When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, He might have responded by pointing them to the prayers of Joshua, Jephthah, or, yes, Jabez; but He didn’t. Jesus knew that His disciples would never properly understand examples of prayer, if they did not first understand the principles of prayer; and that’s exactly why He gave them the prayer of Jesus. The Lord did not give them a prayer mantra; He gave them a prayer manner.

Drawing unwarranted inferences from what a biblical character did, thought, or even prayed is an exceedingly dangerous practice. This applies not only to Jabez (1 Chron. 4:9–10), but, incredible as it may seem, it applies to Jesus as well! I love the way eminent theologian and Bible teacher R. C. Sproul drives home this point:

Can we really construct a manual of required Christian behavior purely on the basis of an analysis of what Jesus did? So often when a Christian is faced with a problematic situation, he is told to ask himself, “What would Jesus do in this situation?” That is not always a wise question to ask. A better question would be, “What would Jesus have me do in this situation?

Why is it dangerous to simply try to model our lives after what Jesus did? If we try to model our lives precisely according to Jesus’ example, we may get into trouble on several counts. First of all, our tasks as obedient children to God are not exactly the same as Jesus’ mission. I was not sent into this world to save men from their sins. I can never speak with absolute authority about anything like Jesus did. I cannot go into the church with a whip and drive the corrupt clergymen out. I am not the Lord of the Church.¹

The danger in reading too much into a brief narrative on prayer is that we may make far more out of it than is warranted. This is primarily because the only resource we have to elucidate such narratives is personal success stories. We can thus fall into the trap of reading our own ideas into Scripture rather than allowing Scripture to speak for itself.

Perhaps a biblical example will help to illustrate this point. Remember the prayer of Jephthah? It’s an almost incredible story. Jephthah prayed that God would allow him to defeat the Ammonites in battle. He made what some would consider a rash vow: “Whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering” (Judg. 11:31). Well, guess what happened. The good news is that God answered Jephthah’s prayer and delivered the Ammonites into his hands. The bad news is that his daughter was the first to come out of the door of his house to greet him. Talk about snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory! Sure, he had defeated the Ammonites, but now it seemed that he would have to send his only daughter to a fiery grave.

Is that really what this narrative is saying? Unlike the narrative on Jabez, there’s more to this story. The rest of Scripture contextualizes the prayer of Jephthah. In fact, Hebrews 11 places Jephthah squarely in the faith hall of fame. We may thus conclude that Jephthah would not have compounded one sin, namely, making a rash vow, by the far more egregious sin of making a human sacrifice.

As a judge of Israel, he knew full well that God had forbidden such an abominable practice. Trust me, the words of the Lord were not lost on Jephthah. They rang down through the corridor of time with a crushing crescendo: “When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire” (Deut. 18:9–10).

A complete reading of this biblical narrative makes it crystal clear that Jephthah did not incinerate his only daughter as a literal sacrifice. He rather offered his daughter to the Lord in what Paul refers to in Romans 12:1 as a living sacrifice. Offering up his daughter as a burnt offering was a figurative way of saying that for the rest of her life she would be dedicated to the Lord in temple service and perpetual virginity. Jephthah’s daughter did not go out and mourn her impending death; she mourned her perpetual virginity. As Scripture puts it, she and her friends roamed the hills and wept, “because she would never marry” (Judg. 11:38).²

Can you see how Jephthah’s prayer takes on an entirely different perspective when the rest of the Bible contextualizes it? That is precisely why biblical accounts of prayers must always be interpreted in light of scriptural principles. This is particularly true when it comes to Jabez. Putting too much weight on a one-sentence prayer that is never expanded upon elsewhere in Scripture is fraught with dangers; not the least of which is reading personal biases into Scripture.

— Hank Hanegraaff

NOTES

1. R. C. Sproul, Knowing Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1977), 71.

2. The fact that commentaries struggle to interpret this passage further highlights the truth that a cloudy narrative of Scripture should always be interpreted in light of clear passages.

In 1872, Francis Galton inquired into the practice of intercessory prayer and concluded that it was not particularly efficacious. He came to this conclusion by studying statistical tables of average lifespans. In the halls of medicine today, scientists are also making serious inquiries into prayer’s efficacy using more sophisticated statistical measures. Prayer, specifically intercessory prayer, is being put to the test as an intervention in randomized clinical trials. Some Christians claim this is cause for rejoicing and science is proving God answers prayer. Others view the research more skeptically, raising questions of research quality but also of the plausibility of putting prayer and, by implication, God, to the empirical test.

In 1883, Francis Galton, father of biostatistics, wrote:

It is asserted by some that men possess the faculty of obtaining results over which they have little or no direct personal control, by means of devout and earnest prayer, while others doubt the truth of this assertion. The question regards a matter of fact, that has to be determined by observation and not by an authority, and it is one that appears to be a very suitable topic for statistical inquiry.…Are prayers answered or are they not?…Do sick persons who pray, or are prayed for, recover on the average more rapidly than others?1

Galton’s prior statistical research into the efficacy of prayer, which he viewed as a simple, perfectly appropriate, and legitimate subject of scientific inquiry, had been published in the Fortnightly Review in 1872.2 His inquiries led him to reject the hypothesis that there is any objective efficacy to petitionary or intercessory prayer with respect to recovery rates from illness.

How did Galton arrive at his conclusions? He examined Guy’s statistical table of average life spans. According to the table, the lowest average life expectancy of affluent groups in England belonged to the royalty; well-to-do clergy also had low life expectancies and fared poorly in health. Galton surmised that these two groups might be expected to be prayed for by others and to pray more for themselves. Clergy, as a whole, had one of the longest average life spans of any privileged group, according to Guy’s table, but Galton reasoned that this had little if anything to do with prayer. It was a result instead of country living and the supposed carefree life of many clergy.

The general attitude of the Church of England in the late 1800s was that matters pertaining to religion were not acceptable areas for scientific study, and Galton’s critics — chiefly among the clergy — abounded. For the church, divine revelation was the final arbiter of the efficacy of any spiritual care practice. Science, rather than lending empirical support to the practice of prayer, challenged God’s ability to answer it and undermined faith; Galton’s study was a chief case in point. The ecclesiastical community went so far as to ensure that his study, which had also been published in the first edition of his book, Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development, was omitted from subsequent editions of the book.

One hundred years ago, Galton and his critics sat in two different epistemological camps. For Galton’s critics, the Word of God alone established knowledge about prayer and its effects; faith in God’s Word was all that was needed to determine prayer’s efficacy. For Galton, empirical evidence from Guy’s statistical tables and a 19th-century equivalent of a retrospective chart review served as the primary sources for knowledge. In addition to his conclusions drawn from the tables, Galton had other empirical evidence. He reasoned that prayer was ineffective after he read newspaper accounts that missionaries, surmised to also be a praying and a much- prayed-for people, were frequently lost at sea.

Had they been alive today, Galton and his critics might have arrived at altogether different conclusions. According to late 20th-century researchers, prayer, particularly intercessory prayer, appears to be quite efficacious. Some researchers say that science appears to be proving that prayer works, not based on tabular data, newspaper accounts, and simple descriptive statistics, but based on inferential analysis of the findings of randomized, controlled, double-blind studies conducted in a variety of clinical settings, including intensive care units of hospitals. The studies are published in reputable peer-reviewed journals such as The Archives of Internal Medicine.3

The State of the Science

St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City was the venue for one of the latest and most controversial prayer studies.4 In this study, 990 patients in the coronary care unit were randomly assigned to either a treatment or a control group. Both groups received the standard medical treatment for their cardiac problems. The specific “treatment” for experimental group patients consisted of prayer by people who espoused a belief in a personal God who they believed heard prayers and healed in response to prayer. Names of patients in the experimental group were given to 15 different teams of intercessors, who agreed to pray for 28 consecutive days for no complications and a rapid recovery from the cardiac problems that had landed the patients in the intensive care unit. Questions of ethics aside (neither the patients nor their health care providers knew about the existence of the study), analysis of the study indicated a mean score of 6.35 for the prayed-for patients and 7.13 for the control-group patients, a difference that was statistically significant. Statistical significance in this case means that the odds of this difference occurring by chance alone would be 25 to 1. Dependent variables measured included such things as the development of angina pain, the need for coronary bypass surgery, cardiac arrest and death, with points assigned and then tallied according to the severity of symptoms. Lower mean scores correlated with fewer complications postoperatively. Moreover, the physician who tallied the findings did not know what patients were in the control or experimental groups.

