A recent poll found that eighty per cent of Britons still believe that prayer can be answered, in spite of a dramatic drop in church attendance. Only one in seven people insist they would never resort to prayer in the face of problems in their lives. Interestingly, teenagers and people in their twenties are more likely to pray than their parents’ generation.

Well, first of all, what is Christian prayer? It’s the most important activity of our lives. It’s the very purpose for which we were actually made: to have a love relationship with God. And all love relationships thrive on communication. The more we communicate, the more we grow in love, the more our love flourishes. And it’s the same in our relationship with God.

So Christian prayer is to God as our Father.

A couple of weeks ago we looked at this sculpture, which I love, that Charlie Mackesy did of the Prodigal Son. And this is a picture of what God is like: a loving Father.

I used to think that God was dictatorial; I don’t know, judgmental, like a cosmic policeman out to get me. And atheists often describe God like that. And I don’t believe in a God like that. This is the kind of God I believe in: the God that Jesus described as a loving heavenly Father.

God in the Bible is described as both like a father and a mother: he just loves us – not just as a baby, but growing up.

There’s a guy, who’s hosting a group on this course, called Alex Douglas. He said how he’s got these amazing parents. But he said that when he was growing up, when he was a teenager, he was actually very rude to them. His mother had MS, and his father was such a kind, lovely man but he was still very rude to him. And this is how he put it. He said:

‘I was a greedy, greedy child. I stole from my parents over a long period of time.’ And when he was fifteen his parents found out, and there was this great big row – lots of shouting, screaming in the kitchen. And he said, ‘I’d become the worst human being, and it all hit me. I ran upstairs, slammed the door, then piled all my furniture against the door and sat by my bed. I remember hearing my dad coming upstairs and sit against the door, and I always remember these words he said to me: “Alex, I don’t know what you’re thinking or what you’re going through, but I need you to know that me and your mum love you. We try and provide for you. We give you everything we have. Is that not enough?”

‘And there was a silence that could have gone on forever. And then I heard my dad quietly say: “Please, please, son, open the door. I really want to hug you right now.”’

That’s the loving father who wants to hug the son. And Alex said, ‘I never experienced God like at that moment. I never understood the gospel more.’

That’s God’s love for you. And Jesus said he’s our Father in heaven. He’s the Creator of this entire universe. You know, our sun is one of 300 billion stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of 100 billion galaxies. And yet, in a throwaway line in the book of Genesis, the writer says: ‘He made the stars also’ – just like that, boom, the entire cosmos was created.

And in a way the power of prayer depends on our grasp of who it is to whom we’re praying. So it’s to the Father through the Son. A couple of weeks ago we looked at how this was made possible through Jesus: we have access to God through Jesus. Also, we can pray to Jesus. Most of the time I pray to Jesus. Jesus said: ‘I have called you friends’ and I love just to talk to Jesus as a friend. We have access to the Father through Jesus by one Spirit: that’s the Holy Spirit.

That’s why the Weekend is so exciting: we look at the subject of the Holy Spirit. We were looking last week at how Jesus knocks at the door of our lives. If we open that door, he comes in by his Spirit. That is God living within us. And God helps us to pray. St Paul says: We don’t really know how to pray as we should do, but the Spirit helps us.’ The Spirit of God living within us helps us in our weakness.

So why pray? Well, all relationships are based on communication. Often marriages break down for a lack of communication. But with good communication, they grow and they flourish.

So what are the rewards of prayer?

First of all, the presence of God.

I have a very good friend called Brother Luigi. He’s a Benedictine monk, and he was the abbot of a monastery and he now teaches at the Pontifical University in Rome, and he is the most holy, godly, prayerful man, certainly one of the most prayerful people I’ve ever met in my entire life. And so I asked him. I said, ‘Luigi, how do you begin your prayers?’ And he surprised me. He said, ‘I start with a time of complaining.’ I said, ‘Sorry? What did you say?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I complain.’ I said, ‘Well, what do you mean?’ He said, ‘Well, I say to God: “Oh, this is a complete waste of time. I’ve got so much to do. Why do I need to pray?”’

‘And then,’ he said, ‘I start to meditate on a verse, like something like I love you, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.’ And he said as he starts to do that, all the knots inside him start to untie, and then he finds his heart burning within him. And then he just totally loses track of time in the presence of God.

An audio recording of the Nicky Gumbel in conversation with Brother Luigi at the HTB Leadership Conference in 2014 can be downloaded from here.

The presence of God, it satisfies that spiritual hunger we all have. It quenches our spiritual thirst. It refreshes our soul. Prayer is like the soul breathing.

So, the presence of God.

Secondly, the peace of God.

I don’t know about you, but I really struggle with fear, anxieties, worries. Both my parents were big worriers. They always had to have something to worry about. I heard of one mother like that who texted her grown-up daughter. She just sent this text. She said: ‘Start worrying – details to follow.’ And I was like that, and I’m tempted to worry.

Someone said that ‘worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere’.

Corrie ten Boom said: ‘Worry doesn’t empty tomorrow of its troubles, but it empties today of its strength.’

