As most of you know, the evangelist and pastor Billy Graham died earlier this year. Some saw him as a saint and others saw him as a sinner. As a Lutheran, I see him as both saint and sinner. He was a child of God and he had the same struggles with sin and being human like the rest of us. He earnestly sought God in his life and he sometimes missed the mark. Billy Graham is like us.

With that said, I ran across some words of his about prayer…

“Prayer is not about using God, it is more often about getting us in a position where God can use us.

 I watched the deck hands on the great steam ship named the “United States” as they docked that ship in NY Harbor. First they threw out a rope to the men on the dock. Then, inside the boat the great motors went to work and pulled on the great cable. But, oddly enough, the pier wasn’t pulled out to the ship; the ship was pulled snugly up to the pier.

 Prayer is the rope that pulls God and us together. But it doesn’t pull God down to us… it pulls us to God. We must learn to say with Christ, the master of the art of praying: ‘Not my will; but Thine be done.’”

 The Bible is filled with prayers, people praying and admonitions to pray. 246 different references to be exact. There are as many reasons to pray as there are troubles and joys in our lives… but I believe Billy Graham has it right. One of the things that happens when we pray is intimacy. We are drawn closer to God every time we pray. Outside of the requests made in prayer, the simple act of prayer creates a closeness with God.

Prayer is an acknowledgement that there is someone who is more powerful than you and is in charge. If that wasn’t true, why would we ever pray? If God is more power than us (He is) then prayer is also act of submission. In prayer we entrust our cares, concerns and joys to the one who holds all things in His hands.

In the south, when a cold air mass moves down from Canada, people sometimes refer to it as a “Blue Norther” and it makes its presence felt! You can feel the wind blow as the high pressure cold air rushes into the warmer area of lower pressure. The greater the difference in pressure between the high and low, the greater the wind speed.

Prayer creates in us a kind of low pressure area as we bow in humility before the Lord. The “lower” we can become through prayer, the stronger the wind will be when the high pressure of the Spirit blows in.

Take the time to pray. Don’t ask for anything. Just talk to God. Let Him know you want more of Him in your life and experience the peace of God that surpasses all understanding when we take the time to pray. (Philippians 4:7)

God bless,
Pr. Ben