Praying about thorns in the flesh.

2 Corinthians 12.6-10.

There’s a popularly misinterpreted paragraph Paul wrote about a person he described as “a thorn in the flesh.” Most of the time when you hear people interpret this passage, they claim it’s about some chronic ailment Paul had. Usually they speculate it’s eye damage from when Jesus blinded him that one time; Ac 9.8-9 as if when Ananias later cured him, Ac 9.17-18 he only cured him partway. But nope; Paul was writing about a really annoying person. Someone who was trying to derail his ministry.

2 Corinthians 12.6-10 KWL

6For whenever I want to be proud,

I won’t be a fool,

for I’ll speak truth.

I desist lest anyone considers me greater than I am,

who sees or hears {something} of me

7and the amazing revelations.

This is why, lest I get conceited,

a “thorn in the flesh” was given me—

Satan’s angel, who might punch me

lest I get conceited.

8Thrice I begged the Master about it,

so it might leave me.

9And the Master told me,

“My grace should satisfy you,

for {my} power is perfected by weakness.”

So I will gladly be more proud of my weaknesses,

so Christ’s power might abide in me.

10So I’m pleased with weakness for Christ—

in hubris, compulsions, persecutions, difficulties.

For whenever I am weak,

then I am strong.

I mean, I get why people presume this is a sickness; ἀσθένεια/asthéneia tends to be translated “sickness, disease, ailment, illness.” Properly it’s anything which affects your strength, but usually that’s disease. And a thorn in the flesh does sound like a chronic disease; like arthritis, a bad back, or poor vision 12 centuries before eyeglasses were invented.

But consider the context of this passage. Paul had just been talking about all the persecution he underwent because he preached the gospel. 2Co 11.23-27 Some of those things were physical ailments—because he got flogged, caned, stoned, shipwrecked and forced to swim for it, hungry, thirsty, cold, or weary. Physical hardship comes with the job.

So in this text, the “thorn in the flesh” describes a person or people who “gets under our skin”—yep, exactly like a thorn—and just bugs us. Often maliciously, but sometimes not. I’ve had coworkers who were really annoying people; they weren’t trying to be, but they simply didn’t think about anyone but themselves, and naturally this unrelenting selfishness made them an irritant. Lots of people are self-centered like that. I’m betting you can immediately think of at least one.

Sometimes they’re trying to be malicious. They wanna get in our way, wanna see our downfall. Not necessarily political opponents, although that’d be the first thing most people think of nowadays. Sometimes religious opponents—people who have their own inadequate or false religious practices, who don’t want you preaching the true gospel. Or people who would rather they preach the gospel than you; they’re jealous.

Now to be fair, sometimes they don’t want it to be you because you’re a jerk; you lack the maturity to fulfill your anointing, and need to stay back from leadership till you’re properly ready. Paul definitely had that problem when he first became Christian; both the Damascenes and Jerusalemites wanted to kill him because of the bold, argumentative way he preached. Ac 9.23, 9.29 It’s why the Twelve sent him back to Tarsus. Ac 9.30 Those are problems of our own making, but it’s fair to say by the time Paul and Timothy wrote 2 Corinthians, they were more mature than that.

In Paul’s day, when freedom of religion was barely a thing, such people who might even want to see us dead, and even think they’re doing this for God. And as Jesus said, no they don’t know God. Jn 16.2 They only imagine they do, but they’ve been following their own fleshly desires for a good long time, and have ’em completely confused with God’s will.

Take off your shoes.

Back in the 1990s I visited the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem; you might know this place better as the Dome of the Rock. (This was back when they’d let non-Muslims visit.) It’s the oldest Muslim building in the world; it’s believed to be where the temple of the LORD, in Jesus’s day, once stood. It’s an impressive building. Neat mosaics. Pity it deliberately has anti-Christian verses from the Quran inscribed in them:

An-Nisa 4.171

Messiah Jesus ibn Mary was no more than a messenger of God, the fulfilment of his word, through Mary and a spirit sent by him. So believe in God and his messengers. Do not say trinity; stop for your own good. God is only One God. Glory to him; he is far above having a son.

Yep, Muslims believe Jesus is Messiah, that he’s alive, and that he’s coming back. But they insist he’s not God, nor the son of God. Sometimes they’ll teach even they aren’t God’s children; only his servants. But I digress.

Before we went in, we were instructed to leave our shoes at the door. I was wearing sandals, so it meant I had to go barefoot. Lots of people in there were barefoot. Why barefoot? Because it’s holy ground.

And that used to be the regular practice of monotheistic religions—

Exodus 3.2-5 NIV

2There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”

4When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”

And Moses said, “Here I am.”

5“Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”

When the ground was holy, you lose the shoes.

Joshua 5.15 NIV

The commander of the LORD’s army replied, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.

When people stood before God, or went to temple and synagogue, they removed their sandals. Because that was the ancient custom: Holy ground, no sandals. In the Greek and Roman empires, the way you could tell slaves from freemen was the fact freemen wore sandals and slaves didn’t, and the Jews of that day recognized this was kinda part of the reason we remove our shoes for holy ground: We’re the LORD’s slaves, and need to remember our place.

So why don’t Christians remove our shoes when we worship? Well, some of us do. Sometimes I do. But you might recall we Christians are collectively the temple of the Holy Spirit: We’re always on holy ground. Because we’re holy, wherever we go is holy ground. And sometimes it’s just wise to wear shoes. Hence the barefoot-before-God thing became optional. And when it’s not our custom to ever go barefoot, sometimes we’re not aware it’s an option—one we might want to opt to do.

Jesus prays for his followers to be with him.

John 17.24-26.

