Prayer Can Change Your Life

A sermon preached by the Rev. Terence L. Elsberry, Rector, at St. Matthew's Church, Bedford, New York, on the Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year C, March 28, 2004.

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I

The theme of this morning's sermon is taken from Psalm 126: “Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy.” That's what can happen when we pray as God wants us to pray.

There's a book that has come to mean more to me than almost any other book, next to the Bible and our Book of Common Prayer. It's long out of print, this little book, written over 50 years ago. But its title conveys the importance of its message and its relevance for each one of us. The book is Prayer Can Change Your Life .

And isn't that why we often come to God in prayer? Because we want to see some change – in our situation or circumstances or in the people or world around us?

What makes the message of this little, long lost book so relevant for us as Christians is because it provides a step-by-step program for how prayer actually can change our lives.

II

The book was written in 1951 by Dr. William R. Parker, a professor at University of Redlands in California. Coming to a dead end in his life, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, he tried help of various kinds. Nothing worked. Then he turned to the Bible, seeking how God would have us pray. From that he formulated a practice of prayer he followed daily until a few months later he was completely healed.

Fascinated by this strange power that was to him a new experience, he sought out 45 area people who were willing to be part of a controlled experiment, satisfying academic conditions, to study prayer as a potential healing agent. The healing sought might be physical, emotional or spiritual.

For nine months, they took a class called “Prayer Therapy.” Designed by Dr. Parker, utilizing orthodox Christian theology and some basic psychological insights, the course studied the effects of concentrated prayer on the lives of people who came into the course desperate for help.

A startling 72 percent of those who practiced Dr. Parker's program of prayer showed marked improvement in the life-dominating problems that brought them into the study in the first place.

Some of the problems were extreme. One woman, Clare, married and the mother of two small children, came seeking help to face the imminent death of her husband, who had been given just six months to live. A so-called “nominal Christian,” Clare had a nodding acquaintance with God. She attended church once or twice a year. Religion for her had been until now more a social convention than a living reality. Now in her desperation, she'd signed up for the Prayer Therapy course. “I'll try anything,” she said.

Klaus was a young man considered “hopeless” by both his medical doctor and his psychologist. He'd been hospitalized on various occasions for a nervous breakdown, alcoholism, and epilepsy. His life was a nightmare of heartbreak and frustration. When asked why he'd signed up for the Prayer Therapy course, Klaus said, “It's my last hope. I've got to try something. They say I'm beyond help.”

Then there was Tony, a young man afflicted since childhood with an agonizing stutter. He had attendant feelings of tremendous insecurity and inferiority feelings. Could Prayer Therapy cure his stuttering or, if not, help him live in peace with his affliction?

Another woman, much older than Clare, was well-known in her hometown as what my mother used to call “a good Christian woman.” She attended church regularly, supported charitable causes, was in every way an upstanding member of her community. Her problem, the need that drove her to sign up for Prayer Therapy, was not a problem within herself. It was a problem that plagued her from without. Her problem was her daughter-in-law. The woman lived with her son and daughter-in-law, a young woman whom she admitted on the first day of class, she detested. “I need your help,” he told Dr. Parker, “and the help of your class, because I hate her so much I'm afraid if I don't get help I'll go crazy.”

So, back in the fall of 1951, the group of people began their work in prayer therapy.

That so many emerged, nine months later, so happily transformed, is proof not of the miracles of modern technology but of ancient principles and practices of Christian prayer.

What are those principles? What is the distilled essence of what these people did to find so much help for their lives?

At its most basic, the course consisted of eight steps – worked out over the nine months. Each step required classroom teaching, reading assignments, and a great deal of group discussion.

We can apply these eight steps to our own lives and find help in time of need. We can apply these eight steps anytime, even when life is going along pretty smoothly, and find the richer, fuller life God has in mind for us. Jesus had a name for it. He called it “the abundant life.” The Prayer Therapy method is to start with one step, stay with it for a while, until it becomes a part of your life, then move on to the next.

Step One, Recognize certain truths about God. Prayer, after all, is simply conversation with Him. Always we come back to the basic realities the Bible teaches us. Which are that God is love. That His love is the power we need to be healed, His wisdom the wisdom we need to live fulfilled lives.

Step Two, Look for anything in us that might separate us from God. What might that be? Any negative thought, feeling or motive. To walk closely with God we need to let the light of His Spirit show us what we need to let go of. Then we need to give it to Him.

Step Three, Ask God to fill you with His Spirit. The Bible talks about two baptisms, the baptism in water for repentance, and the baptism in the Holy Spirit to give us the power we need to live victorious lives. We need both.

Step Four, Fill our minds with positive thoughts. St. Paul said: “Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever thing are good, whatsoever things are just, think on these.”

Step Five, When you pray, believe you've received the help you need – then act as though you have.

Step Six, Think about what it means that we are called to love God , as Jesus said, and ourselves and other people. We've heard these injunctions so many times, but do we really try to love like this?

Step Seven, Take time to listen to God. How often I present my needs to God, then leap up, off to my busy schedule. We need to take time to let Him speak to us, in whatever way He may.

Step Eight, Give thanks. Give thanks to God that He exists, that He cares for you, that you can come to Him with your every need.

Dr. Parker, the creator and director of the course in Prayer Therapy, had this to say about these eight steps to prayer that can change our lives. He wrote:

“If we faithfully follow [these steps], in the end, we cannot fail. Why? Because God cannot fail. If we surrender the negative, the destructive, the distortion, and then accept the positive, our victory is assured. It cannot be otherwise. God cannot withhold good. It is against His nature. Then what is wanted is that we unblock – and receive. Forgiveness, love, confidence, faith will flow to us from an inexhaustible source …”

III

And what of the four people?

Clare, the young woman whose husband had only six months to live, discovered in her course work on Step Two that she was haunted by resentment, self-pity, and hatred. In her work, she came to accept God in Christ as here and present for her. She experienced His love in a manifest way for her husband and their children. When God's love became real to her, she learned to live in the present, not fear the future. She was transformed by Jesus Christ, the God of love. And five years later, when Dr. Parker wrote his book, her husband was still alive.

Klaus, the “hopeless case,” entered the course an atheist. Then one day he had a seizure in class. When it was over, he found his classmates not shrinking from him as people had always done in the past, but reaching out to him in love, standing by him, praying for him. Klaus learned the love of God in other people. From that day, he started on the road to healing in every area of his life.

The older woman who detested her daughter-in-law discovered that her own continual criticism and negative feelings had driven the younger woman into a beleaguered, embattled position. By practicing Step Six, loving God, herself, and other people, she learned to love her daughter-in-law. They were both transformed.

And Tony, the young man who stuttered? He'd always been able to sing without stuttering. One day in class the thought came to him: “Brahms wrote that song. God wrote me. I realized God wrote both Brahms and me. If God valued me enough to create me, then He loved me. He really loved me!” With that, Tony's healing had begun.

Trust that love for your life. Surrender to God the things that separate you from Him. Find in Him the promised abundant life. “Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy.”