The St. Luke’s prayer study did not go unnoticed by the medical community. Letters to the editor came pouring in, and by eight months after the initial article appeared, 15 were published.5 The majority took issue with the lack of informed consent and some rather serious flaws related to study design and methodology.

Randolph C. Byrd, a Christian physician at San Francisco General Hospital, conducted an earlier study of a similar nature on intercessory prayer, which served as a model for the St. Luke’s study. Results were published in the July 1988 issue of the Southern Medical Journal.6 According to the Byrd study, prayed-for coronary intensive care patients in an experimental group fared better than control-group patients in 20 out of 26 categories; dependent variables, assessed and showing statistically significant differences, included incidence of pneumonia and cardiac arrest, development of congestive heart failure, need for intubation, and diuretic and antibiotic therapy. Based on this one study, Byrd concluded that God answers prayer. Nevertheless, silence rather than controversy followed this study’s publication, according to Byrd.7 Unlike the St. Luke’s study, the ethical issue of informed consent was addressed in the study with 393 patients who agreed to participate in either the experimental or control group, and were then assigned at random in a similarly blinded fashion. According to the article, prayer was made by “born-again” Christian intercessors from Protestant and Catholic churches to the Judeo-Christian God for a rapid recovery rate and prevention of complications and death.

In recent years, other researchers have used prayer, or what they have defined as prayer, as an intervention. Elisabeth Targ, for example, conducted a controlled, double-blind study at California Pacific Medical Center, San Francisco, to research the effects of “distant healing” on patients in the advanced stages of AIDS.8 Distance healing was equated with prayer. Outcome variables included survival rates, comorbid conditions (complications), and recovery rates. Results appeared to indicate that prayed-for patients fared better than those for whom prayer presumably had not been offered.

Raising the Questions

Why should prayer research pose problems? If science is indeed lending support for the hypothesis that prayed-for people get well quicker and have less complications following major surgery, why should questions be raised that might challenge this hypothesis?

Should not Christians, of all people, look on this research on intercessory prayer as a cause for rejoicing? Should not Christians expect statistically significant results from randomized studies and also expect study results to be congruent with what the Bible teaches about the efficacy of prayer? Will not God, at last, be vindicated by science and the statistical tables turned on Galton’s 19th-century conclusions? Is not the marriage of science and religion welcome? The answer to all of these questions is “not necessarily.”

Not necessarily, for two disturbing reasons. The first concerns the interpretations of prayer and prayer research by Larry Dossey, a physician and prolific writer with a decidedly “new consciousness” worldview who has become the chief spokesperson and authority on prayer in the United States, even in some Christian circles (see accompanying sidebar). The second reason has to do with the nature of the research itself, even apart from any New Age or new consciousness interpretations.

Research Issues

Kimberly A. Sherrill and David B. Larson, two Christians who are primary researchers in the burgeoning field of religion and spirituality, have written that if research on the role of religion and health is to gain respectability as a legitimate nonfringe area of study, it needs to have at least the following characteristics: clinical relevance and conceptual foundations, and methodological soundness;9 yet, more than respectability is on the line when prayer research is involved. We also need to consider the very nature of prayer, and, more importantly, the very nature of God.

Clinical Relevance

In the case of prayer research in general, clinical relevance appears to be well established. Any intervention that aims to improve either the quality of life or the length of life, in fact, should be an intervention worthy of examination, and prayer most definitely falls into both categories if the latest statistics are to be believed. Results from descriptive correlational studies on various religious practices, including prayer, also lend support to the hypothesis that prayer is an intervention that is good for you. Increased scientific evidence affirms that various religious factors influence physical and psychological well-being in positive ways. Moreover, as adults age, nonorganizational or private expressions of spirituality, such as prayer, contribute in varying degrees to improved physical health and emotional and spiritual well-being, though exactly how this occurs is still the subject of investigation.

A growing number of studies in many disciplines, including sociology, medicine, and nursing, indicate that participation in religious practices of virtually all types correlates positively with health indicators, such as lower blood pressure, decreased depression and anxiety, and even lower mortality rates. Prayer is one of those practices. That alone makes it a worthy topic for study.10

Personal prayer and requesting prayer from others have been reported as two of the most frequently used religious coping strategies in descriptive correlational studies of older adults. Prayer has also been identified as the second most frequently used spiritual care intervention by nurses concerned with meeting the spiritual needs of their patients, second only to providing opportunities to talk about spiritual or religious concerns.11 When asked what nurses can do for them to support their spirituality, patients have cited prayer either for them or with them.12

Conceptual Foundations

For the Christian researcher, observable facts from retrospective reviews and cross sectional and prospective studies are important, yet tentative, sources of information about the efficacy of prayer. Research findings need to be coupled with an accurate (insofar as is humanly possible) conceptual under­standing of what prayer is and how prayer might work.

Research on prayer should be theory-driven. This requires a more comprehensive understanding of prayer with an investigation of Scripture as the primary source document, because, epistemologically speaking, the early critics of Galton were right: the origin of knowledge about prayer is Scripture.

Faith comes from hearing the Word of God (Rom. 10:17), and, with it, a better understanding of statistical data may result from the Word as well. Prayer in and of itself is not a completely independent variable subject to human control and manipula­tion. In prayer research, the most important independent variable is God; yet, God and His relationship to prayer are generally neglected in both the conceptual formulation of most prayer research and in the analysis of study results. In the case of Dossey’s interpretations of prayer, for example, God is factored out of the equation altogether (see sidebar)!

The focus of current prayer research is generally on the variable of the intercessors and on the nature of the intercessions that can be manipulated; that is, intercessors may be told specifically what to pray for. Can the results from intercessory prayer, however, be reduced to a simple cause and affect relationship? Can we assume that God will answer any and every intercessory prayer request? Can an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent God be manipulated to do our will? What of the research principle that stipulates that interventions should do no harm? Will patients involved in intercessory prayer studies whose symptoms worsen or complications abound find themselves doubting God’s very existence, let alone God’s love and concern for them?

Scripture clearly exhorts us to pray for the health of others and informs us that God hears and answers both personal and intercessory prayers for health. We have numerous examples in both the Old and New Testaments. King Hezekiah, for example, prayed for health and an extension of his life, and God granted it (2 Kings 20). The Book of Psalms gives frequent indication that physical health results from earnest prayer, and the New Testament provides numerous examples of healing in response to prayer. Often, however, more was involved than personal petition or intercession by others; personal need for repentance often preceded or accompanied personal restoration of physical health (see Ps. 31; Mark 5:1–13). Moreover, in all biblical accounts of healing, there is the underlying truth that while various human factors are operant — for example, repentance and belief that God can and will heal — God alone is in control and answers specific prayers according to His good and perfect will. That good and perfect will may sometimes mean a “yes” in response to prayers for healing; God does heal today and many churches today are experiencing this reality with a renewed emphasis on the healing ministry of Jesus; but it may also mean a “no” or “wait.”

God is not a genie, and prayer is not magic. Much of today’s research, however, leaves us with that impression. In fact, the current intercessory prayer research is not alone in implying this. The New York Times best-seller, The Prayer of Jabez13 by Bruce Wilkinson, also capitalizes on this theme of instant gratification. Why should we pray, according to Wilkinson? In order to be blessed by God. “I want to teach you how to pray a daily prayer God always answers,” Wilkinson writes in his preface. Name it and claim it; pray and receive. All that is really needed is a formula, not God.

Scripture clearly lends support to the correlation between prayer and emotional and mental health as a corollary to a relationship with God. Paul encouraged the Philippian Christians not to be anxious about anything (Phil. 4:6). The means to that end is personal prayer and supplication — making their requests known to God. He even gave an absence of anxiety as a defining characteristic of prayer, their hearts and minds kept in Jesus Christ through the peace of God. This is not just any peace, but the peace that passes all understanding, bypassing the worried and troubled mind, the source of anxiety (Phil. 4:6–7).

