Prayer: How and For What?

The Bible talks about prayer frequently.  Occurs in about 152 verses in the New Testament and about 245 times in the Old Testament.  The frequency of a word does not inherently make it important but it is when it is so often commanded, utilized by faithful people and looked upon with favor by God.  So it must be integral to pleasing God.  Some people find prayer to be mysterious or difficult.  After all, how is it that Jesus could pray all night?

Let’s take a look at several examples of prayer to see what they consist of.  First, a prayer of David after God told him that his family will be blessed and his throne would be established forever in II Samuel 7.

2Sam 7:18-29  Then King David went in and sat before Jehovah. And he said, Who am I, O Lord Jehovah? And what is my house, that You have brought me here?  (19)  And this was yet a small thing in Your sight, O Lord God. But You have spoken also of Your servant's house for a great while to come. And is this the manner of men, O Lord God?  (20)  And what can David say more to You? For You, O Lord Jehovah, know Your servant.  (21)  For Your Word's sake, and according to Your own heart, You have done all these great things to make Your servant know.  (22)  Therefore You are great, O Jehovah God. For there is none like You, neither is there any God besides You, according to all that we have heard with our ears.  (23)  And what one nation in the earth is like Your people, like Israel, whom God went to redeem for a people to Himself, and to make Him a name, and to do for You great things and terrible, for Your land, before Your people, whom You redeemed to You from Egypt, from the nations and their gods?  (24)  For You have confirmed to Yourself Your people Israel to be a people to You forever. And You, Jehovah, have become their God.  (25)  And now, O Jehovah God, the word that You have spoken concerning Your servant, and concerning his house: establish it forever, and do as You have said.  (26)  And let Your name be magnified forever, saying, The Jehovah of Hosts is the God over Israel. And let the house of Your servant David be established before You.  (27)  For You, O Jehovah of Hosts, God of Israel, have revealed to Your servant, saying, I will build you a house. Therefore Your servant has found in his heart to pray this prayer to You.  (28)  And now, O Lord Jehovah, You are that God, and Your Words are true, and You have promised this goodness to Your servant.  (29)  Therefore, now, let it please You to bless the house of Your servant, to be forever before You. For You, O Lord Jehovah, have spoken. And with Your blessing let the house of Your servant be blessed forever.

What did David do in his prayer? 

1.      He gratefully acknowledged God’s kindness and blessings
2.      He humbled himself before God
3.      He reverently acknowledge God as Lord and omniscient
4.      Although he was king, David called himself God’s servant
5.      He praised God and exclaimed the wonders of what God had done and His power
6.      He was genuinely grateful toward God for taking care of His people
7.      He openly submitted to God’s will and asked that it be done
8.      He spoke of the nature of God
9.      He asked for the blessing of God

This is an excellent model to look at in our own prayer life.  There are many other examples of prayer throughout scripture, but let’s take a look at the most famous model of prayer that Jesus used to instruct with.

The model prayer 

Mat 6:9-13  "Therefore pray in this way: Our Father, who is in Heaven, Hallowed be Your name.  (10)  Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.  (11)  Give us this day our daily bread;  (12)  and forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors.  (13)  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil. For Yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen."  Jesus' model was very simple and efficient.

1.      Glorify God
2.      Accept and acknowledge God’s will
3.      Ask for necessities
4.      Forgiveness
5.      Strength
6.      Honor God

The Bible also offers much more instruction on how to pray than we might realize.  Not necessarily in direct commands, but also through the examples of Godly people who’s prayers were found pleasing to God.  

