Foundations in OT – Prayer

Again we are looking at the story of Abraham as a means of discovering, what we might call, first principles of our faith. In Genesis 18, we have the story of God visiting Abraham in the shape of a man, with two others who turn out to be angels. God comes for two purposes.

First, he is there to reiterate his promise that Sarah will have a child in nine months time. Understandably Sarah finds this hard to believe because it is biologically impossible. This is essentially an answer to the pray they have prayed for many years. A prayer God has already promised will be fulfilled, but now Sarah finds laughable.

The second reason for coming is to tell Abraham about his plans for Sodom. Abraham engages in a conversation with God about the extent of God’s judgement and mercy. He is praying that God will be just towards the potentially innocent people of Sodom who might be destroyed along with the wicked.

This story shows us the intimate way God wants to relate with us. The relationship between them is like the way Adam and Eve walked with God at the end of the day. They relate like friends. Here God come and takes Abraham into his confidence, about actions God is going to take, and welcomes Abraham’s comments and questions.

Jesus spoke of God as Abba (Dad) expressing that same kind of intimacy. Prayer then, is not a ritual, addressed to a distant and disinterested God, but a conversation with our Dad and friend. God wants us to listen to what he is doing and get our comments, as much as he wants to hear our adulation and requests.

Someone said, “I speak to discover who I am.” In Abraham’s conversation with God, he is certainly discovering who God is, but he is also discovering who Abraham is in this relationship too. He clearly understands his inadequacy before God, but he also discovers his worth. Not only does Abraham honour God, God honours Abraham.

I believe that a major purpose of prayer is personal discovery and development. We all come as sinners who need to discover the depth of God’s mercy and grace towards us, and our Sodom. At the same time, we are discovering the breath of our response, as we develop the qualities of grace and love in our own nature and the actions that follow. This is what is happening in the prayer we read in Acts 4: 23-31. While Peter and John and their community reflect on the nature and actions of God and the opposition they have seen, their real prayer is for boldness.

The last aspect of prayer we see here is the request for God to act: intercessory prayer. Very carefully, Abraham is asking God to be merciful in his judgement of Sodom. He cannot imagine that everyone in Sodom is evil, so by a process of elimination he asks God to show mercy on the few. There is no guarantee that God will answer his prayer in the way that he wants, but God is happy to engage in the conversation. The fact is that Sodom is destroyed.

I do not understand how intercessory prayer works; why some prayers are granted and others are not. That is really none of my business. As Abraham perceived that God must be just, I know that God is love and whatever God does is loving. What I will do in my prayers, is follow the desire of my love and discuss that with God. Sometimes the answer comes through the practical expression of my own love, inspired by God, or through the actions of other people who effective go as angels, not to condemn, as in Sodom, but to help in the same way that Jesus and the first apostles did – with truth, love and boldness.