Jesus’ words in Matthew 6 echo this refrain, correlating an absence of anxiety with a focus on the power and loving concern of God the Father, accessed by prayerful meditation on God’s care for even the birds and the flowers. Scripture clearly informs us that God’s blessings will attend our prayers, but the call to prayer itself is to be an act of obedience.

More than anything else, prayer is a relationship of trust and dependency, not simply a means of getting what we want, when we want it. A closer relationship with God and a greater trust in His goodness are outcomes that result from personal petitionary prayers and the intercessions of others, regardless of whether immediate healing occurs. Numerous examples are given in Scripture (see Job; Ps. 40–43; 2 Cor. 12:7–10; Luke 22:42). Measuring these kinds of outcomes can be a fruitful avenue of research with respect to prayer.

Methodological Soundness

Research on prayer needs to be conducted with an attitude of humility and with a clear understanding of our motivation and the purposes of research. To set out to prove or disprove that God answers prayer and then to conclude that prayer “works” on the basis of intervention studies alone is irresponsible and totally discounts the true nature of prayer, the nature of God, and the nature of the methodological problems that can occur and have occurred with this type of research. Many replications of studies are needed to establish that any intervention did, in fact, have a hypothesized effect and that the researchers indeed measured what they intended to measure. Prayer studies are no exception to this rule.

Galton’s original study and subsequent ones clearly point to one methodological problem that continues to plague prayer intervention research and will undoubtedly continue to do so in the future: the problem of confounding variables. It is not an impossible task to randomly place people into control and experimental groups and ensure that only those in the experimental group are prayed for by intercessors who are part of the experiment. It is a far more difficult, if not impossible task to ensure that hundreds of friends, relatives, and even Christian health care workers of both experimental and control group subjects are not storming the gates of heaven for their loved ones and clients.

Had the San Francisco or St. Luke’s study results turned out exactly the opposite, with control group subjects experiencing greater recovery rates, would we conclude that prayer is ineffectual? Galton probably would have; but if prayer works at a distance, it is highly conceivable that control group subjects, or at least some of them, might see vast improvement as a result of effectual and fervent prayers by “righteous others” who are praying for them unbeknownst to the investigators of the research study. Many patients are also presumably praying for themselves. Byrd, for example, conducted univariant and multivariant analysis and showed no significant difference between control and experimental group subjects prior to the intervention; he concluded that the effects of intercessory prayer would be valid. What he compared, however, were variables of age, sex, and primary cardiac and noncardiac diagnoses; no attempt was made to explore similarities and differences in religious orientation or spiritual support systems.

Galton’s original study exhibits yet another method­ological problem. There is no accounting for other antecedent factors that might have influenced the mortality rates of royals and clergy, given the retrospective nature of the study. Might there have been a negative equivalent to the “carefree country life” Galton wrote about that adversely affected the health of royals and the more affluent clergy? Are there antecedent factors of a spiritual nature that affect whether or not prayers for health are answered?

The specific functioning of prayer as an independent variable also differs from study to study and sometimes — as methodological purists have noted — within studies, raising the question of exactly what is being measured. Can we conclude that the exact same intervention is measured in every case of prayer? Do all intercessors pray alike? Do some types of prayer “work” better than other types? Does it matter what is the faith perspective of the person who is praying? What about the amount and length of time prayed for each patient?

The Question of Manipulation

A troubling question remains with respect to the use of intercessory prayer in a randomized trial. Is it, in fact, real prayer? Is it prayer at all?

In an essay entitled “The Efficacy of Prayer,” C. S. Lewis raised this question and even suggested that an experiment could be conducted that is remarkably similar to those being conducted today. “I have heard it suggested,” wrote Lewis, “that a team of people — the more the better — should agree to pray as hard as they knew how, over a period of six weeks, for all the patients in Hospital A and none of those in Hospital B. Then you would tot up the results and see if A had more cures and fewer deaths. And I suppose you would repeat the experiment at various times and places so as to eliminate the influence of irrelevant factors.”

Lewis had an excellent grasp of statistical analysis. He had an even better grasp of the underlying issues. His analysis was that no “real prayer” could possibly go on under such conditions. People could not, he reasoned, pray for the recovery of the sick unless the end they had in view was their recovery. The actual motive of the experiment he envisioned was not to ensure the recovery of all patients but to see what might happen. Does prayer work? So, he concluded, the “real purpose and the nominal purpose of your prayers are at variance” and “whatever your tongue and teeth and knees may do, you are not praying.” The experiment, he concluded, “demands an impossibility.”14

The question that precipitates virtually all of the prayer-as-intervention studies is, “Does it work?” For the Christian the answer is obvious: Of course, prayer works. Not, however, in the magical sense in which our words of intercession somehow manipulate God, nor on the basis of any statistically significant findings that God (or, in Dossey’s view, some nonlocal mechanism of mind) either has or hasn’t answered prayer. In the quest for significant p values, there is always the need to acknowledge and respect the free will of the holy, sovereign God, whose behavior cannot be controlled, manipulated, or even subjected to study by a methodology that assumes a purely cause and effect universe.

Lewis again gives us insight into the true meaning of prayer, which is always to be understood in the broader context of the fallen and suffering world in which we live. His comments should be food for thought when considering whether prayer can and should be used as an appropriate intervention in randomized clinical trials:

There are, no doubt, passages in the New Testament which may seem at first sight to promise an invariable granting of our prayers. But that cannot be what they really mean. For in the very heart of the story we meet a glaring instance to the contrary. In Gethsemane the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from Him. It did not. After that the idea that prayer is recommended to us as a sort of infallible gimmick may be dismissed.15

Sharon Fish Mooney is a PhD candidate at the University of Rochester School of Nursing. She has published books and articles on spiritual care issues. She has taught research and worked as a nurse researcher with the University of Colorado Center on Aging Research.

1 ‑Francis Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development (London: Macmillan, 1883), 277–94.

2 ‑Francis Galton, “Statistical Inquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer,” Fortnightly Review 12, no. 68 (1872): 125–35.

3 ‑Sharon Fish, “Can Research Prove That God Answers Prayer?” Journal of Christian Nursing 12, no. 1 (1995): 24–27, 46.

4 ‑W. S. Harris, et al., “A Randomized, Controlled Trial of the Effects of Remote, Intercessory Prayer on Outcomes in Patients Admitted to the Coronary Care Unit,” Archives of Internal Medicine 150 (1999): 2273–78.

5 ‑Editor’s Correspondence, Letters to the Editor, Archives of Internal Medicine 160 (2000): 1870–78.

6 ‑Randolph C. Byrd, “Positive Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer in a Coronary Care Unit Population,” Southern Medical Journal, Journal of the Southern Medical Association 81, no. 7 (July 1988): 826–29.

7 ‑Randolph C. Byrd with John Sherrill, “The Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer,” Journal of Christian Nursing 12, no. 1 (Winter 1995): 21–23.

8 ‑Fred Sicher, Elisabeth Targ, Dan Moore II, and Helene S. Smith, “A Randomized Double-Blind Study of the Effect of Distant Healing in a Population with Advanced AIDS,” Western Journal of Medicine 169, no. 6 (December 1998): 356–63. See also Elisabeth Targ, “Evaluating Distant Healing: A Research Review,” Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine 3, no. 6 (November 1997): 74.

9 ‑Kimberly A. Sherrill and David B. Larson, “Anti-tenure Factor in Religious Research,” Religion in Aging and Health, ed. Jeffrey F. Levin (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994), 149–77.

10 ‑See, for example, D. B. Larson and S. Larson, The Forgotten Factor in Physical and Mental Health (Rockville, MD: National Institute for Healthcare Research, 1994); D. B. Larson, J. B. Swykers, and M. E. McCullough, Scientific Research on Spirituality and Health (Rockville, MD: National Institute for Healthcare Research, 1998).

11 ‑Carolyn Hall and Hilreth Lanig, “Spiritual Caring Behaviors as Reported by Christian Nurses,” Western Journal of Nursing 15, no. 6 (December 1993): 730–41.

