Wait for Me and call to Me

God given opportunities to pray in our work

No one ever taught me how to pray. I experienced a conversion to Christ well into my late thirties, after many years of a totally unreligious life. I never learned how to be disciplined and systematic in my prayer life. I had very little I could refer to, except memories of my childhood, when I used to recite set prayers before falling asleep. Definitively I did not know that I could pray for anyone else.

The first significant prayer in my life was when, probably out of desperation more than for any other reason, I said: “Jesus take my life.” I had no idea what it really meant or what the consequences could be. However, since then I never had any doubt that God does answer our prayers, because Jesus took my life and changed it upside down. There was no thunder in the sky, no angels singing, no strong emotions. I said the words and God did it, immediately. Suddenly I found myself in communion with my Creator, filled with His Holy Spirit, reassured of the lordship of Jesus and I started talking to Him, about myself. Later of course I enjoyed communal worship, especially loud praises, with a lot of singing, but for years my personal prayer life was made up of very simple statements, directed straight to God.

The second time I prayed something really significant was a few months later. I was under the shower, thinking about my life as a whole, the sort of idle thoughts that come to us when we are relaxed. I felt that probably I needed something more than what God had already given me and I said: “Lord, if you want me to have a companion, please send one, otherwise forget it.” The same day I met my future wife and two and a half moths later we were married.

It was even later that I started to pray for others. I was asked by my sister-in-law to pray for her back pain. I had no idea how to do it and I just said “Jesus heal her”. That was it and her back pain went, like that.

I said no one taught me how to pray. It is not totally true, because I think that along the years the Holy Spirit guided me from my original simple requests to more elaborate intercessory prayers and finally to the most enjoyable, at least for me, form of prayer: long silences, just being in His presence, feeling and receiving His love. I also watched and listened to more experienced and gifted men and women praying for others, leading communal prayers, or interceding and I learned.

I have been in full time ministry for ten year. Before that, I practiced law, first in Italy, my home country, then in London, for twenty-seven years. After I gave my life to Jesus, I continued the legal profession for twelve years. I enjoyed what I was doing, it was fun, stimulating, lucrative and it gave me opportunities to meet many interesting people, including some public figures. On occasions, what I was doing was reported in the FT and that gave me the feeling that I was at the centre of something really important. It also gave me the financial freedom I wanted to do all the Christian works available to a committed layman working in the City. Because I was mixing all the time with non-believers, it gave me opportunities to share the Gospel and I liked that. Unfortunately, because of my naivety, I made a number of mistakes, like arriving at some meeting, packed with lawyers, bankers and other very serious people, with a large Bible under my arm. “Here I am folks, with the solution to all your problems”. It never worked. Or when I tried to give my partners pastoral advice that they never requested. I became the “one who got religion”. Eventually I learned. God will always give us opportunities, in our professions, in our family life, with our neighbours. There is no particular formula, except perhaps that we have to be patient and wait. The opportunity will come.

It is not difficult to imagine that in a caring, people oriented profession the opportunities are many, occurring on a daily basis. I refer of course to the opportunity to pray for and with those who are in our care. It seems simple, almost logical that, as Christian believers, any time we come across needy people prayer should be offered. However, I think that because we live in a secular society, where Christian values are no longer commonly accepted, there are many considerations that will prevent us from offering prayer. While I was writing these few notes, I received a circular letter from a friend, a young and talented doctor who was working in a teaching hospital. I report verbatim a passage from his letter:

“You have just made a statement about why you stand for the sanctity of the unborn child and sex within marriage. Then you hear the words: “We consider you unsuitable for the contract because of your Christian ethics. The contract is terminated from today. Please return the keys and leave the department”. That happened to me last year.”

A few years ago I met an American surgeon who is a Christian believer. Four times he was under disciplinary scrutiny because he used to pray for his patients. Colleagues and staff had reported him. What shall we do then? The answer is not simple, but I would like to share some of my own experiences and the principles I now apply to myself.

First of all, if we cannot tell people about the Lord, we can always tell the Lord about people. A Christian friend, who is a teacher in an inner city school in America, had to face every day the reality of a violent, totally de-christianised, hostile environment. He too was disciplined because he expressed publicly his Christian beliefs. He prayed earnestly and others Christians prayed with him. Eventually a new teacher arrived. She heard about the disciplinary action against my friend and privately shared her faith with him. They agreed to meet every day and pray for the school. In less than one year, one by one all the hostile teachers and staff left and were replaced if not by believers at least by sympathetic colleagues. Eventually the whole school turned to the flagpole prayer movement. (In the USA prayers are allowed only in privately owned school. In many state controlled schools, Christian students and teachers gather outside the school premises around the flagpole for their daily prayers). Prayers can change the environment around us.

Secondly we have to earn the respect of colleagues and clients alike. Excellency in our professions is not an option, but a Christian duty. Whatever we do, we do it unto the Lord and we cannot offer Him anything less than the best. When I acquired an international reputation as a leading legal authority in some aspects of corporate finance, I also acquired the liberty to express publicly my beliefs. May be privately some still derided me, but the reputation I earned commanded public respect. The opportunities to share my faith multiplied, simply because my staff, other lawyers, even clients recognised that I was not just a nutty case, but also a serious and respectable professional, with something more, my faith in Christ. They realised that they could talk to me and they did. I cannot boast that I led many to Christ, may be one or two, but many listened and they even accepted prayer from me. They all were visibly embarrassed, but they listened. Only the Lord knows whether on time a word I shared years ago may bear some fruit.

Thirdly, even in the ministry, I learned not to pray for anyone unless they ask. If I really sense that I should pray for someone who is present, I ask for permission. Strangely enough non-believers rarely reject the offer. It is more common to meet believers who refuse the offered prayers. When the offer is accepted, then it is extremely significant how and what we pray. Our careful choice of words, hopefully under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, can achieve much and I will try to explain why.