The last bit of Jesus’s John 17 prayer concludes with Jesus asking his Father for his students, his followers, to be with him where he is. Historically Christians have interpreted this a few different ways, and I believe some of those ways are valid:

• That we be on the same page as Jesus—theologically, mentally, spiritually, devotionally.
• That we continually follow Jesus. Where he goes, we go.
• That we continually obey Jesus. What he says, we do.
• That he has various missions he’s assigned us, so we oughta be doing them.
• That we’re gonna be in heaven (properly, paradise) after we die, and Jesus will be present there for us.
• That we’re gonna return with Jesus at his second coming, and rule the world with him.

I should add they’re simultaneously valid. You’re gonna find some Christians who only wanna focus on being with Jesus in the here-and-now, and other Christians who only wanna focus on being with Jesus in the afterlife and resurrection. If we deny this passage isn’t about being with Jesus in the entirety of our Christian life, it means we’re trying to avoid him in one part of it or another. Nope; that won’t do. Jesus wants his followers to be with him both now and later. That’s what he was praying for.

Time to quote him:

John 17.24-26 KWL

24“Father, about these whom you¹ gave me:

I want them to be with me,

where I am,

so they might see my glory

which you¹ gave me

because you¹ loved me

before building the world.

25Righteous Father, the world also didn’t know me,

and I did know you,¹

and these students have come to know

that you¹ sent me.

26I made your¹ name known to them,

and I will make it known,

so the love with which you¹ love me

might be in them

and I in them.”

There are those commentators who think this prayer of Jesus was only for his followers at the time—for the Twelve and his other first-century students. But when Jesus says in verse 26 he will make the Father’s name known—future tense—he clearly means he’s gonna make it known to people beyond the students he had at the time. He’s gonna make the Father known to the 3,000 added later that year at Pentecost, Ac 2.41 to the thousands more added after that, Ac 4.4 to later generations of Christians throughout the Roman Empire, Ethiopia, the Holy Roman Empire and western Europe, the Russian Empire and eastern Europe, the Americas, China, Korea, the Pacific, the global south, and to the people Jesus still personally appears to in visions to lead ’em to salvation.

Prayers we don’t expect answers to.

When I talk about people who don’t expect God to answer, I’m not necessarily speaking of hypocrites. There are those.

Hypocrites would be the people who offer prayers instead of help; those who wish people to be warm and well fed but won’t offer clothes and food. Jm 2.15-16 Or politicians offer “thoughts and prayers” after a mass shooting, instead of writing laws to control guns. I also wonder how often they actually follow up with prayer—and that’s why they never expect God to answer; they never spoke to him in the first place.

Nope, today I mean the people who don’t believe prayer works. They do pray, but they never, ever expect God to answer. Sometimes because they figure God stopped answering once the bible was complete—so from now on, if you have any God-questions, direct ’em towards the bible, not the Almighty.

And sometimes—and probably more often—they claim prayer doesn’t work that way. They say prayer is meant to be unidirectional. The purpose of prayer isn’t to communicate with God; it’s not to ask him anything, or ask him for anything. Those who make requests of God misunderstand its purpose, get their hopes up that God might hear ’em, but only set themselves up for disappointment. Because God’s not gonna answer them. That’s not why we pray.

Okay, so why do we pray? Well, they explain, that’s the religion. We’re told to pray. Christians pray. If you don’t pray, you’re not following the religion. But don’t expect anything out of the prayer itself; expect it out of the obedience. God wants us to pray, so we do; we’re obedient. That’s the point.

So when they pray, they go through all the motions of talking to God. They address God, praise him, lift up people they think God might want to see us lift up, talk about their own personal religious improvement, add a lot of pious-sounding things which God might like to hear, invoke Jesus’s name, and say Amen. For all the world it looks like they talked to God.

But no, not really. It’s entirely ritual. Or, as any reasonable onlooker might conclude, pure hypocrisy.

No, seriously. If we’re going through all the motions of talking to God, but we’re not really talking to God; we’re just going through the motions because we need to fulfill a religious duty, how is it not hypocrisy? And y’might recall the one thing which, in the gospels, pissed off Jesus more than anything, was hypocrisy. Why on earth would hypocrisy, in any form, be a legitimate part of Jesus’s religion?

Fasting for answers.

Whenever we fast, prayer needs to be a part of it.

Yes, fasting helps us develop spiritual maturity; yes, fasting increases our self-discipline and self-control; yes, fasting shows our commitment to God (assuming we are doing it for God, and not because we have an ulterior motive to lose a pound or two). Yes, it has its spiritual benefits. But its point is the hardcore pursuit of God, whom we love more than calories. So we should be talking with him throughout.

And in the scriptures, when we see people fast, that’s what they’re doing: Talking with God. Usually because they have a dire need or have a serious question, and want God to help or answer ’em. And that’s fine; God wants us to bring our questions and needs to him.

First thing is to not bring public attention to your fasting, lest you want God to ignore your requests because you’re really just fasting for the attention.

Matthew 6.16-18 NLT

16“And when you fast, don’t make it obvious, as the hypocrites do, for they try to look miserable and disheveled so people will admire them for their fasting. I tell you the truth, that is the only reward they will ever get. 17But when you fast, comb your hair and wash your face. 18Then no one will notice that you are fasting, except your Father, who knows what you do in private. And your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.”

Forget the burlap and ashes; yes I know people in the Old Testament did it, but they didn’t know any better. Cancel any lunch or dinner dates—don’t do that thing where you go to them anyway, but conspicuously don’t eat; that’s hypocrisy too. Go through your day as usual, but instead of eating, pray. Seek God’s aid and answers.

Jesus prays for his believers’ unity.

John 17.20-23.

