As I was contemplating what to write this month, I received a phone call from Brazil.  This was no ordinary phone call, this was a video phone call, courtesy of “Skype,” the internet, and the computer in my office.  I quickly “left-clicked” the icon that said “accept call” and proceeded to…  Actually nothing happened.  I could hear my friend in Brazil speaking on the other end, but he could not hear or see me.  He tried again, and… nothing.  Brian Karr, a young man who lives a couple of doors up the street from the church office, stepped into my office at that moment and recognized the trouble right away: the web-camera was not attached to the computer.  I attached it, and, voila! I was looking at and speaking to my friend.

            While we were talking he got a phone call on his cell phone—isn’t modern technology marvelous—so he excused himself from our conversation for a moment, and answered his phone, speaking in Portuguese.  This happened again a couple of minutes later.  And all of that made me think of prayer. 

            What’s that got to do with prayer, you say?  Well, first, in order to pray, one has to have a “connection.”  Psalm 66.18 says it this way: If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened…  In order for us to talk with God, to approach Him in prayer in the first place, we need to have established a “clear connection,” one in which we are approaching Him in repentance, in sorrow over our sin and sinfulness, and in a desire to know and do His will.  When that is certain, then we can be assured God listens, as the Psalmist in 66.19-20: but God has surely listened and heard my voice in prayer.  Praise be to God, Who has not rejected my prayer or withheld His love from me!

            Another thing it brought to mind is how God works, or rather how He teaches.  He keeps us humble by using those from whom we often would rather not learn to teach us.   1 Corinthians 1.27-28 says it this way: But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.  He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things…  He humbles us to pray, He humbles us to learn to speak with Him, He humbles us, sometimes, in whom He uses to teach us to pray.

            The final thought had had to do with the greatness and the infinite capacity of our God.  When my friend got the phone call, he had to stop one conversation to begin another, and then he spoke in a language I do not understand—fortunately he did.  Yet God doesn’t have to stop any conversation to hear another, and He hears them all in whatever language they are spoken—He understands them all.  He has people from every tribe and language and people and nation, (Rev. 5.9.) 

            The bottom line is this: praise God for prayer, for the privilege of speaking with Him, whenever we want, because of what Jesus has done.  Take advantage of that privilege: keep connected—keep repenting.  And learn more about how to do it, even from those you think you can’t learn from. Don’t just think about it, pray about it!

 

– Pastor Jim