Needless to say that God, even if He knows exactly what is needed, delights to hear us praying for others. I also believe that prayer cannot change God, He is unchangeable, nor can it change His plans and purposes for us and for those we pray for. At the same time God looks at our hearts not at our lips. Words are not so important to Him. Therefore, why should we pray for others? Why should we carefully choose the words we use in prayer? Because our prayers have the power to change the persons we pray for. Therefore, when I pray for people, especially for physical healing, I pay very close attention to what I say, because I know that my words have an effect in the heart of the hearer. Even a single word is sufficient to produce the expected results, sometimes even a simple touch. When someone asks me for prayer, whether he is ill or has any other request, I always think that I am in the presence of a needy, wounded, vulnerable, sufferer. A word of consolation, a word of encouragement, a word of hope can do much more than a rushed command to be healed or, alternatively, a long-winded and complicated prayer.

Another reason why prayer has the power to change us is that every prayer experience, especially for healing, is an encounter with the Jesus. When the Lord forced the woman with the issue of blood to tell the whole story in front of the crowd (Mark 5, 25- 34), He did not want to humiliate her, He simply wanted her to meet Him face to face. Healing is not an anonymous and distant affair. It is a personal and direct encounter with Jesus and once we meet Him we cannot be the same persons. When I pray for anyone I always try to step aside, spiritually of course, and point to Jesus.  It is difficult and it took me years to arrive at that point. However, now my aim is for the person in front of me to meet the Lord, to remember Him, not me. 

I found that offered and accepted prayer can give us almost unlimited opportunities to express what we feel, or what we sense the Lord is saying, much more than counselling or a simple dialogue. While we pray, the person who receives our ministry has only to do exactly that: receive. The prayer is addressed to God and we can say to the Lord many things that we cannot say directly to the person in front of us. I am a rather rotund person. If somebody tells me: “You are fat brother, your shape is not good for Christian witnessing”, I may be offended and find consolation in another slice of cake. If somebody prays for me and asks the Lord to reshape this temple of His Holy Spirit or to fill me again with the Spirit of love, power and self-control, I may be more encouraged to leave that slice of cake on the plate.

There is one particular issue, which may be very hard to deal with, and it is touch.  There are many instances in the four Gospels in which Jesus healed by touch. In Mark 16, 18 Jesus points at the believers as those who lay hands on the sick. In my experience there have been situations in which touch, even without any word being expressed, produced healing. Recently, in East Africa, I saw a blind woman regaining her eyesight at the moment I took her by the hand. I remember another instance in which I hugged an ageing woman who lost her eyesight because of diabetes. She only spoke German and communication between us was minimal. I felt compassion for her and without thinking too much of what I was doing, even without asking permission, I hugged her. She regained her eyesight instantly. I have no explanation for that, nor do I say that anyone should repeat what I did. However, I found that often a gentle touch, may be just touching somebody’s hand, an eye contact with a smile, might be more effective than an inspired prayer. How can we reconcile this approach with the professional detachment that we need? I do not know how much a social worker can get personally involved with the service user. Probably touching is unethical or unprofessional. However, if we are prompted by the Holy Spirit, rather than by our own emotions, I think that a kind gesture can never be wrong.

Even when I was dealing with highly powered bankers and industrialists, I found that if I listened to my heart, or better to the Holy Spirit dwelling in me, I could go behind the façade of the cold, calculating money maker and see the human being, with all his insecurity, fears, worries. I did not have to say anything, I did not have to enter into anything personal. It would have been absolutely out of order. Nevertheless, I tried to feel sympathy, I tried to look at the person in front of me in the same way Jesus would have looked at him or her. Admittedly, some of my interlocutors were far from being people I would have liked to have dinner with. There are unpleasant people around. Yet I always made an effort to look at everyone as people in need of a Redeemer, as much as I need one. Potentially they all could be saved; potentially they all could have the same inheritance that I have. The result of this exercise was mental prayer, quiet prayer in my heart for all those people I met. The more I prayed for them, the more I liked them, the more I was able to accept them, even in all their unpleasantness. Those prayers changed me and my attitude towards my interlocutors and, surprisingly, even the hardest negotiations turned out to be pleasant accords.

Mental prayer helped me also to solve difficult cases. Either I had no idea what to do next, or I found the parties to a particular transaction in locked horns, going nowhere. God has everything under His control and there is absolutely nothing that He is not interested in, even complicated financial transactions. I prayed and very often the solution was found, an agreement was reached, whatever needed to be done was done. At times believers are shy and refrain from bringing to the Lord situations that they consider banal, too secular, unworthy of God’s attention. Jesus said that two sparrows do not fall to the ground without the Father knowing. Shouldn’t the Lord be interested in our work? Shouldn’t He be interested in a particular social case? Of course He is and there is nothing wrong in bringing to Him every aspect of our work. That does not give us a license to be sloppy, unprofessional, careless in what we do, nor does it absolve us from using all our knowledge, skills and experience. However, I suspect that God is pleased if we ask Him to help us even in what we should be able to do in our own strength.

A friend of mine used to be an electronic engineer, specializing in fixing the electronic components of large industrial plants, something very complicated and time consuming, often with large amounts of money at stake. My friend always prayed and asked God to tell him exactly what to do before putting his hand at any job. The Lord obliged and he became so successful that, when he left his job to go into full time ministry, his employers offered him three times his previous salary to encourage him to stay. He refused and now serves his Chief Engineer.

The conclusion? Pray for everyone, for everything, for every situation, all the time, quietly in your heart and wait for the opportunity to share your faith and prayers with others. The opportunity will inevitably come.

First published in the Social Workers Christian Association Magazine