Why United Methodist Prayers Seem to Work So Well

Luke 11: 1-13
The Lord’s Prayer
He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’ He said to them, ‘When you pray, say:

Father, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come. 

Give us each day our daily bread. 

And forgive us our sins,

for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.

And do not bring us to the time of trial.’
Perseverance in Prayer
And he said to them, ‘Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, “Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.” And he answers from within, “Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.” I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.

‘So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!’


In my last appointment, the prayer group that met weekly at church had quite a reputation. It wasn’t the negative kind that congregations sometimes have; it was a positive one. That group of 5 or 6 people were known for their praying. We met every Monday at 1 pm; we went over the prayer list from the Sunday before as well as the monthly list. They kept me updated on the pastoral care needs of the congregation, and I asked them to pray for situations that needed an extra special showering of prayers. It was holy time we spent together, lifting up one another in love and prayer, and asking God to come near to serve the needs of the church and the community.

One week a member of the prayer group came with a request from a friend of hers who attended a local Roman Catholic church. Her friend had sent her with a request for our group and our church to pray for her and said, “Methodist prayers just seem to work better than any others!” What is it that is special about prayer in the Wesleyan tradition?

I have a friend whose mother is an alcoholic. Many Christmases ago, when we were young adults, my friend and I had a long conversation about how the things that we wanted in life, our wish lists, were changing as we matured. She felt a tremendous amount of guilt about that fact that one of the things she often found herself wishing was that her family would stop having to live with the problem that was her mother. “How could I wish my mother to be dead and gone,” she wondered? But what else was she supposed to wish for? She didn’t even know how to live with her mother’s disease anymore. She had been cooking meals and keeping house for herself, her brother, and her father since she was about 11. There just weren’t any words anymore, hardly much feeling left in her. It broke my heart. So I began to pray for my friend and her mother. I didn’t know what I was praying for. I wasn’t praying for a cure to her mother’s alcoholism. Those prayers hadn’t worked before; why would they work now? So I started praying for my friend and her mother every night by name. I simply said their names in prayer, not knowing what to say or how to pray for them, but simply calling God’s attention to their family and the pain they were all living with and how much I hoped God would attend to them. Today, my friend and her mother have found ways to be in each other’s lives, although it is still difficult and always will be. But since then, my friend has found greater and greater peace in her life and with her mother, who still lives with the disease. But I think that I may have been more affected by the prayers for them than either of them was.

What I realized was that I began to feel a very strong connection to both my friend and her mother, a woman I had only met a few times at that point in our lives. I began to care deeply for them and to truly ask God to act in their lives in some way, whether I knew what it would be or not. I didn’t need to control the outcome; I needed to connect to the problem and the hope for its resolution. And connect I did. Not only did I feel a deeper connection with my friend, but I felt a deeper connection with God. Through prayer, I was connecting to the action of God in our lives, to the love and compassion that God shows us through each other, to the feeling of being loved by God beginning to know the heart of God through a very personal relationship that I had with a close friend. I knew that God loved her and her mother, and I knew that it pleased God for me to love them and pray for them. And I know that I was deepening my relationship with God by asking for God to help them in their time of need. Does that make sense?

It takes work to know the heart of God. It takes the work of living through the struggles that our lives present to us and entangle us in every single day. It takes the work of coming to the realization that we need God’s help to get through those struggles and to help each other through. It takes work to build a relationship of any kind, and the relationship we each have with God is the most important we’ll ever have; how much more do we need to work at making sure that connection is strong and alive and growing?

As much as I may like to imagine it so from time to time, Jesus Christ was not a United Methodist. Actually, our dear brother John Wesley was not a United Methodist. But we are, and one of the things that makes us so is our understanding of prayer as a means by which we receive God’s grace. When we pray, we not only speak, but we also listen. We not only ask but we also receive. We don’t control God or time or circumstances or life in anyway. We open ourselves up to the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in the lives of others. And we open ourselves to one another in deep and abiding ways so that over time we realize that we are at work in the lives of others, too. By receiving God’s grace in prayer, we also give it to others for whom we pray regularly.

I loved my friend before I ever began to pray for her and her mother; but since that time, I have felt connected to her in a way that I have not felt with many others, and it continues even now, and that first Christmas conversation was more than 10 years ago. It is the grace of God that keeps them both in my heart now, and it is the grace I received by praying for them that helps to deepen my faith and calls me into prayer for others.

Prayer is not passive; it is active. It takes work to listen, to ask, and to receive. We pray when it is easy to give God thanks, and we pray when it is hard to understand what is happening in the world or in our own lives. We pray to bring order into our lives. We pray so that we can do anything else. Brother John said “I have so much to do that I spend several hours in prayer before I am able to do it.” He saw life as lived in constant prayer and so taught the people of the Methodist movement to live their lives. In his sermon A Plain Account of Christian Perfection he says that “whether we speak of, or speak to, God, whether we act or suffer for him, all is prayer.” This is our heritage: life lived seeking the presence, grace, and connection with God.

Right after the attack on the World Trade Centers in New York, CNN ran one of the brand new United Methodist Church television commercials at no cost to the church because we were the only ones putting a hopeful, compassionate message out to the nation at time of deep pain and distress. The ad showed a diverse group of people praying in a variety of ways, and the tag line at the end was, “No matter how you pray, the people of the United Methodist Church are praying with you.”

That is why we are United Methodist.