Insights

What the Bible Tells Us About Prayer

William Barclay

• Publisher: Saint Andrew Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780715208878
• eBook ISBN: 9780861537419
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Cristianesimo

So fundamental to our faith and our relationship with God, prayer can be both public and private, communal and individual. Many learn to pray by listening to others, but how often do we turn to the Bible to understand what it is that we do when we pray? These insights reveal the remarkable real meaning of prayer, its power and its purpose.

Your will be done (1)

Mark 14:32–42

They came to a place the name of which is Gethsemane. Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Sit here while I pray.’ He took Peter and James and John with him, and began to be in great distress and trouble of mind. He said to them, ‘My soul is sore grieved even to death. Stay here and watch.’ He went on a little farther and fell on the ground and prayed that, if it was possible, this hour might pass from him. He said, ‘Abba, Father, everything is possible to you. Take this cup from me – but not what I wish, but what you wish.’ He came and found them sleeping and he said to Peter, ‘Simon, are you sleeping? Could you not stay awake for one hour? Watch and pray lest you enter into some testing time. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.’ And again he went away and prayed in the same words. And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were weighed down with sleep. And they did not know how to answer him. And he came the third time and said to them, ‘Sleep on now. Take your rest. It is enough. The hour has come. See! The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise! Let us be going! He who betrays me has come!’

THIS is a passage we almost fear to read, for it seems to intrude into the private agony of Jesus.

To have stayed in the upper room would have been dangerous. With the authorities on the watch for him, and with Judas bent on treachery, the upper room might have been raided at any time. But Jesus had another place to which to go. The fact that Judas knew to look for him in Gethsemane shows that Jesus was in the habit of going there. In Jerusalem itself there were no gardens. The city was too crowded, and there was a strange law that the city’s sacred soil might not be polluted with manure for the gardens. But some of the rich people possessed private gardens out on the Mount of Olives, where they took their rest. Jesus must have had some wealthy friend who gave him the privilege of using his garden at night.

When Jesus went to Gethsemane there were two things he sorely desired. He wanted human fellowship and he wanted God’s fellowship. ‘It is not good that the man should be alone,’ God said in the beginning (Genesis 2:18). In time of trouble we want friends with us. We do not necessarily want them to do anything. We do not necessarily even want to talk to them or have them talk to us. We only want them there. Jesus was like that. It was strange that men who so short a time before had been protesting that they would die for him could not stay awake for him one single hour. But none can blame them, for the excitement and the tension had drained their strength and their resistance.

Certain things are clear about Jesus in this passage.

(1) He did not want to die. He was thirty-three and no one wants to die with life just opening on to the best of the years. He had done so little and there was a world waiting to be saved. He knew what crucifixion was like and he shuddered at the thought of it. He had to compel himself to go on – just as we have so often to do.

(2) He did not fully understand why this had to be. He only knew beyond a doubt that this was the will of God and that he must go on. Jesus, too, had to make the great venture of faith, he had to accept – as we so often have to do – what he could not understand.

(3) He submitted to the will of God. Abba is the Aramaic for my father. It is that one word which made all the difference. Jesus was not submitting to a God who made a cynical sport of men and women. Thomas Hardy finishes his novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles, after telling of her tragic life, with the terrible sentence, ‘The President of the Immortals had finished his sport with Tess.’ But Jesus was not submitting to a God who was an iron fate such as Edward Fitzgerald portrays in The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

But helpless pieces of the game he plays,

Upon this chequer board of nights and days,

Hither and thither moves and checks and slays –

And one by one back in the closet lays.

God was not like that. Even in this terrible hour, when he was making this terrible demand, God was father. When Richard Cameron, the covenanter, was killed, his head and hands were cut off by one Murray and taken to Edinburgh. ‘His father being in prison for the same cause, the enemy carried them to him, to add grief unto his former sorrow, and inquired if he knew them. Taking his son’s head and hands, which were very fair (being a man of a fair complexion like himself) he kissed them and said, “I know them – I know them. They are my son’s – my own dear son’s. It is the Lord. Good is the will of the Lord, who cannot wrong me nor mine, but hath made goodness and mercy to follow us all our days.” ’ If we can call God father everything becomes bearable. Time and again we will not understand, but always we will be certain that ‘The Father’s hand will never cause his child a needless tear.’ That is what Jesus knew. That is why he could go on – and it can be so with us.

