Communion service Sunday 21st September – led by Revd. David Apin
It’s unusual for David to hit us with a thought-provoking idea right at the beginning of the Service, but the day’s theme was ‘Speaking with God’ and the idea was that we spent so much time looking through the Gospels at what Jesus did that we neglected our own personal relationships with God. When we spoke to God, we needed to be able to talk to him as we would talk to any friend. And there was nothing wrong in praying for ourselves – if we could get over the hurdle.
And there was the ‘rub’. We are presented with so many images of God, many of which make Him seem unapproachable. I think Mike Findley’s description of his daily life of prayer and conversation with God gets closest to what David was aiming at. And to emulate Mike’s prayer life is both an aspiration and a challenge for us. As it clearly was for David too.
David hoped he was reasonably good at praying. But… praying for himself, no, that didn’t feel right. But it was what our Lord wanted us to do, to talk to Him and tell Him when we needed help. That was what he was there for. He knew about the world: he wanted to know about us. Jesus wanted us to be able to ask Him for things, and he would give.
The reading from 1 Timothy 2 was about prayers for all people, but particularly for those in authority, that they would allow us to live a quiet and peaceful life with all reverence to God. And thank goodness Frank didn’t go beyond verse 7, because Paul’s views about women and how they should behave would have had our ladies mounting the barricades.
David’s training for ministry had not included training in prayer because it was a Church of England College and the Church of England had a big book for services with all the prayers and services – to be repeated endlessly.
He’d learned how to pray by trial and error (we could tell that, couldn’t we?) and at first he’d prayed ad-lib. But then he’d found that his prayers became samey. He’d avoided prayers that were babbling, or going on and on and on, because the best prayer of all was the one that came to the point, and you said, “God, please, this, do this for me”.
To avoid constant repetition he’d brought prayer books – some not quite ‘him’ at all. But he could still find the prayers that really suited. And so he used these books – including the battered one, still just about holding together, full of words that mattered – and still matter.
The Bible talked about prayer being private and in secret, but that didn’t mean that we should hide our prayers. It meant that we should say them for the right reason. We should not pray so that people thought we were very pious, or pray to look clever or good. At the end of prayers, we said Amen. It was not a ritual, it meant, “Yes, that is what I think”. It was listening to a prayer, following it, and being able to say, “I agree, because there are parts of that prayer that really touch me”.
There were rules for composing a prayer of intercessions. You started with the king and queen and the royal family, then the people who ruled us, then our country, all churches, the URC, our church, the minister, elders and other church officers, then the congregation. And finally, you got round to people who could not come; the sick, the bereaved, the sad. He’d looked at how you were supposed to do it and I thought, no. He had prayers for the troubled places of this world, for this our church – caring passionately that it would go forward into the future – and for the people around us, particularly those in our own families.
We had to be humble enough to admit that we needed God’s help. A pretty big thing to admit, but so important if our prayers were to be sincere. But more than anything else, having the innermost faith to say, “God, you can do this. Please do it for me”.
Potters Bar United Reformed Church 