How to Pray:
1.      Alone, shut the door, quiet place (Matt 6:5-6)
2.      Not with empty words (Matt 6:7)
3.      Reverently, kneeling or face down (Matt 26:39)
4.      Constantly (I Thess 5:17)
5.      Without wrath or doubting (I Tim 2:8)

6.      With thanksgiving (Col 4:2)
7.      With mind and spirit (1 Cor 14:15)
8.      Sometimes with fasting (I Cor 7:5)
9.      Fervently (Hebrews 5:7)
10.    God hears the righteous (3 John 1:2)

What to Pray For
We have a legitimate concern to avoid “vain repetition” in our prayer as Jesus commanded in Matthew 6.  Even so, after looking at the subject matter of prayer in the Bible and examples of prayer we see that fervent, honest prayer is received by God and even recorded as Scripture that repeats the same themes.  The consistent subject matter of prayer in the Old Testament that was looked upon favorably was:

1.      Forgiveness
2.      Strength
3.      End Hardship
4.      Praise God
5.      Repentance and Salvation
6.      Safety
7.      Healing

That sounds  lot like the content of our public prayers in worship today.  The same themes found int the Old Testament are consistently repeated in the New Testament.   And we find even more diverse themes in the New Testament that include:

1.      For enemies (Luke 6:28)
2.      For all people (I Tim 2:1)
3.      For Salvation for self and others (2 Thes 1:11)
4.      To do good (2 Cor 13:7)
5.      For children (Matt 19:13)
6.      For strength in temptation (Mark 14:38)
7.      For authorities and for peaceable lives (I Tim 2:2)
8.      For the Strength to preach (Eph 6:9)
9.      For love toward others (Phil 1:9)
10.    To do no evil (2 Cor 13:7)
11.    To give thanks (Eph 1:16)
12.    For opportunities to preach (Col 4:3)

13.    For health and prosperity (3 John 1:2)
    
There is no mystery to prayer.  It’s pretty basic.  The Bible bears out in its examples and commands that there is not much to it.  Prayer is about our most fundamental needs as humans and as spirits and is about praise toward God.  Through it we express not only needs, but joy, thankfulness, worship and selflessness.  We can know all these things about prayer, what to pray for and how to pray just by searching God’s Word.  For by His Word, God communicates with us and through prayer we communicate with God.  And we have help in all this, “For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” Romans 8:26

Good Bull - Aggie Marines in Vietnam

This account of a real event that occurred in Vietnam relates part of why I am so proud be an Aggie and why the Aggie Spirit burn so bright.  In the email chain that brought this story to me, the man who was saved in this story referred to a fellow Aggie as "Sir" and talked about the A&M memorabilia he will be passing down to his grand children.  This story came to me through members of the Corps of Cadets, including a yell leader.  Those bonds remain strong.  These are men of character, honor and respect.  This should help any outsider understand why we say "Farmers Fight!"

I certainly hope Cpt. Beggs doesn't mind me sharing this story with whoever may stumble across it.  It's worth sharing and recounting.

 

My Friend Charlie

Charlie Rodenberg was raised in Old Ocean, Texas, by a mother and father who had both been in the Marines in World War II. Charlie was the type of kid who would play in the garbage dump with you, if that’s what you wanted to do, help you hunt birds with BB guns, and trade already been chewed gum with you if you liked his brand better. In short, he was all you could ask for as a friend.

I first met Charlie when we were both students at Texas A&M. Charlie and I were cadets in the same unit in the A&M cadet corps, which was made up primarily of Air Force ROTC cadets. Charlie and I were the only two Marines in the unit. After finishing college and getting our commissions, Charlie became a pilot and I became an infantry officer, so although we were in the Marines together, we rarely saw each other due to being in different “communities”---his was aviation, and mine was infantry. However, Charlie and I did have one momentous meeting that occurred in Vietnam; one that I wasn’t even aware of until almost forty years after it occurred.

It was on a warm day in January---in Vietnam, the month of January can be quite warm---when Charlie and I had that momentous meeting. Just two days prior to my meeting with Charlie, I had just returned from a 5 day “R and R”, or as the military referred to it , “rest and recreation”, in Hawaii, with my wife. Wars continue after R&Rs are finished, so two days after kissing my wife goodbye in Hawaii, I was back in Vietnam, leading a combat operation against enemy forces. It was during that operation that Charlie and I were to meet again.

Our operation had been uneventful up until we started taking some sniper fire from a small hill. I deployed my Marines and started doing all the things Marines are supposed to do in such situations, when one of my Marines found himself isolated in a potential minefield. I tried to “talk” my guy out of where he was by getting him to retrace his steps, but he was too scared to move. So, I ran up the hill to get him myself, and that’s when I stepped on it.

