Does Prayer Change Anything? Here Are Three Ways It Does

Thoughts and prayers.  Thoughts and prayers?   Why would anybody get upset about that?  But people do.   An awful event happens, like what happened in Parkland.  Then the tweets start coming, thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers.   And folks go ballistic.  Why?  It’s not that these people hate thoughts and prayers.   It’s that the words don’t seem sincere, at least coming from certain people.   From these people the words seem ploys to avoid action, ways to avoid uncomfortable realities.  That’s because they come from the people who could take action; who could change those realities.  And I get that.  I honestly do.   I understand why folks react that way to those words.

In fact, when Parkland happened, I more than understood.  I became one of them.  When I heard thoughts and prayers, the words rang hollow.   I prayed.  But when it came to praying with others, I couldn’t do it.   In the face of those lives lost, of those traumatized children and families, such prayers felt useless. 

I’m ok with how I felt.  Sometimes, you feel what you feel.   That’s not the question.   The question is, were my feelings telling me the truth?  Just because you feel, doesn’t mean the feelings are telling you the truth.  When it comes to prayer, especially in the face of senseless violence, does it do anything?   Do prayers have the power to change something like that?    In these words, God tells you.  So, let’s hear what God has to say. 

James 5:13-18

Does prayer actually change things?   If so, how does prayer do it?  In these words, from James, the brother of Jesus, God tells you.   Before prayers changes anything, it first changes you.  Then it changes your community.  And yes, then, it does change the world.

How does it change you?  To understand how it changes you, you need to see what James has been talking about before he gets to prayer.   All through this letter, James has been ranting against injustice, how the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.   Yet even as James rants, in his closing words he tells people.  Be patient.  Trust in the end, God will act.   And right before these words on prayer, he tells them, above all things don’t do this.  Don’t swear oaths.  Isn’t that a little weird?   Why does James get so worked up about that?   It’s because in oaths people use words to manipulate, to get what they want from God and others.   “I swear by heaven and earth, God, if you don’t do this thing, I’ll stop believing.”   Or, “I swear on a stack of Bibles, I won’t do it again, honey.”   At the worst, swear words even carry a certain violence to them.  And James knows.   Words that carry violence often lead to violence.  

So instead James says to people, when trouble hits, don’t swear, pray.  James gets more explicit than that really.   Literally James say this: Is anyone among you suffering from evil?  Then pray.   Heck, that covers everyone.  Who hasn’t suffered evil?   In fact, right now, everyone here is probably suffering from evil in one way or another.   Maybe, you’re paying a price for someone who did you wrong.   Or it could be anything really.  Evil is simply something that isn’t what God intends.  And since God intends fullness of life, anything that doesn’t bring you that fullness qualifies. 

So, whatever the evil is, when you bring it to God, what does God do?   God gives you a little glimpse of God’s perspective.  And that changes something.  It changes you. 

When someone does me wrong, and I bring it to God, God does two irritating things.  First, God points out ways I might have contributed, even in a small way, to the evil happening. I realize.  I have some responsibility, even if it is small.   But then God gives me perspective on that other person, to their frailties and pain.  When I start praying, I can’t pray just for revenge.  I have to pray for change, change for the situation, change in the person or maybe institution that did me wrong, and yes, change in me too. 

For the same reason, when good things happen, James tells you to pray too.   If you sing songs of praise, you’re not singing songs of praise to yourself.  You’re singing them to God.  And when you do that, that gives you perspective.   You can’t act as if you alone created whatever good thing happened.   God moved through lots of people and events to bring that about.  It’s not all about you.  

But in prayer, God doesn’t only change you.  God changes your community.  That’s why, James tells you that when you are sick, don’t keep it to yourself.     In the same way, when you mess up, don’t keep it to yourself either.   Bring it to someone.  

James doesn’t just tell you to do this because it helps to have people pray for you, though it does.  James tells you to do this because when you do it, it creates a community. 

Many years ago, for four months, I traveled the world studying churches doing extraordinary things.   On one of those trips, I ended up sitting in a men’s group that was part of a church in Chicago.   As the time for prayer came, one of the guys shared this.  He said.  “You guys know that I got married a year or so ago.   Well, at my job, I work with this other physician’s assistant.  We get along great.  I really like working with her.  That’s the problem.  I like working with her too much.  I’m scared if I don’t watch it, I could blow up my marriage.”  When he asked for that prayer, he was getting help for a real issue sure.  But more than that, he was creating a community.  He was saying.  I trust the people in this room enough to share honestly what’s going on with me, even the parts that aren’t so pretty.  And his honesty freed others to risk doing the same.

