The Vows: Prayers

Welcome to the weekly Dulin Podcast, a ministry of Doolin United Methodist Church in Falls Church, Virginia. Each week, we share a short reflection on faith and life in community, exploring how God's grace moves among us and through us. We're glad you're here.

Hello, friends at and welcome to another weekly moment as well as another podcast here at Doolin. I'm James Henry. I'm the pastor here, and we've been working our way through a variety of topics over the last five weeks. We're starting a new set of topics this week. We're going to be talking about the five vows we make when we become United Methodists, at least these days.

When I was growing up, there were four, now there are five. We promise when we become United Methodists and members of a particular congregation to support that congregation, in this case, Dulin United Methodist Church, We promise to support it with our prayers, presents, gifts, service, and witness. So we're going to take each one of those and talk just a little bit about how we support the church with those various items. Because they're very broad in general, they could mean almost anything when you hear them. And so, I'm going to share with you some thoughts about what I think each one of them might mean.

So, five weeks, five topics. This week we're going to talk about prayer. We promise to support the church with our prayers. Straightforward, isn't it? Pretty simple.

What does it look like to pray? And yet when I have conversations with people about prayer, sometimes there's kind of a tentative feel about praying. What does praying look like? What does it seem like? Are there certain things I should include in prayer?

Are there certain things I shouldn't include in prayer? Does prayer involve words? Should it be done in silence? Should I say the words inside my head? Should it be more like meditation?

What does prayer look like for each one of us? Well, the truth is it's going to look a little bit different for each one of us because each one of us is entering into seeking to have a relationship with God. And so prayer is really at its simplest an opening to the relationship with God. It sometimes involves words. Oftentimes, for me, it involves silence as well.

I certainly have a list. I could reach right over here on my desk, which is where I'm sitting here at the house, and I have a prayer list that includes folks from my own personal life, from other people's lives, and from the life of our church together. And those folks are on a list and I do lift them up with a certain intentionality. So how do you pray and are there certain things you need to include? If you simply, as you say James, an opening to a relationship, what does it look like?

I grew up in a time when there were a lot of formulas for prayer. That there was the ACTS formula, A C T S. Adoration, contrition, thanksgiving, supplication. Those are all fancy ways of saying you should adore God. You should feel sorry for the things you've done wrong.

You should give thanks for all of the many blessings and gifts you have and that you should give yourself over surrender supplication, surrender to God. Those are pieces that you could include in a prayer. I don't think there are certain things that have to be in a prayer. I know for some of you that may sound heretical. And if it is, I encourage you, reach out to me, talk to me about why those are important to you.

Because if they are, they ought to be a part of your prayer. But if indeed it's opening ourselves up to God, sometimes just opening what are the things that are on my heart today. Do I need to pray the same prayer list every single day in order to get God's attention? Or should I let the pieces of my prayer life that are most important to me in this moment that seem to be rising up? If I sit for a moment in silence and I catch my breath and I settle into an attitude of prayer, for me prayer is in part an attitude and an intention, an opening to this moment just to be present with God.

And there are things that might rise up. I might see a picture of one of the folks who are homebound in our faith community. I might see a picture of a friend who has told me that they're struggling with an issue or a congregant who might have said the exact same thing. Those people may rise up on me. And in those moments, I m trusting that the spirit is going to let them rise in me.

I encourage you to take a moment if you get a chance today or whenever you are watching this video or listening to this podcast to pull out your Bible or an online Bible like biblegateway.com, pull that out and look up chapter eight of Romans. And if you read your way into chapter eight of Romans, which is one of my it's my favorite in Romans for sure, but it talks about if we don't have words to pray, the spirit intercedes on our behalf. Sometimes, we don't have the words but the spirit kind of moves us and kind of lifts those things up in us and lifts them up to god. So maybe you're deeply concerned about the divisiveness of the world in which we live. You're deeply concerned about your children, grandchildren, friends, significant other, your job, your work, whatever seems to be on the tip of your heart, that can just be lifted up.

You can even use just like I'm doing with my hands. You can have a posture in which your hands are open and you're lifting to God signifying with open hands like this that you're letting go of whatever that thing is. You're letting go of it. You're recognizing there's that at this moment, this is on your heart. What does prayer do?

If I'm lifting these people up, what does prayer do? There's no empirical answer to that. I'll just tell you that right now. There have been studies done. I know that Duke University did a study that showed that people who were prayed for recovered more quickly or seemed to be more at peace than people who were not.

That's an old study. It's a while ago. I can't imagine that the I don't know what their controls were. I can just quote that. So if you want to look it up and find out and come back and say, James, you know, they've since recanted or they clarified or they've spoken about their controls, I encourage you to do just that.

But it does seem to have an impact when someone prays. Are we bouncing something off I envisioned this in as a little person when I was much younger. And when I talked to God, I imagined that I was lifting something up to God. And as God heard it, it might make God choose to act in a certain way. That I was bouncing an idea or a thought or a desire off of God.

