"So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you” (Luke 11:9)

“Oh Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz

My friends have all got one. I must make amends”

OK. As prayers go that’s pretty specific. And, to be fair, maybe a little easier for God to deliver than world peace and an end to all disease or whatever. Still, I got talking online to one of those ardent atheists who loves to quote scripture and he said, “It says in your Bible,” - it’s always ‘my’ Bible for  some reason - “that whatever you ask for in prayer God will give you” and he went on to cite this very text. “So why aren’t you all driving round in flash cars?”

If you want a good answer to that there’s a film called ‘Bruce Almighty’ that deals with it quite well. But let’s just follow this through logically. Suppose I take this guy’s advice and I pray to God for a Mercedes, or to win the lottery. In fact suppose we all do. All two billion Christians. What’s God going to do? Snap his omnipotent fingers and have one appear outside all our houses thus throwing all the Mercedes workers out of a job because God has undercut them? Do we somehow all have to pick the same numbers to win the lottery - maybe at God’s will - and if we do, does the jackpot have to be split among all of us?

Clearly this isn’t what Jesus means when he says “ask and it shall be given you”. Sad to say that hasn’t stopped some Christian pastors, especially in the USA and China, from promoting what they call the “prosperity Gospel” - the idea that if you pray hard you’ll be well-in with God and he will make you rich and prosperous in the way that Jesus was. Oh. Wait. Just a minute. Maybe worse than that, though, are the Christian communities that peddle miraculous healings - and sure, nothing is beyond the power of God - as the result of ardent prayer. Suggesting to grieving parents that their child died because they weren’t “ardent” enough in their prayer is, frankly, just sick.

The problem with this whole argument, whether it comes from atheists or Christians, is that it treats God as a kind of cosmic vending machine: you put in the prayers and out comes what you ordered. It denies God agency and makes him our servant rather than the other way round. So what is Jesus actually getting at in this passage? It starts with Jesus’s followers asking him how to pray, so let’s think about how we pray in church and what prayer is.

Some would say that prayer is talking to God. And it is - I’ll come back to that. But when we pray we are also talking to ourselves. In the first prayer of this service we approach God - we knock at the door. We offer words of praise. I suspect God doesn’t need our praise but it’s a way of reminding ourselves whose presence we gather in: that we come before the maker, one way or another, of all that is; that we come before perfection - a being that is perfectly just, perfectly true, perfectly loving. And we come recognising that we are none of those things. That we are flawed and broken. That we know temptation and succumb to it. That we have left things undone that we should have done. And yet, through the Cross of Christ we are welcomed into the presence of our loving Father. We knock and the door is opened.

Some would say that prayer is talking to God but when we pray we are also talking to ourselves. In our prayers of intercession we bring before God those who are in need. We ask God for what they need on their behalf. Do we imagine that God doesn’t know? Do we imagine that God has forgotten them? No. When we remind ourselves, in the presence of God, of those in need we are offering ourselves to be part of his answer to those prayers. Asking for the generosity of spirit to give to charities and to put food into food banks. Asking for the compassion to visit folk who are grieving or sick. Asking for the will to speak for those who get so easily forgotten and those who are treated as hated outsiders. We ask and it is given us.

So to thanksgiving. So many of us have so much to be thankful for. We live in a beautiful part of the world - the world God has made. We are blessed with so many things that stir the heart and soul - the love of family and friends, music, art, and all the manifestations of creativity that our Father has placed within us. We are blessed with reason and thought - the capacity to understand this magnificent universe around us, to seek out cures for diseases and ways to end want and hunger. But why? Why has God lavished all this on us? Why is this planet not like all the arid balls of rock that we see in the universe? Seek and you will find.

The answer is simple. It’s as simple as the question,  is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? The first words of the prayer Jesus taught his followers are “Our Father”. Throughout his teachings Jesus talked about God as a loving father to his children - to me and to you and to all who seek him out, all who ask, all who knock. 

This is the relationship God offers us in Christ. Maybe it’s as simple as this: my son is 28 now and living in Clackmannan. I used to love the times around the dinner table when we would talk. I used to love the times he would ask me for help with his homework. I used to love the times when we would talk about what was going on in the world - about values and principles. Truth is I still do - apart from the homework obviously. 

This is what prayer is about. It’s about time spent with our father. It’s about the Creator of all that is wanting to spend time with his creation. It’s about time spent talking to God, and maybe we should think of that less formally. Many years ago there was a Minister in Annan called Mairi Byers. She told me about a prayer group where she encouraged folk to speak their prayers aloud and one young lass began her prayer with “Hi Babes.”

And why not? Maybe this is the secret of prayer. It’s our chance to seek our place in God’s Kingdom and find that we are welcome there whoever we are and whatever we’ve done. It’s our chance to ask what we can do to make this world a better place and be assured that he will help us to do that. Above all though it’s our chance to seek out God and find him.

To find him and talk to him. To talk about all the things that are messing with our heads and all the things we’re proud of. To talk about how our day has been. To talk about the things that have made us laugh and the things that have made us cry. And to listen. To listen for his voice in the stillness: a voice that longs for us to grow strong and loving; generous and kind; thoughtful and living in peace with one another; to walk, all our days, knowing that we are loved and to love one another as we love ourselves. That is the power of prayer.

Lord teach us how to pray: to knock and know we are welcome as your children, to ask for compassion to love our brothers and sisters and to seek, always, to know your will.