When that sort of honesty happens, it changes a community.  It makes it more real, more intimate, more powerful.   The folks who created, Faith 5, the 5 family practices you can find on the link and that are the focus of this series, knew that.   It’s why these practices begin each night with sharing your high point and low point of the day, and then later with bringing those things to God in prayer.   When a family does that, night after night or week after week, it builds intimacy, a deeper connection in that family than before.  

But as powerful as how prayer changes you, how it changes families and communities, James knows.  Prayer’s power goes far beyond that.   Prayer doesn’t only change people, it changes the course of nations.   That’s why he brings up Elijah.  When Elijah prayed for the rain to stop, it  changed the direction of a nation.  It defeated the agenda of an unjust and evil leader named Ahab, who was exploiting the people.   And James makes it clear.  If God could do that then, God could do it now. 

In fact, God did not so long ago.   He did it in 2003.

In Liberia, 18 years ago, slaughters like what happened in Parkland were happening every day.   In a nation torn by civil war, the government and rebels massacred entire villages.  They kidnapped boys and made them killers.   They kidnapped girls and made them slaves.   In two years in a country of only 4.5 million, 200,000 people died.   To put that in perspective 200,000 people had died in a place with the same combined population as Dade and Broward counties. 

But in the third year of that war, 2003, something happened.  A Lutheran women’s leader, Leymah Gbowee, called together hundreds of Christian women to pray for peace.  At one of those meetings, a Muslim, Asatu Bah Kenneth, said that she would bring Muslim women to join in praying too.

On April 1, this group of Christian and Muslim women dressed in white and gathered to pray for peace at the fish market in the center of the capital city, Monrovia.  They picked that place because the country’s president, Charles Taylor, could see it from his house. Every day, his motorcade passed the women. Before the week was over 2,500 women had gathered there to pray. 

Those prayer led to some pretty interesting actions.  They agreed to not have relations with their partners until the war ended.  (That’s some leverage!) Then, creating a joint statement calling for peace, they marched through the streets of Monrovia and demanded a meeting with President Taylor. And they got it.  On April 23, the women visited Taylor. Gbowee presented him with the statement onstage while the women sat in the audience, holding hands and praying.  And Taylor agreed to peace talks.

Next the group targeted the rebels.   They found out their leaders were meeting in Sierra Leone.  So, the women traveled there.  And they refused to stop sitting in front of their hotel until they agreed to peace talks too. 

On June 4^th, those talks began in Ghana.  And the women showed up there too, to sing and pray.  It wasn’t easy.  During the negotiations, an international court indicted Taylor for war crimes. He fled back home.   War broke out in Monrovia even as the peace talks continued.   And in the midst of it all the Liberian women continued to pray in Ghana and at the fish market.

But by July 21, the women in Ghana had had enough.  They surrounded the building where the negotiations were taking place and they refused to let the delegates leave until a settlement was made.  When guards came to arrest them, their leader, Leymah Gbowee threatened to take her clothes off.  And the guards backed off.   Finally, the Ghanaian President, the chief mediator, agreed to meet with the women if they would stop surrounding the building.  The women agreed, but only if they would be allowed surround it again if the meeting didn’t go well.

Three weeks later, on August 11, the negotiators announced the terms for peace.  That very day Taylor resigned, and went into exile in Nigeria.  The Liberian women returned home and held a march of victory.

And over the next two years, these women aided the government in getting democratic elections. They registered voters.  They set up polling stations.  And on November 23, 2005, the Liberian people elected their country’s first female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.  And in 2011, Sirleaf and Gbowee received the Nobel Peace Prize.  And you can see the inspiring documentary that tells their story, and if you have Amazon Prime it's even free

When these women prayed, it changed them.  They discovered through their prayers that they had more power than they ever imagined.    It changed their community, breaking down the barriers between Moslems and Christians as they prayed together for peace.   And in their prayers, they stopped a war; they sent a dictator to exile; and helped elect the first woman President of their country.  That’s not bad, huh?

So, were my feelings telling me the truth?  No.  Prayer has power. 

After all, when you pray, you never pray alone.   As James puts it, the prayers of a righteous person is powerful and effective.  And, Jesus, the ultimate righteous one is always there praying with you.   And as you pray, Jesus will change you.   And as you get honest and ask prayer from others, Jesus will change your family, your church, your community.   And in those changes, Jesus will lead you in ways that will change the world.  

So, what do you need pray to God about today?  What do you need to share in prayer with others?  What ways will God lead you through your prayers to change the world.   Let us pray.