12 ‑Cited in Sharon Fish and Judith Allen Shelly, Spiritual Care: The Nurse’s Role (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988).

13 ‑Bruce Wilkinson, The Prayer of Jabez (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2000).

14 ‑C. S. Lewis, “Essays on Prayer,” The World’s Last Night and Other Essays (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1960), 5–6.

15 ‑Ibid., 5.

But Is It Really Prayer ?

The primary spokesperson today on the subject of prayer research is Larry Dossey. A physician from Texas, Dossey was co-chair of the panel on Mind/Body Interventions, Office of Alternative Medicine, National Institutes of Health. Currently, he is executive editor of Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, a popular over-the-counter peer-reviewed research journal launched in 1995 that encourages the integration of complementary therapies and conventional medical practices. The journal combines some good quality research with equal doses of promotional hype by Dossey and New Age notables such as advisory board member Andrew Weil. It also includes ads for everything from customized amino acids ($69 a bottle) and conferences on Anthro­po­sophical medicine to lectures on shamanic healing, in Lima, Peru, and workshops on therapeutic touch at Theosophical retreat centers.

Approximately 50 medical schools have courses devoted to the study of alternative medicine, including explorations of the relationship between spirituality and health. Dossey takes much of the credit for this phenomenon, and not without empirical support. An article on his official Web site (www.dosseydossey.com) notes that in 1993 only three medical schools previously were exploring how spirituality and health interface. That year marked the publication of Healing Words, a New York Times best-seller that was Dossey’s first book about prayer (HarperSanFranciso, 1993). A number of other Dossey- authored books are now used as textbooks in medical and nursing schools, including Prayer Is Good Medicine (HarperSanFranciso, 1996), Be Careful What You Pray for…You Just Might Get It (HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), and Reinventing Medicine: Beyond Mind-Body to a New Era of Healing (HarperSanFranciso, 1999).

Dossey’s prodigious speaking circuit includes present­a­tions at spirituality and medicine conferences at such prestigious institutions as Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins, the Mayo Clinic, and the Beth Israel Medical Center of New York City, in addition to frequent appearances on television, including Oprah, Good Morning America, Dateline, Larry King Live, and CNN. All of this exposure reinforces his reputation as an authority on spiritual healing associated with intercessory prayer.

In a commentary that appeared in the Archives of Internal Medicine following the publication of the controversial 1999 prayer study (see accompanying article), Dossey spoke like a true evangelical. He compared Newton’s critics “who con­demned universal gravity as occult nonsense without weighing the evidence” to modern-day skeptics who exclude intercessory prayer as a valid subject for research in principle. 1

Dossey has received unquestioning endorsements by many naive evangelical Christians (see, for example Dale Matthews’s The Faith Factor and Reginald Cherry’s Healing Prayer)2 and accolades from popular health and wellness luminaries such as Dean Ornish and New Age notables Matthew Fox and Joan Borysenko, who also writes blurbs for Dossey’s bookcovers. From a biblical perspective, however, Dossey’s understanding of intercessory prayer might well be classified as occult nonsense. On the surface it might appear that he is intercessory prayer’s chief proponent, but nothing could be further from the truth.

“Goddess, God, Allah, Krishna, Brahman, the Tao, the Universal Mind, the Almighty, Alpha and Omega, the One” — all are names for a Supreme Being Dossey feels most comfortable calling “the Absolute”;3 but is it to this Supreme Being (or Beings) that we direct our intercessions? According to Dossey, there is no place for prayer to actually go, since there is no one to whom prayer is actually directed. Interces­sory prayer and petitionary prayer are inherently impersonal and “nonlocal,” products of our own minds independent of matter, space, and time, emerging from a consciousness not confined to the brain.4 One’s own mind can affect, for good or for ill, one’s body and emotions; it can also affect other people’s bodies and emotions as well, even at a distance. The principle of distant healing is hence the subject of much contemporary prayer research. Our thoughts and intentions and, by extension, our words can affect healing and even, according to Dossey, result in harm if they are negative in nature.5 We can, quite literally, name it and claim it.

In his understanding of the inherently “nonlocal” event called prayer, an “external God” is not regarded as a necessary intermediary because there is nothing actually “sent” and therefore nothing actually to mediate. There is a “divine factor” in prayer, Dossey claims, but this factor is not external; it is internal since God (however one might define him, her, or it) is present to some degree in everyone.6 Intercessory prayer does not become an act of supplication by sinful and dependent creatures to a holy, transcendent, yet also immanent Other, as Scripture clearly teaches, but purely a function of our own “divine within” — the infinite, eternal, and immortal Self (God) interconnected to every other being and thing in the universe. Dossey’s notion of intercessory prayer is Pantheistic Monism 101 with heavy doses of para­psychology thrown in for good measure.

To understand this mechanism of intercessory prayer, Dossey refers to recent developments in quantum physics, specifically the concept of nonlocality; but questions should be raised. With respect to selection and interpretation of theory for testing, what specific theories of quantum physics are appealed to by intercessory prayer researchers for support? What is the current status of those theories within the discipline of physics? Can a theory that argues for nonlocality at the subatomic level of reality be extrapolated to support a practice such as healing-at-a-distance or a purely human form of intercessory prayer? Is the legitimate science of quantum physics really compatible with monistic interpretations of the universe, resulting in a type of quantum mysticism that can explain both why and how prayer works?

In Healing Words, Dossey writes about his own experience of deconversion and the “wilting” of the evangel­ical religious fervor with which he was brought up, following his discovery of such “intellectual giants” as Bertrand Russell and Aldous Huxley.7 Buddhism and Taoism were added to that intellectual mix in medical school, resulting in the adoption of an eclectic philosophy more spiritually satisfying to Dossey than his early religious roots.

It is clear from his autobiographical commentary on the origins of his present thought that his early image of God as “an elderly, robed, bearded, white male figure who preferred English” 8 was certainly no match for his current under­standing of the kinder, gentler Absolute, who is the “Divine within.” In truth, neither of Dossey’s gods can hold a candle to the only true and living God, who created humans in His very image and likeness. This is the God who can teach us the true meaning and practice of petitionary and intercessory prayer, characterized by a joyful yet humble dependence on the One who desires the best for us and those we pray for and always answers prayer according to His good and perfect will.

1 ‑Editor’s Correspondence, Letters to the Editor, Archives of Internal Medicine 160 (2000): 1870.

2 ‑Dale Matthews, M.D., with Connie Clark, The Faith Factor (New York: Viking, 1998); Reginald Cherry, M.D., Healing Prayer (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1999).

3 ‑Larry Dossey, M.D., Healing Words (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), xiv.

4 ‑Ibid., 8.

5 ‑Larry Dossey, Be Careful What You Pray for…You Just Might Get It (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), 1–8.

6 ‑Healing Words, 8.

7 ‑Ibid., xvi.

8 ‑Ibid., viii.

Lee Strobel: Let me ask you about this book, and let’s go back to the beginning. What was it that prompted you to write The Prayer of Jesus? And by the way, I love the subtitle: Secrets to Real Intimacy with God.

Hank Hanegraaff: Well, as you yourself write in the foreword to The Prayer of Jesus, Amazon.com lists over 8,000 books on the subject of prayer. Yet while people’s appetites have been whetted when it comes to prayer, I fear that people often misunderstand the main point of prayer. Multitudes view prayer as an instant formula when the essence of prayer is found in intimate fellowship — and that, ultimately, is what The Prayer of Jesus is all about. If supplication is seen as the sole sum and substance of prayer then we have missed the main point.

L. S.: In other words, what I can get from God, what I’m going to ask for, what I’m going to seek to have happen in my life in terms of God bringing me what I pray for and desire.

H. H.: Yes, that’s right. And prayer is much more than that. For Christians, prayer should be its own reward. It is not a magic formula to get things from God — communing with God is half the prize. In fact, that is precisely what we look forward to in eternity. We’re going to experience something that not even Adam and Eve experienced. We’re going to have the privilege of touching, of talking to and experiencing, the resurrected Christ throughout eternity.

