." Men have always tried to make a mystery of the plain fact Jesus illustrated and preached. Why can't we be the people who have simple enough faith to accept Him at His word? Must we refuse Him too?

Are you ready then? All right, let's do first what we said we should do first. Let's look at His life and see where the source of power for Him was.

Here it is - in two words: He prayed!

"Oh yes," you say, "but ..."

... but what? Don't try to add anything, don't make it complicated. Keep your finger and your mind right here. This is the spot. This is the source: prayer. See if that is not true.

The Gospel accounts of Jesus are full of records of His taking time to pray. Reading those accounts, you will say, "Above all else, Jesus was a man of prayer." He was.

He grew up in an atmosphere of prayer.

He was praying when John baptized Him.

He charted His life's course in forty days of prayer in the wilderness.

He spent the night in prayer before choosing His inner circle of twelve.

After hard days of work and travel, He went into the hills alone to pray.

Often He rose before dawn and went out to pray by Himself.

He was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane the evening He was betrayed.

He prayed as He was being nailed to the cross, and He prayed while He was on the cross.

His teachings and His authority to proclaim God's will resulted from these hours He spent in trying to find the purposes of God and to be led by Him.

Here, then, is the source of His tremendous power. He said we could have it in the same way, and that it does not come in any other way.

The early Christian fellowship took the cue from Jesus. The first Christians found time for prayer as He had done. "All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers" (Acts 1:14). The early church built the whole practice of the Christian life around regular prayer. They felt, as did Paul, that they lived "in Christ," in His spirit (2 Cor. 5:17). They found the strength to change the world order. Why were so few able to do so much? Was theirs a secret power we cannot have? No. They simply centered their life in God, and were confident that His spirit in them could conquer the world. Through the centuries since that time, many forms and techniques of prayer have been developed. But the power, the tremendous world-saving power, has slipped away from many Christians. We ask: Has God changed?

Why cannot prayer today become as of old a source of power, of wonder-working, world-changing power?

It can!

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