“Praying: Help” Phil 4: 4-7 Psalm 121

How did you learn to pray? What were some of the first prayers you remember praying? For me two distinct prayers come to mind. The first was a plaque hanging on my brothers nursery wall that we prayed together every evening: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” I’m not sure that we ever realized the magnitude of what we were praying, but we said that prayer night in and night out at bedtime. The second prayer was around the family dinner table. We each had a turn praying it throughout the week, but the prayer remained the same “Dear God, bless this food to our bodies. Amen”.  As we grew older, the prayer changed a little bit, but the basic request remained the same, blessing and nourishment. It was around the bed and the family dinner table I learned to pray, taught by my parents. Certainly other people also taught me,but it was through these basic prayers that I learned to take my needs before God. 

For the next three weeks we will be discussing what it means to pray. How we pray. And some basic prayers. Author Ann Lamott writes, “Prayer is communication from the heart to that which surpasses understanding - communicating from the heart to God”. Prayer is meant to be simple. Simply talking with the God who loves us. But somewhere along the way, some of us have got it into our minds that prayer needs to be complicated - involving “thees” and “thous”. Or done a certain methodical way. Many people have fears about praying aloud, not because they don’t pray or even because they have a fear of public speaking, but because they are afraid that they will do it wrong. But that simply cannot happen because there is no wrong way to pray to God. Prayer is meant to be simple. 

In fact, prayer can be as simple as crying out “God, help me!”. Asking for help for the people we love. Help when facing trying situations. Help in meeting our needs and desires. When we ask for help, it is often out of desperation, and all fancy words and formulas are set aside. Its when we pray honest prayers, not what we believe that God may want to hear. 

When we pray for God’s help we do so for two reasons. First, because we believe that we are in relationship with God and that we communicate through prayer. Second, because we believe that God deeply cares about us and what we are going through. We communicate with people that we are in relationship with. I am quite a distance away from many of the people I love the most. But we chat on the phone or Skype a few times a week and text almost every day. We are in constant communication because we care about what is going on in each other’s lives. So it is with God. We are in constant communication with God through prayer, because we are in a relationship with God. Its okay to just sit down and tell God about your day. Or pray short prayers like “help” in times of need. Once again, there isn’t a wrong way to pray - its just important that we keep the lines of communication open.

We also believe that as God’s beloved children, God cares deeply about us and what we are going through - both in times of joy and pain. Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians that we are to bring everything before God. Not just the good things. Not just the bad things. But everything. Think back to the example of important people in our lives. For the people I’m closest with, I want to know everything that is going on in their lives - the good and the bad. If they only tell me the good things, I feel like they are keeping themselves from me. If they only tell me the trying things, I can feel like they are using me. But when we bring whatever we may be going through at the moment - the good and the bad - that is how we know that we are in an authentic relationship. So it is with God. We don’t just try to sugarcoat things for God, or say when something is going well. But we also don’t just go to God in times of need. We go to God in all things, because God cares about us at all times. 

Paul goes on to write that we are to make our requests known. It may be hard to articulate what prayer exactly is - in fact books upon books have been written on this topic. But actually praying is only difficult if we make it so. We are simply talking to God, like we would talk with anyone else that we deeply care about. We are telling God what is going on. It doesn’t need to be fancy. Some of my favorite examples of prayers in scripture are the Psalms, because they express such authentic emotion. The psalmist lays before God what they are feeling at any given moment, because they know that God is already aware. They are simply handing it over to God in trust.

And at its core, that’s what prayers of trust do - hand over our requests in trust. Requests like “hold my friend in your light”, “help my child”, “I don’t know what to do next”. “Help, enter this mess”. Sometimes when we pray for help we want to tell God what to do. Or have God tell us what to do. But often when we hand them over in trust we will find that they are answered, even if it is not in the way we expected. 

Prayers for help remind us that we are not in charge and that we cannot fix anything. In America we are often told to “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps” - but that is not Biblical. We are to turn to God with our needs. And we are to open ourselves us to the help from God. Where does the Psalmist say that our help comes from - God. The only one who never stops watching over us 

The problems arise when we fail to act as if our help comes from God. In fact, prayers of help often only comes when we are at our absolute last resort. When we have exhausted all other options. When we feel as if we have failed. When there isn’t any other path to take or magic solution to try. But Paul reminds us to make our requests known to God - not when we don’t have another option, but as soon as we have them. It is not a bother to God to hear what we are going through. God wants us to come before the throne of grace. God wants to brings us the peace that passes understanding. But we don’t get it because we don’t want to admit that we have a need and come. We need to learn to open ourselves up to the help of God, but this is especially hard for those who don’t like to ask others for help. Those that have to fix everything on their own. But God asks us simply to come, so our load can be lighted and our burden lifted.

Another pitfall we can run into when asking for help is handing our problem over to God only to pick it up and take it back a short while later. When we do so, we are essentially saying that we don’t trust God to help us. Don’t trust that God cares. For those of us who are visual or tactile learners, you may want to try writing down your prayers of help on slips of paper and locking them in a lock box - symbolically showing that you surrender your prayers for help into the hands of God. Others may have different way to affirm that God is their source of help. But we all need reminders of this from time to time. 

Prayers of help aren’t easy to pray. They aren’t easy to admit. And its often when we are at the end of our rope, with no words left, that we even say them. When I talk to people about prayers for help, I often say that these are the type of prayers that the apostle Paul talks about in Romans, those that are sighs too deep for words. Spiritual writer and Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, said his most often prayer for help was “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me”. We all have such moments. The question is do we hand these times of distress and trial over to God? Do we trust God with the deepest concerns of our soul? Or do we simply go on trying to find a way out on our own? 

Our times of distress can make or break our relationship with God. I have seen far too many people flee from God in times of distress only to ask where he was when things go wrong. But other people I have seen endure things that are beyond my wildest comprehension only to emerge with a closer relationship with God, because they handed all of their pain over to the God who can handle it. Will you cling to or flee from God? Will you cry out for the One our help comes from? Amen.