L. S.: It strikes me, Hank — and studies have shown this — the percentage of people who pray is huge. It’s a virtually universal phenomenon. In fact, I saw one study that showed that a significant percentage of atheists pray, which shocked me. I don’t know what they’re praying to, but it seems to be an almost universal experience that people seek to commune with God. And yet, I think if you ask the average person, “Do you feel fulfilled in your prayer life? Do you feel like you really have an intimate experience with God?” most people, if they’re really candid, would say “No.” And I think the reason is, few people have been taught how to pray, and what we have in Scripture is the disciples asking that very question, and Jesus gave an answer. [See Matt. 6:9–13; Luke 11:1–4.]

H. H.: You could probably, if you were there, see the urgency sketched on the faces of the disciples. Perhaps Peter, as usual, served as a spokesman. He didn’t say “Lord, teach us how to pray.” He said, “Lord, teach us now to pray.” He had seen the serenity that Jesus Christ exuded in the aftermath of prayer. He didn’t know what caused Christ’s face to seem as though it glowed, but one thing he was certain — whatever it was, he wanted it, and he wanted it now.

That day the Lord could have drawn their attention to all kinds of biblical prayers. He might have highlighted the astonishing prayer of Solomon. Remember that story? Solomon was given the opportunity to ask for whatever he wanted. Imagine that: “Just name it and it’s yours.” I can imagine myself blurting out, “Lord, give me a better swing than even Tiger Woods so that I can win the Master’s Golf Tournament for Your glory.” But not Solomon. He humbly asked for wisdom and understanding instead. The Bible says that God was so pleased with his prayer that He not only made Solomon the wisest man who ever lived, but He blessed him with riches, wealth, and honor. Talk about a formula for success. Or Jesus might have pointed His disciples to the prayers of Joshua, Jephtha, or, yes, Jabez. But that’s not what Jesus did, because He knew what every good teacher knows, and that is that examples of prayer must first be understood in light of principles of prayer. That’s precisely why He gave us the Lord’s Prayer — the prayer of Jesus.

L. S.: If we’re going to ask anybody about prayer, who would we want to ask other than Jesus? And here, as you say, when Jesus is asked “How now do we pray?” with that sense of urgency and desire on the part of the disciples, He didn’t give them a stone. In other words, He answered their request, and He laid out for us a pattern, principles that we can draw upon. But it is through this process of prayer that God changes us. You talk about this in the book, that it is the process of praying that is its own reward in many senses.

H. H.: Very much so. In fact, Jesus Christ actually started His teaching on prayer in the Sermon on the Mount with that very principle. He not only taught His disciples that prayer was the spiritual life reduced to its barest essence, but that the secret to prayer is secret prayer.

Hypocrites pray to be seen by men. Thus they have everything they’re ever going to get: their prayer’s worth and nothing more. The tragedy of contemporary Christianity is that we measure success of prayer by the size and scope of our accomplishments, rather than the strength of our relationship with God. All too frequently we are fixated on our outward pleasures, while God is focused on our inward peace. Sadly, the spiritual apathy of our souls all too often leaves us vulnerable to the appetites of the flesh. The American sentiment that “bigger is better” has invaded our Christian subculture and seduced us to seek instant success through formulas. A cacaphony of voices promises us quick fixes and instant cures when in reality there are none — the secret to prayer is not found in instant formulas, but in intimate fellowship with the lover of our souls.

L. S.: Have you found, Hank, that there are a lot of people out there who have misperceptions, misunderstandings about prayer?

H. H.: So many people see prayer as merely a means of bringing our requests, but prayer is much more than that. Prayer is an opportunity to build a relationship. The moment we make the paradigm shift from seeing prayer as merely a means of bringing our requests to a means of building a relationship, our prayer lives will be transformed.

L. S.: It’s a paradigm shift right there, a completely different mindset.

H. H.: Yes, because everything flows out of building that relationship. Often we treat our heavenly Father no better than we treat our families. We want a relationship without the investment of quality time. I can promise you that my wife Kathy would not be flattered by a request for physical intimacy apart from a relationship. In much the same way God is not flattered when we bring Him our requests without building our relationships. I think that if we are brutally honest with ourselves, we will acknowledge that for the most part we have learned to pray backwards. We rush into God’s presence with a laundry list of requests. And before our knees have ever touched the ground we are already thinking about getting back to our frenzied schedules. The bottom line is this: relationships, whether human or divine, never grow apart from the investment of quality time.

Pascal once said, and he hit the nail on the head, that there is a God-shaped vacuum in our lives that only God can fill. If, in fact, we fill that vacuum with a relationship with God, life works. When we don’t, it doesn’t work. A host of consuming appetites fill up our better intentions. So we need to grasp the significance that the real experience in life is communing with God. Once we’ve understood that, prayer begins to work. If we don’t, we’re always going to fall for formulas that overpromise and underperform. We’re going to think for a moment we’ve found the solution, but in the end it’s going to be another fad. Too frequently we are infatuated with fads and formulas rather than with the real deal, which is building a relationship with the only one who can fill our inner vacuum.

L. S.: There certainly is a trend in our culture right now in the direction of prayer, and of course, The Prayer of Jabez really elevated this to the New York Times best-seller list and a lot of discussion on talk shows and so forth. It really seems to have raised the interest in prayer, and I’m sure, given your position as the Bible Answer Man at the Christian Research Institute, you’ve gotten a lot of questions about what your take is on that particular approach. How do you assess that and how much is your book kind of a response to that particular approach?

H. H.: It’s not a direct response to The Prayer of Jabez. I’m just happy that The Prayer of Jabez in a sense has whetted people’s appetites for prayer. I think what I’ve tried to do is say, “Look, examples of prayer need to be understood in light of principles of prayer, and that’s exactly why the Lord Jesus Christ gives us the prayer of Jesus.”

But I would say this: we ought to be cautious about taking narrative passages in Scripture and building didactic teaching principles on them. As R. C. Sproul once put it: It’s a very dangerous thing to ask, “What would Jesus do?” In other words, a better question would be, “What would Jesus have me do?” Jesus is the Lord of the church. He can go to the temple and drive out the money changers with a whip. I am not the Lord of the church; therefore I dare not make that my practice. It’s a very dangerous practice to build a doctrine on what someone thought, did, or even prayed. As with establishing any doctrine or practice, it is really important that we follow, rather, the teaching principles given in Scripture with regard to prayer rather than trying to base our prayer on what Jephtha, Judah, Solomon, or even Jabez prayed. I mean, if you wanted a formula for success, the prayer of Solomon would be it. But that’s not what Jesus gave us. He didn’t point us to those examples of prayer. Rather, He gave us the principles of prayer, the pattern of prayer.

L. S.: Let’s talk a bit about that prayer pattern that He set forth for us and this request from the disciples to teach us now to pray. One thing that Jesus made clear is the Father already knows what we need. Well, why then do we pray for what we need?

H. H.: The very fact that people ask that question belies the fact that they do not understand what prayer is all about. Prayer is not simply about getting our needs met in terms of things, provisions, and so forth. As we’ve said, prayer is about building a relationship with God, a relationship God Himself has initiated through His Word. Even beyond that, though, we can answer that question by saying we pray because we’re commanded to pray; and nothing lies outside the reach of prayer but that which lies outside the will of God.

So we go to our Heavenly Father humbly. It starts with a humble faith in the love and resources of our heavenly Father. Thus prayer becomes a means through which we learn to lean more heavily upon Him and less heavily upon ourselves. That humble faith inevitably leads to adoration as we express our heartfelt love and longing for God. The more we get to know Him in the fullness of His majesty, the more we are inclined to confess our unworthiness and to thank Him not only for His saving and sanctifying grace, but for His goodness in supplying all our needs. It is in the context of that kind of relationship that God desires that His children bring Him their requests with thankful hearts. Ultimately, the purpose of supplication is not to pressure God into providing us with promises, but rather to conform us to His purposes.

I’ll be frank with you: the more you learn about building a relationship with God, the more your personal requests pale into insignificance, because the one thing you start to learn about God is that you don’t have to have a formula for Him to bless you and to give you what you need. It’s very much like you are with your children, Lee, or I am with my children. We long to give them what they need. We don’t expect them to have the right formula that’s going to unlock our hearts and move us to give them something. We give them things they never ask for and we withhold things they do ask for because we love them and know what is best for them.