“It” was a landmine. When it exploded, I was not only filled full of holes, but also had a leg almost torn off and was blown into the air. When I came back down to earth, I landed on my head, which apparently ended up pinching some nerves in my spine. So here I was, with the memory of my wife’s last kiss fresh in my mind, lying in the red dirt of a hill in Vietnam, rapidly losing blood. In addition, I was blinded and paralyzed from the waist down, temporarily as it turned out, thank God. But all I knew then and there was that I was badly hurt, and that I might never see my wife and children again.

One of my sergeants immediately called for an emergency medical evacuation, or medevac, flight for me. I couldn’t move my legs or see, but I could hear all of what was going on around me. I heard the radio operator acknowledge the medevac helicopter pilot’s “inbound” call by saying “Roger, Peachbush 1-7 inbound 5 mikes.” That meant that in 5 minutes, I would be on a helicopter being flown to the nearest medical facility, where I’d be patched up.

There was a problem, though. The area where I lay wounded was in a tree line, and there was no place nearby that was suitable for a helicopter to land. There was a piece of equipment called the “jungle penetrator” that had been designed just for situations such as this, but its use had recently been banned due to safety reasons. There were 3 things that could happen if a jungle penetrator was used, and two of them were bad: the jungle penetrator could snag on a tree as it was being brought back up into the helicopter, thereby tethering the helicopter to the ground, or it could break and the wounded Marine attached to the other end of it could fall to his death. Because of these liabilities, an order went out to all aircrews that use of the jungle penetrator was prohibited.

As I lay there listening to the radio operator talk with the helicopter pilot, it became obvious to me that the only way off that hill for my bleeding body was for the pilot to use the jungle penetrator to get me out. It was either that, or bleed to death before I could be moved to a place where a helicopter could land to pick me up. Then I heard the magic words spoken by my radio operator: “Roger, standing by for the jungle penetrator.” The helicopter was hovering directly overhead, and over the noise of the blades, I heard the JP come down through the trees. The sniper shifted his fire to the hovering helicopter, but the pilot held station so that he could try to save the life of a wounded Marine. My Marines tied me to the JP, and I was winched up into the helicopter without incident, although I don’t remember much of it. I lost consciousness as I was being pulled up into that beautiful, ugly CH-46 helicopter. Had the pilot of that helicopter,whose callsign was Peachbush 1-7, not taken the risk of deploying the jungle penetrator, I would surely have lost my life that January day. That pilot, through his courage and willingness to take a risk in trying to save another Marine’s life, did just that---he saved my life. It would take me almost forty years to find out who that pilot was.

As time went by, I regained my sight and the use of my legs, and ultimately became as near physically normal as is possible for someone who had suffered such an injury. Many years went by, and all of us boys from the Class of 1968 became the old men of the Class of 1968, but we stayed connected through phone calls and emails. During one of those email exchanges, our classmate Dan Wimberly sent out an email that marked the passing away of an Army helicopter pilot, Ed Freeman, who had braved enemy fire countless times during the Battle of Ia Drang to rescue wounded soldiers. I replied to Dan’s email by recounting the incident where a courageous Marine helicopter pilot had risked his own life, the lives of his crew, and his career by choosing to do what was needed rather than what was permissible. I ended my reply by writing “I do not know who the pilot of Peachbush 1-7 was, but I will be eternally grateful to that unknown helicopter pilot who saved my life.” That email was sent out to my circle of A&M classmates, among whom, of course, was Charlie Rodenberg. And Charlie answered that email simply with the following words: “Mike, Peachbush 1-7 was yours truly.” Imagine my surprise. I had seen my old friend Charlie several times over the years, but did not know that he was the man to whom I owed my life. If he had not been courageous enough to disobey standard orders, I would not be here today talking about him.

All of you know that Charlie was a man of deep convictions, courage, and love. He loved his God, his country, his family, and his friends. And we all loved him, and we will miss him. Thank you, old friend; thank you for my life. I wish I could have done something to save yours. May your homeward flight be as beautiful as your life. Peachbush 1-7 has checked off the net, but not out of our hearts.
 

Michael R. Beggs
Captain, USMC (Retired)
4 Feb 2011