The peace of God, it’s not about being in a place where there’s no trouble or problems or hard work; it’s about being in the middle of those things and still having a peace in your heart. It’s like the deep ocean current when there are the winds and the waves on the surface but there’s stillness underneath.

And then perspective. One of the things I find is when you start to thank God, when you start to say: ‘Oh, Lord, thank you that...’ My prayer is: ‘Thank you that I’m alive! Thank you that I’ve got two feet – I can walk. Thank you for the sunshine. Thank you for the blessings. Thank you for family. Thank you...’ and you start thanking, and you suddenly realise: ‘Wow, there’s so much to thank God for!’ And it puts your problems, your worries, in perspective.

And then the power of prayer. Prayer not only changes us, but it also changes situations. Of course, you can’t prove the existence of God by answers to prayer. But what I’ve found is it’s amazing what happens when we pray.

When I first became a Christian, I heard about prayer and I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll try it.’ So it’s just a really trivial thing: I needed to get a lift to London. We were in Cambridge, and I wanted to get a lift to London, and there was a train strike. So I just prayed. I said: ‘Okay, God, I’d love a lift to London.’ Literally a few moments later there was a knock on the door and this guy Peter said: ‘Hey Nicky, would you like a lift to London?’ I thought, ‘That’s so weird! I’ve just prayed about that.’ So I thought, ‘I’m going to try something else.’ I thought, ‘I’ll pray for my mother.’ I knew she had insomnia. And so I started praying. I didn’t tell her, but for a week I prayed that God would give her sleep. At the end of the week, I said, ‘How are you sleeping?’ and she said, ‘It’s really strange. I’ve slept so well the last week!’ I thought, ‘Wow, that’s amazing.’

And through the last forty years, I’ve kept these prayer diaries – not all the time; I’m not doing them at the moment; but I’ve got dozens of these. And I write down the prayers, and then I go back and I just tick them. And it’s an amazing thing. You could put it all down to coincidence.
But William Temple, the great Archbishop of Canterbury, said: ‘When I pray, coincidences happen. When I don’t, they don’t.’

So I guess the next question is this: does God always answer prayer? In a sense, yes, he always hears our prayers. But like a good parent, he doesn’t always just say ‘Yes’, because a loving parent won’t say ‘Yes’ to all the child’s requests. It’s a bit like the traffic lights: Green is ‘Yes, go’, Red is ‘No, stop’ and Amber is ‘Wait’. So Green, if you like, are all these prayers that I can look back in my prayer diaries and see they’ve got a tick. But then sometimes there are ones that don’t have a tick, the ones where the answer seems to be ‘No’. And sometimes, in my own experience, later on you realise why the answer was ‘No’.

I can think of two occasions in my life where I have really desperately wanted something and I prayed for it over and over again. One was to do with when I was a barrister. There was a particular set of chambers that I wanted to get into, and I really prayed that I’d get into it, and I didn’t. Another was about a particular theological college I wanted to go to and the year that I wanted to go, and I really, really prayed, and it didn’t happen. Now I look back and I’m so thankful God didn’t answer those prayers, because if he’d answered either of those prayers I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing right now. Now, you might wish that he had answered those prayers! But personally, I’m so glad that I’m doing what I’m doing, because I love my job.

Sometimes, though, I think we won’t know in this lifetime why God has not answered our prayers.

I think of an occasion some years ago when I was playing squash. I’m a regular squash-player, and I was playing squash with one of my very best friends, who was also the churchwarden of this church and also a regular squash-player. And he played a beautiful backhand drive, and then he turned to play the forehand and he just dropped down with a heart attack, from which he died.

And I have never cried out to God more that he would let him live than I did at that moment. He had six children, the youngest six, up to eighteen. In fact, the one who was six is right now a host on this course. But we had to tell each of those children, and it was the most painful thing – and still is, still is today the most painful thing for me.

Five o’clock in the morning, the following morning – obviously I couldn’t sleep, and I was out praying, and just crying out to God. And I said, you know, ‘God, I just don’t understand. I don’t think I will ever understand in this life why this has happened. But I’m not going to give up trusting you. I’m not going to give up praying.’

So there’s ‘Yes’, ‘No’, and then there’s ‘Wait’, which is the Amber. If a child asks to drive the car, you’d probably say ‘No’. But it doesn’t mean ‘No’ forever: there will come a time when that request will be answered.

This is one of my prayer diaries, from 1989. I happened to be looking through it yesterday and I came across a couple of prayers that hadn’t been ticked. And they were actually for my children. And as I read them, I thought: ‘Wow, those two prayers have been answered!’ and I put a tick, thanking God. And I put a date: 2015.

Just because something isn’t happening for you right now doesn’t mean it won’t happen. God’s timing is perfect.

So, how do we pray? Well, like all relationships, there are no rules. Like my relationship with my wife Pippa, it’s not like ‘This is how we have our conversations!’ We have conversations in all kinds of different ways! Sometimes there’s a little bit of an agenda we go through. But you’re totally free to talk to God in any way that you want.