In his teachings after the Last Supper, Jesus gave his students a new command—to love one another— Jn 13.34 and said his students would be identified by their love for one another. Jn 13.35

Of course, Christians nowadays insist they’re to be identified by their public declarations that they’re Christian. And insist we should take their word for it entirely on their say-so. Doesn’t matter how fleshly they are. Doesn’t matter how much they don’t love one another. If you go to a different church than they do—even in the same denomination!—they don’t know you’re Christian; they won’t take your say-so; if you voted for the other party or have the wrong skin color, they presume your “Christianity” has gotta be somehow irredeemably corrupt. Therefore they don’t have to love you. Not that they follow Jesus’s command anyway, but if you ever call them on it, this is their excuse for ignoring it.

It utterly ignores the spirit of Jesus’s John 17 prayer, in which he straight-up tells the Father he wants those who believe in him to be one. He wants unity among us. He wants us to be so unified, we’re like Jesus and the Father—who are one being. (In three persons, but still, one being.) So unified, so unbreakable, no politician should be able to turn one Christian against another, because we’re one.

Sadly, that doesn’t happen. Partisan Christians regularly violate the unity Jesus wants to see in his followers. So do greedy Christians, horny Christians, and every kind of exceptionalist Christian who figure they get grace, but nobody else does.

We need to fight this tendency in ourselves, and we do it by praying for unity like Jesus does.

John 17.20-23 KWL

20“I ask not only about these students,

but also about believers,

because of their message to me:

21So they all might be one

just as you,¹ Father, are with me,

and I with you.¹

So they might also be with us.

So the world might believe you¹ send me.

22The glory you¹ gave me,

I give them,

so they might be one

just as we are one.

23I with you¹

and you¹ with me,

so they might be perfected as one;

so the world might know you¹ send me

and you¹ love them

just as you¹ love me.”

The reason people doubt Christianity is because we’re so unlike Christ Jesus and his intentions. Too few of us strive to love like he does; too few of us try to love fellow Christians indiscriminately, and use that love to overcome the inevitable disagreements we’ll have from time to time. Skeptics rightly point out if Jesus were living and active among his people, we wouldn’t see anything like the strife and sin and antagonism we see pouring out of the American church. They’re absolutely right. But if we want Jesus to be living and active among us, we gotta follow him. And pray for unity like he does.

Jesus prays for we who are “not of the world.”

John 17.13-19.

Jesus prayed his John 17 prayer before he went to Gethsemane, and prayed for his students because he was about to leave them and wanted his Father to protect them, same as he’d protected them. Because thanks to Jesus’s influence, they were now holy—they were uniquely set apart to serve God; they were no longer common or secular.

That’s what Jesus means when he says they’re no longer “of the world,” in the same way Jesus isn’t “of the world”—they don’t (or are certainly not meant to) follow the crowd anymore, but follow Jesus. And that’s gonna rub the world the wrong way. And rub fellow Christians the wrong way when they love the world, and wanna compromise with it and its godless politics, instead of prioritizing Jesus and his kingdom.

John 17.13-19 KWL

13“Now I come to you,¹

and I speak these things in the world

so they might have my joy fulfilled in them.

14I gave them your¹ message

and the world hates them,

for they’re not of the world

same as I’m not of the world.

15I don’t ask so you’d¹ take them out of the world,

but so you’d¹ guard them from the evil.

16They’re not of the world

same as I’m not of the world.

17Make them holy with the truth.

Your¹ message is truth.

18Same as you¹ send me into the world,

I also send them into the world.

19I make myself holy for them,

so they might already be holy with me

with the truth.”

We don’t pray Jesus’s prayer here as a rote prayer. But we can base our own prayers on it, and pray for the same things Jesus wants. He wants the Father to guard us from evil; Jn 17.15 he taught us in the Lord’s Prayer to pray, “Deliver us from evil.” He wants us to be holy with the truth; Jn 17.17, 19 we can pray that we steadfastly stick to what’s true, and recognize lies and falsehood.

When we hear God, but misunderstand him.

Whenever we pray, and hear what we think is God’s voice, we gotta properly confirm it is. Every single time.

And no, not because the devil’s always trying to trick us. I know fearful Christians who most definitely think that way, and I’ll talk about them another time. But it’s not always the devil. More often it’s people tripping ourselves up—talking to our own inner voice, confusing it with God, and claiming our own bright ideas are really God-ideas when they’re not. And no, I don’t mean “bright ideas” sarcastically; some of them are very good ideas. Like when David thought it’d be a great idea to build the LORD a temple. Sounded great to the prophet Nathan, but it wasn’t a God-idea! 2Sa 7.3-7 God’s idea is actually for us to be his temple.

But sometimes the issue is we actually did hear God—but our own hangups or ego garbled his message. Sorta like what happened with Simon Peter at the end of John.

John 21.20-23 NTFE

20Peter turned and saw, following them, the disciple that Jesus loved. This was the disciple who had leaned back against Jesus’ chest at the supper, and had asked, “Master, who is it that’s going to betray you?”

21“Master,” said Peter to Jesus, seeing him there, “what about him?”

22“If it’s my intention,” replied Jesus, “that he should remain here until I come, what’s that got to do with you? You must follow me!”

23So the rumor went around the Christian family that this disciple wouldn’t die. But Jesus didn’t say he wouldn’t die. What he said, rather, was this: “If it’s my intention that he should remain here until I come, what’s that got to do with you?”

Jesus didn’t answer “What about him?”; he said, “What’s that got to do with you?” But notice the other Christians got it in their heads Jesus did answer—and said the disciple he loved (i.e. John bar Zebedee) would live till his second coming. And John did outlive the rest of the Twelve—if he’s the same John who wrote Jesus’s Revelation. John the Revelator certainly had visions of the second coming. But Jesus never said what they imagined he did. The Christians wanted an answer to Simon Peter’s question so much, they actually invented one and put it in Jesus’s mouth.