L. S.: I remember when I was a new Christian I asked, “Well, why would I even pray to God? He already knows everything. So I’m not going to tell Him anything new.” And I loved the answer. The guy said, “Well, in that case you can feel confident that you can pour out everything to God, because if He already knows it, there’s no reason for you not to be able to tell Him your emotions and your feelings and to be totally honest and to be forthright and to be intimate in what you share with Him.” It really is an unleashing of our desire for intimacy with God to know we can relate to Him because of His omniscience. We can relate on this incredibly deep level and have total confidence that as we interact with Him and speak with Him and get to know Him better, there’s nothing we cannot share, and there is a change that happens in us as a result of praying. Talk to me about what changes you’ve seen in yourself as a result of building your relationship with God through prayer.

H. H.: You have this humble reliance on Him. You learn how to hold your life, as it were, with an open hand, so that God can move you where He wants to move you, take things out of your hand when He wants to, put other things in your hand when He wants to. What you ultimately learn is that the One Who created you now has access to your heart, because what you’ve done is said, “I no longer want to hold onto my heart, my time, my talent, or my treasure. It’s Yours to use as you see fit.” And the minute you do that your life opens like a beautiful flower, because now God can water and nurture it, He can cultivate it, and you can be everything that you were designed to be.

L. S.: I just picture a child. When my children were little, I knew a lot of times what they wanted when they came to me and they were seeking something or they wanted to spend time with me, and the desire as a father is to just pull them up on your lap and to hug them and to help them. You have an experience with them that goes beyond just a conversation, and I picture Jesus here saying, God wants to know you intimately. He wants you to have the confidence to come into His presence and know He’s going to pull you up onto His lap, and He’s going to put His arm around you, and He’s not going to be some stern disciplinarian who’s going to be challenging you as you try to say the right words to magically unlock His heart, but He has this desire to pour out His love and His grace on you. I think that’s just a wonderful picture of God.

H. H.: It really is. I was thinking just this morning how my son Paul — he’s going to be seven on Friday — always comes into the bedroom really early in the morning, and what he likes to do is cuddle up as close as he can to me. He puts his head on my neck, and I rub the back of his head, and he doesn’t say anything, and I don’t say anything, but just being together is enough. He knows I love him. The touch says it all. I know he loves me so much, and that intimacy and relationship is a faint reflection of what we can have with the Lord as we cuddle up next to Him, as He puts His arms around us, so to speak, and loves us and lets us know that He has every detail of our lives under control. There’s not a single maverick molecule running around loose anywhere in the universe. He holds the next few moments, the next few days and months. All the days ordained for us are written in His book before even one of them came to be [Psalm 139:16], and nothing can happen to us unless it first passes through the filter of His love [Rom. 8:28, 35–39].

L. S.: I just know that there are people out there who have that image of your son crawling into bed with you and they say, “If I could just have that with God.” There’s something in the human spirit that so longs for that and so desires that. And you know what? You can have that kind of rich relationship and those moments when there’s just silence between you and the Lord because you’re resting in His presence; you’re resting in confident assurance of His love for you and His desire for the best for you.

Hank, it strikes me that often people make one or two mistakes with the Lord’s prayer. One is, they forget it, as if Jesus never really taught us how to pray, or they just use it as something to repeat — a vain repetition. Those seem to be the two extremes; and yet there is another approach that Jesus intended us to take with this prayer.

H. H.: Yes, absolutely. Jesus made every word He spoke count. The words of the prayer He taught us to pray are like treasures of incalculable value lying deep beneath the waters of a vast ocean. They beckon us to descend into the prayer’s glorious depths. There await unfathomed resources that can scarcely be described to those living on the surface.

L. S.: There is no wasted verbiage in here. Every word is important.

H. H.: That’s right. As has been well said, the prayer is beautiful and symmetrical, like the most finished work of art. The words are plain and unadorned, yet majestic and so transparent and appropriate that once fixed in the memory no other expressions ever mix themselves up with them. The thought of substituting other words never enters the mind. Grave and solemn are the petitions; yet the serenity and tranquil confidence, the peace and joy which they breathe, prove attractive to every heart. It is a model prayer because there is meaning, there is depth, there is provision that is encapsulated in every word. What Jesus in essence does is give us a manner of praying that we can mine. We can go into every single word and discover a wealth of meaning, a depth of beauty.

L. S.: I’m going to take you up on that. He begins the prayer by saying “Our Father.”

H. H.: Even those two words are just incredible. Of all the things that the disciples had been taught about prayer, this was not one of them. They weren’t even allowed to say the name of God out loud, much less address Him as our Father. And yet that is precisely what Jesus taught His disciples to do. But there was a catch. Only those who had been adopted into the family of God could actually pray “Our Father.” Jesus made it clear that there are only two kinds of people in the world; those who can address Satan as “our father” and those who may address God as “our Father.” And Paul, in Romans chapter 8, makes it clear why that is. It has become appropriate for us because we’re no longer illegitimate children. We have been adopted into the family of God because of what Jesus Christ has done for us.

The other thing that comes to mind when I think of “our Father” is the fact that Jesus starts out by teaching us to pray in the plural. It’s not “my Father.” It is “our Father.” We don’t come before Him as rugged individualists. We come before Him as part of a community of faith. We are part of a family that stretches throughout history. So as a community of faith we pray, “Our Father.”

L. S.: We’ve been talking about “Our Father” being the way in which the prayer opens. In fact, it begins “Our Father in heaven.” And that’s significant too, isn’t it?

H. H.: It really is. Jesus taught us to qualify the phrase “Our Father” with the words “in heaven.” In other words, we can address Him with intimacy, but never impudence. He is the sovereign Creator — we are but sinful creatures. So the qualifying phrase “in heaven” helps us to recognize that we are to address our heavenly Father with the reverence due His name.

L. S.: And then the prayer goes on, “Hallowed be Your name.” What’s the significance of that?

H. H.: To pray, “Hallowed be Your Name” is putting the emphasis on God first, exactly where it belongs. Our lives should radiate a far greater commitment to God’s nature than to our needs. And there’s so much wrapped up in the phrase, “Hallowed be Your Name.” It is to pray that God be given the unique reverence that His holiness demands, that His Word be preached without corruption, that His churches be led by faithful pastors and be kept from false prophets, that we be kept from language that profanes the Name of God, that our thought lives remain holy, that we cease from seeking honor for ourselves, and seek instead that God’s Name be glorified. Our meager attempts at ministry are meaningless unless the name of God is magnified. So when we pray “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your Name,” it opens up a whole vista of prayer and communication with our heavenly Father.

L. S.: To take these power-packed words that Jesus prescribed for us in terms of a pattern of prayer, and to exegete those and be able to say, “Why did Jesus tell us to pray that, in this order, in this kind of way?” I think is very powerful.

H. H.: But there’s a reason for that: these words are prayer triggers as it were. When I think of the words “Hallowed be Your name,” I’m not praying that as a vain repetition. It’s a trigger for praying all those things I just mentioned regarding the hallowing of God’s name. My thoughts, in terms of prayer, should not be focused primarily on me. It should be focused on Thee, and I’ll tell you, there’s a beauty to it. When you start focusing on God, the things of earth grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.

L. S.: Absolutely. It reorients your whole mind. Your whole attitude, your whole perspective, all of a sudden change. Then the prayer goes on, “Your kingdom come; Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

H. H.: The phrase “Your kingdom come” is gilded with such golden glory I scarcely know where to begin. When you pray “Your kingdom come,” in essence you’re praying that God would expand His rule over the territory of our hearts. In other words, it is to pray that we embrace His kingdom in every aspect of our lives. It’s not about extending our territories, our houses and lands. It’s about extending His rule over the territory of our hearts. We often confess — you and I have talked about this — the fact that there are areas in our hearts that still belong to us. The rooms have not yet been swept clean and what we’re saying, in essence, as we go through the process of sanctification is, “God, take over more and more of my heart.”

