Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church

The Prayer God Answers

I Corinthians 12:1-11

Tenth Sunday after Trinity

July 27, 2008

What is the secret to answered prayer?  That is a topic of serious discussion in many circles today.  Well, I think every prayer is an answered prayer.  Just sometimes God’s answer is, “no.”  But I have noticed that when most people talk about answered prayer, they’re really talking about how to get what they want from God.  And there are books out there that attempt to tell you the “secrets to answered prayer” and “prayers that get results.”  But no book, outside of the Bible, has ever spoken so plainly or clearly about the proven way to get what you want from God in prayer, as our own Book of Common Prayer.  And here is the secret,  pray for what God wants to give.  As the Collect for today puts it, ask such things as shall please God.

This collect was written to apply to the Epistle Reading for this Sunday, which comes from the well-known twelfth chapter of First Corinthians.  A great feeling of discontent had fallen over the Corinthian Church in Paul’s day, due to jealousy and strife over speaking in tongues.  Tongues had been the center of their worship when the Corinthians were pagans.  The music, the goading of the religious leaders, and the entire service, which went on for hours, was formulated to work people into a psychological frenzy, in which they did many odd things, chief of which was losing control of their speaking abilities until they babbled meaninglessly.  This was considered to be the height of worship, and the achievement of being at one with their pagan gods.  People who did not achieve it were looked down on as less spiritual, even rejected by the gods. The Corinthians brought this idea with them into the Church, and they set out to make the worship of God a copy of their pagan worship, only putting the name of Jesus in the place of their old pagan idols.  They set up tongues as the chief measure of spirituality, and sneered at those who did not have them.  Speaking in tongues became a source of pride, a way of saying, “I am favored by God.  I am more spiritual than you.  I am better than you.”  Let me say here that the gifts of tongues is no longer necessary or functioning in the Church.  In the days before the New Testament was written God continued to speak to His Church through miraculous gifts and signs, such as tongues.  And the primary function of the gift of tongues was to enable people to hear the Gospel in their own language.  As the teachings of Jesus were recorded in the New Testament, along with the Epistles that explain and apply the Gospel, the need for tongues diminished, and, finally ended.  We don’t need them today because God speaks to us in the Bible.

But the Corinthian Church was an unhappy Church for two big reasons.  First, the tongue speakers were unhappy because they knew their worship was phony.  It was shallow and based on emotional experience rather than real truth.  On top of that, it was self-induced, and they knew it.  But they didn’t know what to do about it.  So they prayed for more tongues, and worked themselves into higher frenzies, and asked God to bless their efforts and make them feel satisfied with their tongues, but all this only caused more  dissatisfaction.

Those who didn’t speak in tongues were unhappy because they thought there was something wrong with them and their relationship to God.  So they prayed for tongues, and sought to work themselves into the frenzy.  When it didn’t come, they were unhappy.

How could they have avoided these problems and found peace in worship and in prayer?  By praying for what God wants to give instead of what they thought they wanted.  This simply means to pray according to the will of God. Ask God for the right  things, like faith, hope, and love, for the strength to bear your cross rather than have it removed, for the power to live as God wants you to live, and to believe that all things work for His glory and our own edification.  As you can easily see, the prayer God answers is the prayer that we would be conformed to His will, not that He would be conformed to ours.

Let us close today by praying again the Collect for the Tenth Sunday after Trinity, found on page 203 of the Prayer Book.

“Let thy merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of thy humble servants; and, that they may obtain their petitions, make them to ask such things as shall please thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

 The Rev. Dr. R. Dennis Campbell, Vicar, Holy Trinity Anglican Church, 

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