And sometimes we’re gonna do that. We’ll ask God a question, and he’ll respond, “It’s not your business to know about times and dates,” Ac 1.7 NTFE or whatever other thing which isn’t our business. But we’ll ignore that, take what little he’s told us, and try to extrapolate the data we want out of it. And it won’t be God. It’ll be our creative—but fallible and depraved—little minds, filling in blanks which God deliberately wants blank. It’ll be us trying to make an end-run round the LORD. Not smart! But Christians do this all the time. Without even thinking.

And this is why a Christian accountability partner who likewise hears God, comes in extremely handy. We’ll bounce our misbegotten ideas off on them—“I think the LORD told me this”—and they’ll respond, “Well he told me no such thing.” Or even “No he didn’t; he warned me you’d come up with that, and he wants you to stop putting words in his mouth.”

Yep, sometimes confirmation protects us from ourselves.

“If you don’t listen to God, there are consequences.”

In last week’s prayer article, “Signs it’s God’s voice,” I brought up a pastor who wrote a list of ways we can tell God is talking to us. I took issue with them because they imply we can determine it’s God without properly confirming it. With confirmation they can be useful, but without confirmation they’re just ways we psyche ourselves into thinking it’s God when it may not be. At all.

There were two other items in his list which I didn’t yet bring up. That’s because they’re not really “signs it’s God’s voice”—they’re warnings. He wanted his readers to know if we don’t listen to God, there will be consequences.

And no, he wasn’t talking about natural consequences—that when God’s warns us away from something, but we’re not listening and go there anyway, bad stuff will happen, and God was trying to prevent that. Or when God tells us of an opportunity, but we’re not listening and miss it, and that’s wasted potential.

Nope; really he was talking about curses. If we don’t listen to God, he will punish us. He didn’t phrase it that way, and probably never would. But that’s exactly what he meant: God will hurt us if we won’t listen.

It’s a messed-up way of thinking, but he’s not the only pastor I’ve heard this from. Lots of Christians imagine God as a harsh Father, not a benevolent Father. A father who’s more like the harsh parents they grew up with, and they’re projecting that upon him instead of studying what Jesus has to say about him. So when they read the Old Testament passages about consequences for the Hebrews’ sins, they imagine God’s actively smiting them, instead of passively stepping back and letting nature and their enemies have at ’em. They proclaim, not a God who corrects his children, but a God who beats them and calls it “discipline.” Jesus teaches no such thing, so let’s be rid of this false idea.

God doesn’t need to add to the consequences of not listening to him. It’s gonna harm us aplenty when we don’t! I already mentioned missed opportunities, and you have no idea how many opportunities present themselves in our lives. And God knows about all of them. And so can we, if we’re listening and are obedient. And we’ll miss nearly all of them when we aren’t.

That alone should get us to pay attention. You know those Christians who appear to have tons of good luck, good fortune, and blessings coming their way? True, some of them are exaggerating, and some of them are big fat liars. But some of them are totally telling the truth: They’ll do anything God tells them, and they’re listening for it. So God’s pointing them towards every opportunity around them. He knows they’ll make the most of it, and bless him, and help him grow his kingdom. You can do that too, y’know.

“Signs it’s God’s voice.”

Part of prayer is hearing God, and part of hearing God is confirming we truly heard him. You wanna know it’s God, you go find a fellow Christian who also hears God, and compare notes.

But people don’t wanna go find a fellow Christian and do that. We’d much rather tell ourselves, “Oh, I know what God sounds like,” be accountable to no one, and run with whatever we’re pretty sure he told us. Especially when it’s something which really appeals to our flesh.

So when we look for advice about how to hear from God, or how to know we’ve just heard from God, we’ll immediately uphold any shortcuts which tell us, “No you’re right; it’s totally God.” Which never threaten to make us feel foolish when a fellow Christian responds, “Oh God told me something very different,” or “I’m really not sure that’s God.” Which never require us to let iron sharpen iron.

I once got a list from a pastor on some ways we can tell it’s God talking to us. They’re all problematic because—again—they don’t require us to confirm anything with our fellow Christians. They don’t encourage us to interact with our Christian community. They encourage us to go it alone.

So naturally he got a lot of positive feedback from people who were thrilled to hear they didn’t have to talk with fellow Christians about what they thought God told ’em. Now they could confirm it’s God by themselves! In private. With no one to embarrass them for how fleshly their “still, small voice of God” actually sounds.

Giving compliments to God.

People commonly think praise and worship are just synonyms for the word compliments: If you praise God, you say nice things about him, to him. “Oh Lord, ooh you are so big, so absolutely huge; gosh we’re all really impressed down here, I can tell you.” Like that.

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with complimenting God. He’s awesome! The problem is sometimes we aren’t really complimenting him; we’re telling him this stuff because we think it’s part of the formula for getting our requests answered. When we pray—and many Christians actually believe and teach this!—we have to begin with the compliments. We have to tell God nice things and butter him up praise him properly.

As demonstrated, they claim, by the Lord’s Prayer: “Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven” is supposedly praise. Not prayer requests for God to make his own name holy, bring about his kingdom, and encourage us to obey him. Anyway, because they imagine these are praises not requests, they insist the Lord’s Prayer begins with praise… so our prayers should begin with praise. Start by telling God how awesome he is. “Dear heavenly Father… ooh you are so big…” and so forth.

Again: Nothing wrong with complimenting God; nothing wrong with beginning our prayers with compliments. Nothing wrong with entire prayers consisting of compliments. Some of the psalms are nothing but compliments.

Psalm 145.0-7 CSB

0A hymn of David.

1I exalt you, my God the King,

and bless your name forever and ever.

2I will bless you every day;

I will praise your name forever and ever.

3The LORD is great and is highly praised;

his greatness is unsearchable.