But beyond that, to pray “Your kingdom come” is to pray that God would extend His territory in the kingdoms of this world. In other words, that more and more people will come to faith in Jesus Christ, that more and more people will come to embrace His kingdom, the City of God, as it were, rather than the kingdom of Satan.

And then, I think too, it is a recognition that Christ has already won the war. We’re right now sandwiched in between the triumph of the cross and the termination of time, between D-Day and V-Day. D-Day was the first coming of Christ when the enemy, Satan, was decisively defeated. V-Day is the second coming of Christ when the kingdoms of this earth will in fact be the kingdoms of our Lord and He will reign for ever and ever. Of course John on the island of Patmos caught just a little glimpse of this when he saw the New Jerusalem, the holy city, coming down out of heaven, prepared as a bride, beautifully adorned for her husband, and he heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God will be with men, and He will be with them. He’s going to wipe every tear from our eyes. There will be no more death, mourning, crying, nor pain. The old order of things will have passed away, all things will become new” [Rev. 21:1–5].

That’s what we’re looking for: His kingdom to come on this earth. This earth will no longer be dominated by destruction, disease, decay, death, doubt, or discouragement. It will then become a place where there will be no more mourning or crying. Death, all of the scourge of sin, will be wiped away. When I pray “Your kingdom come,” I have this glimpse, this longing for the new heavens and the new earth wherein dwell righteousness. The same is true when we pray “Your will be done.” In the yielded life there is great peace in knowing that God has every detail of our lives under control. He will not spare us from trial or tribulation but He will use adversity to purge the impurities from our lives.

L. S.: We’re at the point now where Jesus said, “Give us today our daily bread.” He says we should bring our requests to God. There is an appropriate time, after we’ve honored God, we’ve expressed our reverence to Him, and so forth, and we put into context the requests that we’re going to make, that we do bring the requests of our heart to the Lord. That’s an unbelievable thing, isn’t it Hank?

H. H.: It’s kind of neat when you look at the Lord’s Prayer. It is neatly divided into two sections. The first is building a relationship with God, and so we pray “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done.” And then there’s this transitional phrase that takes the prayer from heaven to earth: “…on earth as it is in heaven.” From this point on we pray for ourselves — for our provision, pardon, and protection. In the petition “Give us today our daily bread,” we pray for all things belonging to and necessary for the sustenance of the body and life.

I want you to note very carefully the word “necessary.” God gives us that which is necessary, not always the niceties of life; He provides for our needs, not our greeds. When we pray “give us today our daily bread,” we are praying with Auger, “Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may become proud and disown You and say ‘Who is the Lord?’ or I may become poor and steal and so dishonor the name of my God” [Prov. 30:8–9].

Once again, I think it’s also important to recognize that we’re praying in the plural. We’re not only talking about our individual needs; we’re talking about the needs of our brothers and sisters around the world who suffer from maladies ranging from droughts to deadly diseases. We watch them on television, but all too often the images quickly fade with the next commercial interruption. With this petition we are reminded daily to pray not only for our needs, but for the needs of others.

L. S.: Talk about “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

H. H.: One of the most poignant of all the parables that Jesus ever told was the story of two debtors [Matt. 18:21–35]. The first owed his master more than 20 million dollars, more than he could pay if he lived to be a thousand. The second debtor owed the first debtor less than a measly 20 dollar bill. The master in the story forgives the 20 million dollar debtor every last penny, but instead of being overwhelmed with gratitude he goes back and grabs that second debtor by the throat and drags him off to the debtors’ prison. When the master heard all that had happened, his condemnation was swift and severe. The 20 million dollar debtor was thrown into prison until he himself could pay his debt in full, which was a task that he obviously could never accomplish. And then Jesus turns to His disciples and says, “This is how My heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.”

The point that Jesus is making, of course, is transparent. We have been forgiven an infinite debt. Therefore, it is a horrendous evil even to consider withholding forgiveness from those who seek forgiveness from us. That should be a startling revelation to every one of us because we all have people who have wronged us, and we, in both the story and the petition, are reminded that we ought to be ready with an open heart to forgive anyone who asks for our forgiveness. When we pray “forgive us,” we are reminded daily of the infinite price that was paid so that we might be forgiven. We must ever be mindful that it was God Himself who hung on the cross so that we could be reconciled to Him for time and for eternity.

L. S.: It feels good sometimes to have a grudge and so forth, and if that’s our kind of attitude, then the next words from our mouth to Jesus need to be, “I don’t want my heart to be like that. You have forgiven me. I want to forgive the person who’s hurt me.” We need to not let our obstinate refusal to forgive people in our lives become a barrier between us and God.

H. H.: Not only that, but one of the more liberating things that can ever enter the human heart is, when you pray this prayer, to think in your mind of the one person or the two or three people that you really have an unresolved problem with, and, while you cannot coerce anybody to ask for forgiveness, to start praying for that person. If you can learn to pray for those who spitefully abuse you, you will be the quintessential example of true liberation. You know, it’s easy to pray for those that love us, but not so easy to pray for those who spitefully use us [Matt. 5:44]. If we can but only learn to forgive and pray for them — we will be set free.

L. S.: What about “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One?”

H. H.: If, in fact, we put on the full armor of God [Eph. 6:10–18], we will stand against the wiles of the Evil One. If we do not, we lose. We cannot stand firm without the belt of truth buckled around our waist, without the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith to extinguish the flaming arrows of the Evil One, the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and praying at all times in the Spirit. So we need to understand what each part of the armor is, and we need to understand what each part of the armor represents, and if we understand those things we are going to learn what true spiritual warfare is all about and how we can prevail. We don’t have to fear the Evil One. The Evil One has to flee from us if, in fact, we understand what it means to put on the full armor of God.

And I’m really trying to make two points, Lee. I’m trying to make the point that we shouldn’t underestimate the power and the province of the Adversary, and we shouldn’t overestimate it either. We shouldn’t underestimate it in the sense that Satan is a malevolent being, the vastness of whose intellect exceeds that of anyone who’s ever lived from Solomon to Socrates. Therefore, a man unaided from above is never going to be a match for a fallen angel. On the other hand, the Bible teaches us that Satan is a lion on a leash, the length of which is determined by our Lord. When I pray this petition, I am reminded that one day Satan will be thrown into the lake of burning sulfur and temptations will be no more. We will enter the golden city with divine assurance that nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life [Rev. 21:27]. In other words, there is that day on the horizon in which temptations will be no more. So there’s a hope in that petition as well as great counsel for our daily lives here and now.

L. S.: But the key thing is God has given us defenses, and we just need to apply them in our lives.

Hank, you close the book in talking about going deep, really embracing the prayer of Jesus. Not that we just read it and look for principles and ideas and insights and so forth, but we should really embrace it and apply it in our lives. Could you give us just a sense of how we can go about doing that?

H. H.: In the ninth chapter I talk about stepping into the deep, and I start out by describing a day that I’ll never forget. It was the day that my wife read me a story. I was in pain, I could hardly move, and Kathy sensed that she had a captive audience, so she pulled up a chair next to the shallow waters of the tub in which I was soaking and she began to read from a book called Into the Depth of God. The words were refreshing and riveting. They washed over me like the balm of Gilead. Within moments I was completely oblivious to my pain, because this was not the stuff of shallow men who splash around in surface things and attempt to write about the deep. This was not the stuff of nonpeakers talking to nonpeakers about peak experiences. These were the words of someone who had escaped the shallowness of his own soul and plunged deep into the ocean of God’s immensity.

Well, as Kathy read I was brought into the experience of the author and his family as they traveled to the Great Barrier Reef. Calvin Miller, the author, had come to snorkel in the shallow waters above the reef. His son, however, had come to scuba. For the rest of their lives father and son would tell stories about their experiences with the Great Barrier Reef, but only one of them had really come to know it. And that, of course, is an analogy for prayer. Most of us snorkel in surface waters of prayer and succeed only in sunburning our backs. We fail to comprehend that “deep,” as Calvin Miller put it, is where the noisy, trashy, surface of the ocean gets quiet and serene. It’s where our noisy requests give way to the quiet of a relationship with our Maker.

