The Pastor’s Quiet Time (Part 4)

Some pastors’ busy schedules include preparing a devotional for the weekly prayer service. It may not take as much preparation time as the Sunday morning service, but it’s still a part of the weekly regimen. In addition, some thought must be given to the prayer that is scheduled as a part of the service on Sunday.

What may get pushed to the side is our own personal prayer life. One of Philip Yancey’s books is Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? In this book, Yancey details the importance of prayer and explores such questions as:

•  Is God listening?
• Why should God care about me?
• Why do so many prayers go unanswered?
• Does prayer change God or change me?
• How can I make prayer more satisfying?

One of the chapters most helpful to me was on the mystery of unanswered prayer. My keen interest in pursuing this topic was piqued by severe losses in my family in spite of prayers prayed with “garden of Gethsemane” intensity! My first wife died of cancer after a 3-year battle. But not before we suffered through the death of her father and mother and sister, who also died of cancer. I was living with the mystery. I was helped by these thoughts from Yancey’s book:

“Not even Jesus was exempt from unanswered prayer. In Gethsemane Jesus prayed with both the faith of protest and the faith of acquiescence. He turned for help first to God, pleading ‘let this cup pass’; then to his friends, who were sound asleep; then to the religious rulers, who accused him; then to the state, which sentenced him; then to the people, who rejected him. Finally he uttered that awful cry of dereliction, ‘My God, why have you forsaken me?’ For C. S. Lewis, that sequence of helplessness illustrates ‘the human situation writ large. . . . Every rope breaks when you seize it. Every door is slammed shut as you reach it.’

From some unanswered prayers I gain a glimmer of insight into the riddle of prayer. What if David’s son had lived and reigned as king instead of Solomon? What if the prophets’ prayers had been answered and Israel had established itself as a world power, its citizens holding their religion tight to their chests, unshared with the world? What if Paul had been healed, making him a more agile missionary perhaps but one of insufferable pride as he feared? Finally, what if Jesus had received the answer he prayed for in a moment of dread? His rescue would have meant the planet’s ruin.” (Yancey, pp. 233-34).

I found my prayer life invigorated by reading this and other of Yancey’s books. What book has stimulated your devotional prayer life?