4One generation will declare your works to the next

and will proclaim your mighty acts.

5I will speak of your splendor and glorious majesty

and your wondrous works.

6They will proclaim the power of your awe-inspiring acts,

and I will declare your greatness.

7They will give a testimony of your great goodness

and will joyfully sing of your righteousness.

David ben Jesse had loads of plaudits to give God for what he’d done. No doubt we can all think of great things God did in the bible, and hopefully we also have some testimonies of great things he did in our own lives. Or how he graciously behaves towards us when we interact with him.

The Jesus prayer.

In Psalm 123.3, the psalmist asked the LORD to show grace to his people. Quote it? Why sure.

Psalm 123.3 NRSVue

Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us,

for we have had more than enough of contempt.

The Septuagint translated it ἐλέησον ἡμᾶς, Κύριε, ἐλέησον ἡμᾶς/eléison imás, Kýrie, eléison imás, “Mercy on us, Lord, mercy on us.” And in Jesus’s Pharisee and Taxman Story, it comes up again.

Luke 18.9-14 NRSVue

9He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

To this day you’ll hear Christians pray a variation of Psalm 123.3, plus the taxman’s prayer, and Jesus’s name for good measure. We call it “the Jesus prayer.” It’s a really simple, really popular rote prayer. Probably the simplest.

Κύριε Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ, υἱέ τοῦ Θεοῦ (or υἱέ Δαυὶδ/“son of David”) ἐλέησόν με, τὸν ἁμαρτωλόν/Kýrie Yisú Hristé, yié tu Theú, eléisón me, ton amartolón. “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Sometimes it gets shortened all the way down to Ἰησοῦ ἐλέησόν/Yisú eléison, “Jesus have mercy,” or Χριστέ ἐλέησόν/Hristé eléison, “Christ have mercy,” or most often Κύριε ἐλέησόν/Kýrie eléison (yes, same as in the Mr. Mister song), “Lord have mercy.” But no matter the form it takes, it’s the “Jesus prayer.”

It’s similar to what Bartimaeus shouted at Jesus to get his attention. We pray it for the same reason. We want mercy.

Mark 10.46-52 NRSVue

46They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. 47When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 48Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” 49Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” 50So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. 51Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” 52Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

Good for him. ’Cause when we pray the Jesus prayer, sometimes we get naysayers who object to our praying this prayer. “Stop the vain repetitions. Mt 6.7 KJV That’s not how Jesus taught us to pray!”

Actually it is how he taught us to pray. In his Persistent Widow Story, he taught us to be persistent, to cry out to God day and night, and not lose heart. Lk 18.1-8 This is that. It’s the prayer equivalent of a knock on the LORD’s door. It’s not a vain repetition; we’re praying for good reason! (Better be, anyway!) We’re knocking so the door might be opened to us. Lk 11.9 Sometimes we gotta knock more than once. Sometimes we gotta get loud. But when we mean it, we’ll get his attention. He’ll hear. And respond.

Hearing God. But doubting you do.

When I became Pentecostal, I suddenly found myself among Christians who regularly said, “Oh, God told me [ENCOURAGING WORD],” or “God showed me [DIRECTION TO GO].”

It’s not that I hadn’t met such Christians before—even in a cessationist church, where they preached he didn’t do that sort of thing anymore! Most Christians are continuationist, same as Pentecostals: God never turned off the miracles, never went away nor hid himself. He can and does talk to his kids whenever he wants. Where we disagree is how often he talks. Pentecostals, myself included, find he talks to his kids all the time. Other Christians think it’s more rare; supposedly God saves his statements for special and important occasions, and doesn’t just chat with us like a loving Father would with his children. Kinda reveals more about how their prayer life isn’t conversational. But I digress.

But yeah, I was surrounded by plenty of Christians who claimed God told ’em this or that. And as I learned how to hear God, I gradually became one of them: “God told me [SUCH-AND-SO].” Not as prophecies for others. I wasn’t trying to pull any Moses-style “Thus saith the LORD” declarations or commands. I only talked about what he told me personally.

Here’s the funny thing. Every so often, somebody publishes a book about how to hear God. And these very same Christians who act as if they know God told ’em stuff… scramble to buy these books.

There’s a preacher of my acquaintance who once said, “Y’know, every time I tell people there really needs to be a book about how to hear God, they get all excited: ‘I would love such a book.’ But these are the same people who claim they already do hear God. So… do they? Do they really?”

Fair question. I would suspect they really do. But here’s why they’d would love to read a book about hearing God’s voice: They have doubts. And rather than deal with those doubts like the Holy Spirit wants ’em to, they don’t. It’s easier not to.

Y’see, when we hear from God, in order to make sure we heard from God, we gotta test those messages. We gotta confirm them! Just as the scriptures instruct. Whether it’s somebody else claiming they got a message from God, or we ourselves believing we just got a message from God, we’re always meant to double-check.

But here’s what humans typically do: Believe it if you like it, disbelieve it if you don’t.

Nope, no further checking. No confirmation. Nothing more with any of the things which get dropped into our spirit; we never bother to confirm it’s God. Or, just as bad, never double-check in case it’s us talking to ourselves, or an evil spirit trying to mess with us.

You really don’t have to buy a book about how to hear God better. You just have to start confirming what you think he’s told you. Find a fellow Christian who also hears God. (Ideally your spouse, or some other trustworthy family member.) Make yourselves accountability partners. Make this prayer request to God: “If you’re ever gonna tell me something, please tell my partner the very same thing.” Then watch him do it. There, was that so hard?

But for too many Christians, this is so hard. They’re terrified if they do this, they’ll find out absolutely nothing God ever “tells them,” is actually God. That it’s entirely in their own head; that they’ve been psyching themselves into thinking God speaks to them, or anyone.