We must note how the passage ends. The traitor and his gang had arrived. What was Jesus’ reaction? Not to run away, although even then, in the night, it would have been easy to escape. His reaction was to face them. To the end, he would neither turn aside nor turn back.

Your will be done (2)

Luke 22:39–46

Jesus went out, and, as his custom was, made his way to the Mount of Olives. The disciples, too, accompanied him. When he came to the place, he said to them, ‘Pray that you may not enter into temptation.’ And he was withdrawn from them, about a stone’s throw, and he knelt and prayed. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘if it is your will, take this cup from me; but not my will, but yours be done.’ And an angel from heaven appeared strengthening him. He was in an agony, and he prayed still more intensely, and his sweat was as drops of blood falling upon the ground. So he rose from prayer and came to his disciples, and found them sleeping from grief. ‘Why are you sleeping?’ he said to them. ‘Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation.’

THE space within Jerusalem was so limited that there was no room for gardens. Many well-to-do people, therefore, had private gardens out on the Mount of Olives. Some wealthy friend had given Jesus the privilege of using such a garden, and it was there that Jesus went to fight his lonely battle. He knew what crucifixion was like; he had seen it. He was in an agony; the Greek word is used of someone fighting a battle with sheer fear. There is no scene like this in all history. This was the very hinge and turning point in Jesus’ life. He could have turned back even yet. He could have refused the cross. The salvation of the world hung in the balance as the Son of God literally sweated it out in Gethsemane; and he won.

A famous pianist said of Chopin’s nocturne in C sharp minor, ‘I must tell you about it. Chopin told Liszt, and Liszt told me. In this piece all is sorrow and trouble. Oh such sorrow and trouble! – until he begins to speak to God, to pray; then it is all right.’ That is the way it was with Jesus. He went into Gethsemane in the dark; he came out in the light – because he had talked with God. He went into Gethsemane in an agony; he came out with the victory won and with peace in his soul – because he had talked with God.

It makes all the difference what tone of voice is used when saying, ‘Your will be done.’

(1) It may be said in a tone of helpless submission, as by one who is in the grip of a power against which it is hopeless to fight. The words may be the death-knell of hope.

(2) It may be said as by one who has been battered into submission. The words may be the admission of complete defeat.

(3) It may be said as by one who has been utterly frustrated and who sees that the dream can never come true. The words may be those of a bleak regret or even of a bitter anger which is all the more bitter because nothing can be done about it.

(4) It may be said with the accent of perfect trust. That is how Jesus said it. He was speaking to one who was Father; he was speaking to a God whose everlasting arms were underneath and about him even on the cross. He was submitting, but he was submitting to the love that would never let him go. Life’s hardest task is to accept what we cannot understand; but we can do even that if we are sure enough of the love of God. As Robert Browning wrote in ‘Paracelsus’:

God, thou art love! I build my faith on that …

I know thee, who has kept my path, and made

Light for me in the darkness, tempering sorrow

So that it reached me like a solemn joy:

It were too strange that I should doubt thy love.

Jesus spoke like that; and when we can speak like that, we can look up and say in perfect trust, ‘Your will be done.’

Further Reading

The passages in this book are taken from the following volumes of the New Daily Study Bible Series. Each of these books will set the passage in its scriptural context.

The Gospel of Matthew Vol. 1

The Gospel of Matthew Vol. 2

The Gospel of Mark

The Gospel of Luke

The Gospel of John Vol. 2

The Letter to the Romans

The Letters to the Philippians, Colossians and Thessalonians

The Letters to Timothy, Titus and Philemon

The Letters to James and Peter

William Barclay

A full range...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Publisher’s Introduction
• The essence of prayer’s request
• The three great gifts
• The charter of prayer
• The laws of prayer
• All is of God
• The Christian’s prayer
• The universality of the gospel
• The way of prayer
• Prayer for those in authority
• The gifts of God
• The peace of believing prayer
• A praying Church
• Unwearied in prayer
• The sin of pride
• Jesus’ prayer for his disciples
• The soul’s battle in the garden
• Your will be done (1)
• Your will be done (2)
• Further Reading