St Andrews PCEA Church - Nairobi

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” Philip.4:6

Prayer is a counter that makes anxieties anxious.

Just a while ago I had a lunch meeting with a friend. We talked about life. About  hopes. Ambitions. Expectations.  Strategies to get there.  Clearly, we have quite a handful of things to do and hope to see!  I escorted him back to his place of work. I took him as far as the bottom of the stairs that lifted to his office. At the landing of the stairs was a huge open space. A parking lot to be specific. People were passing by and cars zooming past. Right there in the midst of unconcerned and unrelated activity, he stretched out his hand to pray for me.

For me it felt awkward – not the prayer, but the open space from where it was being offered.  When I think prayer I think seclusion. Not a parking lot busy with hooting drivers and zigzagging pedestrians. The Presbyterian me felt an urge to look around, make sure no one was near enough to notice and stare at this car-park prayer moment; I was convinced to tell him to launch a short, whispered prayer. But by the time my mind completed these thoughts his eyes were shut and he had already begun to pray. He neither whispered the prayer nor shouted it. His was a normal conversational voice. He was at ease, like one at home in prayer. It was so natural – unacted and undistracted.  It was uneasy for me at the start. But at the “amen” it felt right.
Prayer is a most used, debased and also abused spiritual practice. Manipulators utilize it as a ritualistic path for magical impartations. Scholars debate prayer widely- affirming it, others dismissing it and many only giving it a benefit of doubt.  Even Holywood gave us Bruce Almighty!  All in all, many people connect their deliverances, salvations, prosperities and such significant interventions to a form of prayer to God.

There are things that come to us just out of our raw being – hardware and inbuilt software that is present in and with us at our point of birthing…the point of delivery.  There are other supplies that come to us out of our diligent working.  Others come out of networking. There are also others that come out of our asking - they will never come until we ask.  Birthing. Working. Networking.  Asking. The rich life therefore has supplies from natural endowments, individualized labour, fitting networking, and Godly asking.

Many people are confident asking from people but hardly ask from God.  Some skip God because they do not trust Him; others because they do not know Him as a giver and others because they seek unGodly supplies.

Paul’s sees anxious people around Him. He gets concerned about their restlessness and accompanying  hopelessness. To these anxious friends, Paul prescribes prayer.  From his platform he had experienced prayer as a practice that can tame anxieties. He received prayer as a counter that makes anxieties anxious.  Prayer is a space where we name the undesired circumstance and articulate the desired one. In this dialogue, prayer becomes a practice of creating – creating by articulating and by inviting and invoking the name of the Creator not as a tool, but as the Lord of our creating moment. The presence of the Creator in our creating equation is a knee-bending honor.  It  is for this realization of His greater and wiser presence that at the end of our articulations, we bow to His mastery with the words “May your will be done.”

Through this human-heaven diaologue, anxious people transform to become ambitious people. Ambitious people are creative people.  Being creative people, it is only natural to dialogue with the Best. Ambitious people then should be people of prayer – even in a public car park.

Pastor Buri E.