Yep, they’re letting their doubts paralyze them. And stop ’em from legitimately hearing God.

Jesus prays for the Father’s protection.

John 17.11-12.

Part of the reason for Jesus’s John 17 prayer is the protection of his followers—who would now include us. The world, Jesus says in the next verses, hates ’em because they’re not of the world any more than he is. Jn 17.14 So they’re gonna need protection. Thus far Jesus had been personally protecting them, but he was returning to his Father; now it was on the Father to protect them. ’Cause thus far, Jesus hadn’t lost any of the people the Father gave him… well, except Judas Iscariot.

It’d be better to put all that in Jesus’s words:

John 17.11-19 KWL

11“I’m no longer in the world.

They’re in the world, and I come to you.¹

Holy Father, guard them in your¹ name which you¹ gave me

so they might be one like we are.

12When I’m with them,

I’m guarding them in your¹ name which you¹ gave me.

I’m guarding them

and none of them are being destroyed

—except the son of destruction,

so the scripture can be fulfilled.”

This prayer is not a rote prayer which we can just repeat, and pray as if it’s all our own words. But we can adapt parts of it and include ’em in our own prayers. We can repeat Jesus’s request that the Father guard us, and help us become one like he and the Son are. Jn 17.11

Jesus’s Lazarus prayer.

John 11.41-42.

I’m going through the Lazarus story, and just before Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, he prays. It’s an odd little prayer, and from it we can learn a bit about both Jesus and prayer. Goes like so.

John 11.41-42 KWL

41So they take away the rock

{which is at the place the dead lay},

and Jesus lifts up his eyes to the sky and says,

“Father, I give you¹ thanks that you¹ hear me.

42I knew you¹ always hear me,

but I say this because of the crowd around,

so they might believe you¹ send me.”

It’s odd because y’notice Jesus doesn’t make a prayer request. Usually when a Christian’s about to try to cure someone, or even raise the dead, they ask the Holy Spirit, “Can I do this? Can you make me able to do this? Would you cure this person? Is this your will that they be cured? Please do this.” There’s a whole lot of requesting going on. Some begging. Sometimes even some deal-making.

And Jesus does none of that. It’s only, “Thank you, Father, for hearing me. Yeah, I know you already hear me; I’m just saying this for their sake.” Gotta be honest! But in this prayer, he doesn’t ask the Father for anything. It’s solely acknowledgement the Father is here with Jesus—and the Father sent Jesus.

And then Jesus raised Lazarus.

Why doesn’t Jesus beg the Father to empower him to pull off this miracle? Because he doesn’t need to. We already know from other scriptures Jesus prayed a lot. He was all prayed up. When he tells his students elsewhere, right after he threw an evil spirit out of a boy, “This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting,” Mk 9.29 you notice Jesus couldn’t just start fasting right then; he had to already have a lifestyle of fasting. Same with the prayer: Jesus could start praying his head off right at that moment, but what good is that when you don’t already have a conversational relationship with your Father? And Jesus undoubtedly had that already.

So when it came time to cure Lazarus of death, Jesus didn’t need to stand before the sepulcher, lift his hands to heaven, pray for three hours, and maybe Lazarus might come forth. Jesus spent his entire life patterning every action after the Father’s will. Today was no different. And Jesus spent his entire life praying, almost constantly, often intensely, to his Father. He’d been all prayed up since childhood.

If we’re all prayed up, and we step into a situation where someone needs to be cured of illness, we don’t need to drop to our knees and beg God for hours to grant our request. We’ve already been talking to him. We already know what he wants us to do. We already know whether he’ll empower us to cure this illness or not—and if not, we don’t give the poor person false hope that God’ll cure them immediately. We just remind ’em to keep praying, like the widow in Jesus’s Persistent Widow Story.

But if so, we don’t need to pray any more than Jesus did in this situation: “Hey, Father? Thank you so much for hearing me. You always do.” Then, “In Jesus’s name, I order this illness to go away.” And it will.

Praying for capital and non-capital sins.

1 John 5.16-17.

In going through the Law of Moses, you’re going to notice a few of the sins listed in there are capital crimes; capital meaning “liable to the death penalty.” If an ancient Israeli committed any of those sins, the city’s judges were authorized to sentence them to death. Most of American society figures murder, rape, and treason are the only capital crimes, although way too many of us are pretty murdery and have no problem with killing people for simply being in the wrong neighborhood. Or being the wrong color.

Some years ago I read an English translation of the Septuagint. The bit which in the KJV is translated “that soul shall be cut off from his people,” Ge 17.14, Lv 7.20, Nu 15.30 which we usually interpret to mean ostracizing them from society or banishment, got translated, “that soul shall be utterly destroyed from among his people”—emphasis mine. That certainly doesn’t mean banishment; that means death. I checked the original languages, and yep, the Greek says ἀπολεῖται/apoleíti, “will be destroyed.” But the Hebrew has נִכְרְתָ֛ה/nikhrétha, “must be cut off,” which doesn’t necessarily mean death; it can mean, as we usually mean, banishment. Considering how excessive death appears to be for these crimes, you can see why most of us think it only means banishment.

But clearly the ancient Jews who translated the Septuagint disagreed. They regularly interpreted “cut off” to mean death—which means they saw far more sins as capital crimes. So… having sex with a woman on her period was a capital crime. Lv 20.18 Skipping Passover would be a capital crime. Nu 9.13 Yikes. Good thing the Romans didn’t let the Judeans practice the death penalty!

Because of injustice—like the obvious injustice of Christ Jesus getting sentenced to death and crucified—a number of Christians believe there shouldn’t be any death penalty; our governments clearly can’t be trusted to apply it fairly. Roman Catholics, Quakers, and Anabaptists are decidedly against it. Other sects of Christendom have no problem with it, and their members gleefully reflect the popular culture’s attitudes about executing criminals.