And if God saw fit, God would act on that in some specific way. For me, prayer has become a little bit more complex in the way that I see it, in that opening, in that listening, in that presencing. Sometimes I'm also finding that what happens in prayer is not so much that God has changed, but I'm changed. The more I pray for someone, you know, when you pray for the person who persecutes you that Jesus encourages us to do in his teachings, When we pray for the person that persecutes us, the one that we are currently perceiving as an enemy, the more we pray for them or about them, I believe the more our hearts are changed by praying. I remember a long time ago I was new at a church.

I'm not talking about dueling. I was new at a church and there was a person who kept picking at me, pushing at me. I know you can't imagine it, but it happens. It happens everywhere. Picking at me, pushing at me and I was having trouble.

So I started praying that God would change them. And you know what happened? I don't know that the person changed their behavior at all But my perception of the person and their behavior changed. And I found ways to receive what the person was doing that originally I thought of as poking and prodding. I learned to receive it as their way of coping with the changes I was bringing into their community.

I also found it within myself to speak up for myself. It changed my behavior rather than just take it or become angered by it. I spoke up and I said something in response to what was being said to me. I can't think of a specific response, but instead of just taking it, which I thought originally was what I was supposed to do as a good Christian boy, I found out that a good Christian boy also speaks up and says, I just don't think that's the right way. We can disagree on what you want to see done, but there's a way for us to talk to each other as human beings that doesn't require either one of us to denigrate the other.

We can just speak to each other. And that's possible. So, prayer changed me. I don't know if prayer changes God. God obviously, at least if I read the biblical witness, God already wants the best for us.

God already loves us. God is already reaching for us. So when I'm praying, is it that I am releasing on God's behalf some kind of spiritual energy into the world? Do I become a conduit that God wants to use in the world? And sometimes I am the answer to my own prayers.

Sometimes I am the answer to my own prayers, not by my own strength, but by the grace of God that is poured into me in those moments. I discover that the issue is not so much outside of me, it's inside of me. And perhaps if I took another point of view, it would be different. Now, when I'm praying for healing, for hope, I literally believe somehow spirit is released into the world to do something different, different perhaps. It may or may not look like what I was anticipating when I release it into the world because I assume I know what healing looks like, for instance.

Most of us when we pray for healing, that it's the excision of whatever the problem is. Cut it out and it's gone like it was never there. And that sometimes happens, spontaneous kinds of healing like that happens. But I've also spent a lot of time with people with whom I've prayed for whom the issue in their life, whether it was some disease or ailment did not go away. But their way of dealing with life changed.

And was softened. And they found healing in their spirit, in their soul, just not in their body the way I envisioned healing happening. Now, I'm not trying to denigrate the power of prayer. I believe it's a powerful tool that changes me and the world in which I'm in because in a strange and unexpected way that we often forget because we live in the individualistic West. The truth is the biblical understanding is that we're all connected to each other.

So, my attitude, my prayers not only affect me but they impact the whole milieu, the whole sense of the world, the environment in which we find ourselves. Prayer is not just about me, it's about us. And so when we vow to support our church with prayer, what we're opening ourselves to is praying the that that the lord's will, that god's will, god's heart desire be done at Doolin. In the way lives are changed and transformed and encouraged and the hungry are fed and the broken are healed and that we find a way forward to be a vision of God's light in the world. That's what happens when we pray.

And so I don't want you to think that that's just kind of a minor value made. Yeah, I'll throw up a few prayers for James or the team, Donna the organist or something like that or Katie kind of holds the office together and other kinds of organizational things. Or the volunteer team, the various servants in the community. You are an integral part of who we are And when you pray for us as the community at Dulin, when you pray for yourself, your family, your friends, your significant others, this community in which we find ourselves, this world in which we live, this universe, when we open ourselves to God, it is for, it has an impact on the community. It connects us with God and releases something into community.

So take that vow seriously, that first vow. I promise to support Dueling United Methodist Church with my prayers. So in the coming week, I encourage you, give yourself some time to pray. And as you pray, whatever rises up for you, lift that up. If you want to follow a certain pattern of prayer, if you're uncomfortable with just opening yourself up and kind of extemporaneously speaking to God in the beginning, maybe write some thoughts and use those as a prayer or take a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer or the United Methodist Hymnal or somewhere else and let that prayer sort of shape your prayer time.

Pray one of the Psalms. But I want to encourage you to take that seriously, to make that a daily part of your life, praying for yourself and for those around you and never forgetting to pray for your faith community at Dulin. Or if you're watching this and you are listening to this and you're not a part of Dulin, whatever faith community you're a part of, I encourage you to do that. It's a wonderful vow to make and it's a way to be engaged. Thanks for joining me today.

I'm so glad you're joining me here on the podcast or on the broadcast, whichever you're joining or maybe both. Remember you are precious to God. You are loved and you are a gift. Until the next time, I will see you. I wish you all the best.