L. S.: I love that imagery because so many of us are in the baby pool. There is a deep end here and it’s in that deep end that we really find trust, that we really find the adventure of knowing Jesus Christ, and we find a level of experience with Him that we can’t imagine when we’re just splashing around in the shallow.

H. H.: It’s interesting that you bring that up, in that I write about that very thing in The Prayer of Jesus. That’s the experience I went through with each of my children. There was a time when I couldn’t get them out of the kiddy pool. The kiddy pool was all there was and ever would be, as far as they were concerned.

L. S.: This was good enough. It doesn’t get better than this.

H. H.: That’s right; until I led them into an experience with the ocean. Once they experienced the ocean they never went back to the kiddy pool. And that’s how it is when we get beyond our noisy askings and gettings and plunge into a deep relationship with the Lover of our souls.

L. S.: Give us some ideas on how somebody goes about doing that.

H. H.: I think the first step into the deep is where we make the paradigm shift from seeing prayer as merely a means of bringing our requests to seeing prayer as a means through which we can build our relationship; that’s where the first step into the deep begins. It begins with the realization that there’s a whole lot more to prayer than simply our noisy askings and gettings.

L. S.: Then what else? One of the things I think is often overlooked in prayer is the need for confession. That’s the part we don’t like to do. It’s a part we’d rather skim over. And yet, unless we’re really willing to confess our sins to the Lord it creates static in our line with Him, in a sense, doesn’t it?

H. H.: There’s not a single prayer or example of prayer in Scripture that will “work” without confession. Prayer without confession is like a body without a soul or a car without an engine. It simply will not work. Our prayer, whether it’s the prayer of Joshua, Jephtha, or Jabez, is going to bounce right off the ceiling if there is unrepentantance in our lives. I would never have the temerity to say this if Jesus had not very clearly communicated this principle on numerous occasions.

L. S.: What else?

H. H.: Well, I think another major step into the deep involves the sounds of silence. I want people to think for a moment about their prayer lives. Could it be that your prayer life is characterized by constant babbling? Could it be that the chatter of your mind is deafening? Could it be that your shallow askings have drowned out the sound of the very One whose voice you so long to hear? Have you ever considered how glorious the sounds of silence might be? God has given us 66 love letters etched in heavenly handwriting and the more we get into the Word of God, the clearer His voice will be in the sounds of our silence. In the book I also encourage believers to discover their “secret place” — a place away from the invasive sounds of this world where they can hear the sounds of another place — another voice. Kathy’s secret place is the sauna; mine is walking. The issue is not location, but motivation. We have to find that secret place where we can commune with the living God.

L. S.: That’s what I love about it: it’s very practical.

H. H.: What I do in the book from a practical standpoint is to take you step-by-step into the deep until we get to the words of the Lord Jesus Christ when He ends the majestic Sermon on the Mount. He says, “Everyone who hears these words of Mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man” [Matt. 7:24]. Wisdom is the application of knowledge. I spread the banquet before you. Now it’s a matter of partaking, to eat and make this a part of your life and be revolutionized, not just for time, because our relationship is not a transient relationship. It is a relationship that transcends time and space. It is a relationship we will have with the prayer of Jesus throughout eternity.

Hank Hanegraaff is a best-selling author, the president of the Christian Research Institute, and the host of the Bible Answer Man radio broadcast. Lee Strobel is also a best-selling author and a teaching pastor at Saddleback Valley Community Church in Orange County, California.

Not long ago I had an opportunity to play golf with U.S. Open champion Corey Pavin. Having loved the game since I was 14, I was looking for something in his golf swing that would set him apart from 99.9 percent of all golfers. But there was nothing unusual in his technique. I realized that Corey had a ferocious commitment to the basics.

There is an application here to what is happening today in the Christian church. Hordes of Christians are looking for divine encounters in all the wrong places. Some travel to Toronto in hopes the Holy Spirit has landed there. Others go to Detroit because they’ve heard that a pastor there is blessing water which triggers revival and miracles. Some make pilgrimage to Pensacola, Florida to the “outpouring” there. Many people falsely think that reality can be reduced to a personal experience of enlightenment, when all the while authentic spiritual experience is discovered in God’s inerrant Word.

In subsequent issues, I will return to this theme of getting back to basics, but now let’s turn to the foundational issue of prayer. If you want a real experience, then develop your relationship with your Creator.

No relationship can flourish without constant, heart-felt communication, and that includes our relationship with God. We must be in constant communication with our Redeemer through prayer. As F. B. Meyer remarks, “The great tragedy of life is not unanswered prayer but unoffered prayer.”¹

Today there is much bad teaching regarding prayer. Some leaders in the Christian community even urge followers never to pray “Thy will be done.” Frederick Price asserts, “If you add, ‘If it be,’ on the end of a petition prayer, it will not be answered.”² In light of such falsehood, we need to grasp the facts. We can use the acronym F-A-C-T-S to remind ourselves of the basics of prayer.

FAITH

For prayer to be meaningful, it must be founded on biblical faith. True faith encapsulates knowledge, agreement, and trust in God alone. Ultimately it is the object of faith that renders faith effective — not faith in faith but faith in the triune God. The prayer of faith is rooted in God’s Word. R. A. Torrey said, “To pray the prayer of faith we must, first of all, study the Word of God….As Paul puts it in Romans 10:17, ‘Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God’” (emphasis in original).³

ADORATION

Faith naturally leads to adoration that expresses our love and longing for God. Adoration in turn leads to praise and worship. The Scriptures overflow with descriptions of God’s greatness. The Psalms, in particular, contain passionate prayers of worship, expressions of adoration to the King of Kings. “Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker” (Ps. 95:6).

CONFESSION

The Psalms are also replete with confessions, such as that of King David: “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (Ps. 51:4). Confession means acknowledging that we stand guilty before God. There is no place for self-righteousness. We develop intimacy with the Lord through prayer when we confess our need for His pardon. The apostle John writes, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins” (1 John 1:9).

THANKSGIVING

Nothing is more basic to prayer than to “enter his gates with thanksgiving” (Ps. 100:4). Giving thanks is a function of faith, not feelings. It flows from the assurance that our heavenly Father knows and provides exactly what we need. Paul encourages us to “be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thess. 5:16-18).

SUPPLICATION

God desires His children to bring their requests with praise and thanksgiving. Scripture promises “that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us — whatever we ask — we know that we have what we asked of him” (1 John 5:14-15). Despite His provision, the purpose of prayer is not to pressure God into providing us with pleasures, but to conform us to His will.

As you internalize these F-A-C-T-S, remember that the power of prayer becomes a reality only through the practice of prayer.

NOTES

¹John Blanchard, Gathered Gold: A Treasury of Quotations for Christians (Durham, England: Evangelical Press, 1984), 231.²Frederick K. C. Price, What Every Believer Should Know about Prayer (Los Angeles: Ever Increasing Faith Ministries, 1990), 4.³R. A. Torrey, The Power of Prayer (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1981), 123-24.

The occasion wasn’t the latest New Age convergence, but rather “A Gathering at Christians,” a mega-event sponsored by the National Council of Churches of Christ (NCC), which drew more than 2,000 people to Arlington, Texas, May 21-25,

1988. Assisting the ecumenical body in planning the event was a 25-member team that included representatives of Protestant, Orthodox, Evangelical, and Roman Catholic churches.

Other “how to pray~ sessions during the special “Explorations in Spirituality” workshops includ­ed: Quaker, black oral, and East­ern Orthodox prayer, ancient Lectio Divina and Centering Prayer, monastic prayer, and “creamation spirituality” prayer. The NCC said the reason they spon­sored the various workshops on prayer was to demonstrate unity and to affirm diversity.

“Gathering planners com­mented that each Christian tradi­tion has created unique forms of prayer in response to specific secular and spiritual needs,’ according to an NCC press release on the event. “Exper­iencing the prayer of another tra­dition can be a powerful means of understanding and appreciat­ing that tradition and of affirming diversity.”

There was no acknowledg­ment by the NCC that some of the forms of prayer and spiritual exercises, being from non-Christian sources, might be unbiblical and unchristian.