Me, I believe some crimes certainly merit the death penalty… but I also firmly believe in grace, and believe it’s wholly inappropriate to execute a repentant sinner who wants to try to make restitution for their crimes. And I likewise don’t trust the government to execute people fairly. Time and again, people have been found to be falsely accused, unjustly imprisoned, and sometimes unjustly executed. There should be fewer executions, not more. But because of the many bloodthirsty Christianists in this country, some states are most definitely pushing for more.

But enough about them. The apostle John lived in the Roman Empire, where the death penalty was regularly enacted by the Romans. Beheading for their citizens; crucifixion for everyone else. Hence Paul was beheaded and Simon Peter crucified during the Neronian persecution (64–68CE). John himself was exiled, which is how he ended up on Patmos, having visions of the End. Rv 1.9 Their crime, of course, was being Christian; the Romans considered “disturbing the peace” a capital crime, and anything could be labeled “disturbing the peace” if they so chose.

I bring up capital crimes because John brings up capital crimes in today’s passages. Or, as he puts it, an ἁμαρτία πρὸς θάνατον/amartía pros thánaton, “sin unto death.” Roman Catholics have extrapolated this verse into their idea of deadly sins, but no, John is not talking about lechery, gluttony, greed, laziness, wrath, envy, and pride. He’s talking about sins where the legal consequence is the death penalty.

And, in context, he’s talking about boldness in prayer—in being able to come to our Father with our requests, and knowing our Father hears us. And in this passage, fellow Christians whom they can pray for. If they’re committing non-capital sins, go ahead and pray for them. If they’re committing capital sins… well, John’s not talking about that today. I’ll quote him, shall I?

1 John 5.16-17 KWL

16When anyone sees their¹ fellow Christian

sinning a non-capital sin,

one will ask

and God will give them¹ life—

to the one sinning a non-capital sin.

There is such a thing as capital sin;

I don’t say one should pray about that.

17Everything unjust is sin,

and sin which isn’t capital.

Boldness in prayer. ’Cause God’s listening.

1 John 5.13-15.

We Christians can get mighty bold when we approach God. As we should; we’re his kids, and our relationship with him is not a dysfunctional one, where every prayer request has some sort of quid-pro-quo God expects of us in return. True, it can definitely be dysfunctional on our part, where we’ll take God’s grace for granted. And some of us might think God does expect to make some deal with us before he’ll grant requests. But really, none of the dysfunction comes from God’s side. We’re encouraged to “come boldly unto the throne of grace,” He 4.16 and ask God for anything.

And one of the reasons John wrote his first letter was to remind his readers of this:

1 John 5.13-15 KWL

13I write you² these things

so you² might fully know

you² have life in the age to come,

granted to believers

in the name of God’s son.

14This is the boldness we have towards God:

When any of us ask according to his will,

he hears us.

15And when we know God hears us,

whatever we might ask him,

we fully know we have

the request which we asked of him.

The word παρρησία/parrisía in verse 14 is regularly translated “boldness,” and actually stems from the phrase πάς ῥῆσις/pas rhísis, “every [sort of] speech.” The sense is we Christians are able to say anything to God. Anything. Again, he’s our Father.

I used to shock people from time to time by talking to God as if I’m talking to anyone else; as if I’m talking to my dad. Which he is, after all; it shouldn’t shock people. Yet it does. Too many Christians are only comfortable with approaching God formally—with a built-in social distance between them and him, because he’s holy and they’re not. They don’t realize by adopting us as his kids, God’s made us holy too. We just have to act holy, for once—and stop mixing up solemnity or religiosity with holiness, ’cause that’s not what it means.

Anyway they think God should only be approached in a regal manner, with formal titles; he’s “thee,” not “you.” Lots of self-abasement, lots of special Christianese, lots of effort made to create a gap between us and our Father, and in so doing, undo everything Jesus came to earth to do. Jesus came to bring God near. But if you don’t understand what Jesus is all about, of course you’ll be happy to keep him far.

The National Day of Prayer.

In the United States, it’s the National Day of Prayer, held the first Thursday of May.

Various articles are gonna say the National Day of Prayer began in 1952. It didn’t really. Congress and various presidents have called for national days of prayer, starting with the first Continental Congress in 1775. They just haven’t been consistent. Ten presidents never bothered to call for any such days.

What did happen in 1952, was Billy Graham held a rally on the steps of the Capitol, which spurred Congress to unanimously pass Public Law 82-324, signed into law by Harry Truman. It says,

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the President shall set aside and proclaim a suitable day each year, other than a Sunday, as a National Day of Prayer, on which the people of the United States may turn to God in prayer and meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals.

Truman scheduled the first National Day of Prayer for 4 July 1952, and next year Dwight Eisenhower scheduled it for the same day, 4 July 1953. Then it started moving round the calendar. Mostly it happened Wednesdays in late October. In 1972 there were two.

PRESIDENT	DATES
Harry Truman	4 July 1952
Dwight Eisenhower	4 July 1953 26 October 1955 2 October 1957 7 October 1959	22 September 1954 12 September 1956 2 October 1958 5 October 1960
John Kennedy	4 October 1961 16 October 1963	17 October 1962
Lyndon Johnson	21 October 1964 19 October 1966 16 October 1968	20 October 1965 18 October 1967
Richard Nixon	22 October 1969 20 October 1971 18 October 1972	21 October 1970 16 February 1972 17 October 1973
Gerald Ford	18 December 1974 14 May 1976	24 July 1975
Jimmy Carter	15 December 1977 3 October 1979	7 October 1978 6 October 1980
Ronald Reagan	19 March 1981 5 May 1983 2 May 1985 7 May 1987	6 May 1982 3 May 1984 1 May 1986 5 May 1988

In 1988, Public Law 100-307 fixed it to the first Thursday in May, and that’s what it’s been ever since. (In fact, as I was looking up the dates for the previous National Days of Prayer, my search engine kept insisting it took place the first Thursday of May of that year. Nope. Bad search engine.)

