I still remember quite vividly the moment a friend asked, “Do you think God answers prayer?” The friend was a seminary colleague with whom I was experiencing hospital chaplaincy training, and the setting was the ER. Around us was the rush of medical staff, attending to the needs of a man who’d been in a motorcycle accident and another who’d had a heart attack. We’d been instructed by our supervisor to go down to the ER and just observe. My friend knew that I would want to pray that God intervene and help these two people. She asked, “Do you think that God doesn’t already know what’s going on here? How are your prayers going to change this situation? Aren’t you just tugging on God’s sleeve? Prayer doesn’t change the current situation; it changes you.” Her comments were challenging to me. Since my teenage years, I had learned that prayer is “the mightiest force on earth” and “the prayers of the faithful availeth much.”  I knew, just knew, that prayer changes things…but I sure was having a hard time articulating how prayer affects change right there in the ER with my friend asking such profound and appropriate questions.

I believe that we are called to pray. In Sunday school I had learned the acronym ACTS for prayer. Prayer is Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication. I think that my friend would have no problem with the first three. Adoration allows us to be in God’s presence, “enjoying” God, appreciating the amazing wonder of who God is, observable in the beauty of creation and the lives of the faithful. Confession brings us closer to God as we admit our shortcomings, our “falling short” of the ideals to which God would have us aspire. The confessing prayer admits that we are utterly dependent on the grace and love of God for all existence. And this leads us into Thanksgiving. We are called to “rejoice in the Lord always,” giving thanks for all that we have and for who God has made us to be. It’s the final mode of prayer that my friend seemed to have trouble with. Supplication has to do with ‘asking,’ with the sense of “begging.” The Old English way of saying this was “bidding,” as in “I bid Thee, O God, to answer.” And, yes, it is a bit like tugging on God’s sleeve. But it doesn’t have to be. We are called to pray for others. We are called, actually, to pray without ceasing, asking, or bidding, God to intervene, to act in a powerful way. Supplication is only a part of what prayer is, yet it is an integral part. We pray in trust that God is answering, that God is changing both us and changing the situation.

Spiritual author Glenn Clark wrote 75 years ago, “Do not pray to bring things to pass; pray to see things that are already in the Kingdom.” When we pray, “Thy Kingdom come,” we pray for the highest and best God has to offer. “As it is in heaven, so be it on earth.” Health, wholeness, abundance, reconciliation, peace and love exist in perfection in God’s kingdom. We pray that we experience God’s kingdom here and now, for ourselves and others.

I may not know how it is that God answers our bidding prayers. God’s wisdom and timing are greater than I know. Sometimes situations appear to change miraculously. Sometimes the greatest change occurs in me. Sometimes prayers appear to go unanswered. I do know, however, that I am called to continue in prayer, whether in the ER, in the church pew, sitting on my couch at home, going for a walk or holding a family member’s hand at that dinner table. I pray ‘as if’…and trust that…God hears and answers. And I am doing a lot of praying these days. One thing about a pandemic: it has urged me, even compelled me, to pray and to lead others in prayer. Bidding and abiding. Ask of God and spend time with God. This is our reasonable service and true worship (Romans 12:1).