And over the years I’ve had many different patterns of praying. Sometimes I’ve used the Lord’s Prayer as a structure. I’ve had different ways of praying. But I’d say that what’s common to all the different ways that I’ve prayed is three things, and they’re the three things that you teach children right from the start, aren’t they: ‘Thank you. Sorry. Please.’

It is really important to cultivate an attitude of gratitude. There’s so much to thank God for. You know, ‘count your blessings, not your problems’.

And then ‘Sorry’. I came across this prayer: ‘So far today, God, I’ve done all right. I haven’t gossiped, haven’t lost my temper, haven’t been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish or overindulgent – and I’m really glad about that. But in a few minutes, God, I’m going to get out of bed, and from then on I’m probably going to need a lot more help.’

I always find there’s plenty to confess. Why do we need to confess our sins? Because Jesus died on the cross for us. He took all our sin. We’re totally forgiven. That’s what we were looking at a couple of weeks ago. So why did Jesus say, ‘Well, pray forgive us our sins’? Well, Jesus used a visual aid to explain this.

The night before he was crucified, he had dinner with his disciples, and at the end of dinner, he got down with a towel and started washing their feet. And when he came to Peter, he was about to wash Peter’s feet and Peter said, ‘No, no, no, please, don’t wash my feet!’ And Jesus said, ‘Unless I wash your feet, I have no part of you.’ And Peter said, ‘Well, in that case, wash my whole body!’

And Jesus said, ‘No, I don’t need to wash your whole body. Someone who’s had a bath is already clean. You only need to have your feet washed.’ (John 13:5–8)

So that’s like when you pray a prayer like I know some of you have prayed, asking Jesus into your life, and you received total forgiveness, that’s like your whole body is washed. You don’t need to have another bath. We don’t need to start again every time we mess up. But as we go through life we pick up dirt on the way, and daily we need to receive forgiveness.

And then ‘Please’. Jesus said, ‘Pray, ask for your daily bread.’ In other words, ask for anything you need. Anything that matters to you matters to God. Pray for others, yes, but also pray for yourself. There’s nothing that you’re concerned about which God does not want to hear about.

When should we pray? Well, you can pray anywhere, anytime. You don’t have to go into a church to pray; you can pray on the train, on the bus, pray walking, you can pray in any situation. At night. Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I start praying for other people, sort of interceding for them. I find that it’s a really good time to do that.

So you can pray anywhere, any time. Jesus talks about praying on your own. He talks about going into your room and shutting the door. That just means find somewhere you can be by yourself. For me at the moment, I’m finding walking, just walking in the park early in the morning, is for me a time I love to get away and be by myself.

And then with others. I found this so hard!

I remember two of my really best friends, Nicky and Sila Lee, who I’ve known for so long, we went on holiday just after we’d become Christians, and we decided we’d try praying together. And we sat in this room, and it seemed like hours – it was probably about three minutes! We each prayed one prayer, and at the end of it, I promise you, my shirt was soaking wet, I was so nervous doing it.

But it’s a wonderful thing to do because Jesus said: ‘Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst.’ There’s a power in praying together.

Three little tips to end with. First of all, keep it real. Be honest. Be vulnerable with God. Say what’s on your heart. He doesn’t want to hear about what you think ought to be in you; he wants to hear what is really in us.

And then, keep it simple.

And then, keep it up. Prayer is two-way. You know, the main way God speaks to us is through the Bible – that’s what we’re looking at next week. But he speaks to us as we pray.

As I say, I love to pray just walking around Hyde Park in the morning. And recently I was just walking along, and what I do is I take a piece of paper and a pen to write down my thoughts. And one time I’d just gone through a gate, and I’d just got out my pen to write down something that I sensed God was speaking to me, and there was a couple there with some dogs. They obviously thought I was some kind of inspector. So they said, ‘Is anything wrong?’ So I said, ‘No, no, no, nothing’s wrong.’ He said, ‘Well, what are you writing down?’ So I said, ‘I’m just writing down my thoughts.’ He said, ‘Did your therapist tell you to do that?’ I said, ‘No, just when I pray I like to write down what I sense God is saying to me.’ He said, ‘Does it work?’ So I said, ‘Yeah. Yeah, it works.’

And then he went off and I went off. And it so happened that he was walking one way and I was walking another, and actually we bumped into each other again. And so he said, ‘Is it still working?’ So I said, ‘Yeah, it’s still working!’ He said, ‘How often do you do it?’ So I said, ‘I do it every day.’ He said, ‘How long have you been doing it?’ I said, ‘Forty years.’

And I guess that’s my testimony to you tonight: I’ve been doing this for forty years. I’m not very good at it. You know, I’m no expert. I don’t think my prayers are great prayers! But what I’ve found is that over the years we’ve seen people healed. We’ve seen marriages restored, relationships restored. We’ve seen people set free from addictions. It’s had a profound effect on my life. It’s had a profound effect on our marriage. It’s had a profound effect on our family.

Prayer really is the most important activity of our lives – and it works!