Largely the National Days of Prayer were left up to the presidents until the 1980s. In 1974 the International Congress on World Evangelization was held in Lausanne, Switzerland, and on their return to the States, the American delegation decided to create Mission America to enact some of the plans they’d made in Lausanne. Part of Mission America was the National Prayer Committee, founded in 1979 and headed by Vonette Bright, one of the founders of Campus Crusade for Christ International (now Cru). They met in Washington D.C., started coordinating with the White House about National Day of Prayer events, and held their first joint event in 1983 in Constitution Hall.

What does the event look like? Well, y’know: Speeches from politicians and clergy. Prayers. Sometimes presidents let the National Day of Prayer Task Force take the lead; sometimes not. Sometimes they’re good reminders about the importance of talking with God; sometimes they’re a bunch of platitudes which say little. Some politicians have no prayer life at all, and it shows when they talk about it. (Disturbingly, some clergy members are the very same way.)

But what does this National Day of Prayer thing do? Well, it’s a reminder to pray for our homeland, which is something we oughta be doing regularly. A reminder to pray for our leaders; something we oughta also be doing.

And for Christian nationalists, it’s a not-subtle-at-all way to remind people of the political strength of Christian voters. We are legion, and we vote, so get in line. But I’m not gonna discuss the nationalists today; their godless motives aren’t about prayer anyway.

Jesus’s mission to the world.

John 17.6-10.

In Jesus’s John 17 prayer, after he asks his Father to glorify him, he tells his Father he’s been doing the job the Father sent him to do: He’s been collecting followers.

As I said in my previous article on this chapter, this isn’t a prayer we pray along with Jesus, like the Lord’s Prayer. This is a prayer Jesus uniquely prayed to his Father. We’re just agreeing with him as best we can; we’re asking that Jesus’s will be done, same as he wanted his Father’s will to be done.

John 17.6-10 KWL

6“I make your¹ name known to the world’s people,

whom you¹ give me.

They’re yours¹ and mine; you¹ give them.

They kept your word.

7They now recognize everything you¹ gave me

is from you,¹

8for the words which you¹ give me,

I give them.

They accept the words

and truly know I come from you.¹

They believe you¹ send me.

9I make my request about them.

I don’t request about the world,

but about those whom you¹ gave me,

because they’re yours.¹

10Everything of mine is yours,¹

and yours¹ is mine,

and I was glorified by them.”

’Cause we do believe the Father sent Jesus, and how all Jesus’s teachings originate with the Father. Right?

So that, in turn, is what we oughta likewise pray. We belong to Jesus—and our Father. What’s Jesus’s is the Father’s and vice versa. Our Father gave us to Jesus; he’s our Lord now. We accept him.

I should point out in verse 8, when Jesus says his followers ἔλαβον/élavon, “take, receive, choose, accept,” is properly interpreted “They accept the words,” like I have it, or “They accepted them,” like the NIV and most other bible translations have it. Problem is, every so often some preacher with a shaky handle on Greek will notice there’s no actual pronoun there after élavon. Context makes it obvious Jesus is talking about his teachings, but some of these guys will insist Jesus is really talking about himself—“They accept me.” If you ever catch someone preaching that, feel free to ignore them, and go with the way most bible translators have put it.

Glorifying Jesus.

John 17.1-5.

After the Last Supper, Jesus taught his students a number of things, and capped off his teachings with a prayer we find in John 17. Some Christians call it his “high priestly prayer,” since Jesus is Christianity’s head priest; others just call it “the prayer of Jesus.” Whatever you care to call it, it expresses his will—and since he always pursued his Father’s will, it expresses his Father’s will too.

It wasn’t really meant for us to pray as well, like the Lord’s Prayer. But there’s no reason we can’t pray portions of it, or borrow ideas from it. This is all stuff Jesus wants, after all.

John 17.1-5 KWL

1Jesus speaks these things,

and lifting his eyes to heaven, says,

“Father, the hour came.

Glorify your¹ son

so {your¹} son can glorify you.¹

2Just as you¹ give him authority over all flesh,

so he might give everyone whom you¹ gave him

life in the age to come.

3This is life in the age to come:

They can know you,¹ the only true God,

and the one you send, Christ Jesus.

4I glorify you¹ on the earth,

completing the work you¹ gave me so I may do.

5Now glorify me, Father, by yourself¹

with the glory I had before the world came to be,

with you.¹”

This is the part of the prayer many bibles title, “Jesus prays for himself,” because he asks his Father to glorify him—the verb δοξάζω/doxádzo meaning “magnify, extol, hold in honor, hold a high opinion of, esteem.” The Father had said more than once he does hold a high opinion of his Son, but Jesus wants him to make it obvious because Jesus’s purpose on earth is to explain the Father to us, Jn 1.18 and the more Jesus is honored, Jesus’s exposition of his Father is likewise honored. And you notice how many a pagan, who’s had it up to here with Christians and our churches, nonetheless like and respect Jesus. They may not know him or what he teaches; they might’ve been filled to the brim with Historical Jesus rubbish. But they do glorify him, somewhat—and that’s the route by which the Holy Spirit can get through to them and lead them to Jesus, and Jesus can lead them towards actually knowing his Father.

And this, Jesus says, is life in the age to come. They’ll know the Father, and Christ Jesus whom he sent. And live with them forever; the age to come never ends, which is why so many bibles automatically translate αἰώνιον/eónion, “age [to come],” as “eternal.” Life in the age to come is eternal life. Wanna live forever? Get to know Jesus.