Knocking on Heaven's Door

David Crump

Description

How are we to understand petitionary prayer? This is a key question for any thoughtful believer who desires to take both the Bible and experience seriously. Some believe God answers any prayer as long as the one praying has enough faith and/or persistence. Others conclude from experience that prayer is really for our benefit and has no impact on God's actions. According to David Crump, both views are extreme and potentially harmful.While books that deal with prayer from a devotional or experiential perspective have their value, Knocking on Heaven's Door takes a different approach. Crump carefully studies every New Testament passage that has to do with petitionary prayer and draws conclusions that are both theological and pastoral to help us understand the great mystery of prayer.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Prayer

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781441239044
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

©2006 by David Crump Published by Baker Academic a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.bakeracademic.com Ebook edition created 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owners. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews. eISBN 978-1-4412-3904-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version ®. NIV ®. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.© Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.www.zondervan.com Scripture quotations labeled NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

“Too often books on prayer offer practical advice but are almost entirely devoid of sound exegesis, or they demonstrate sound scholarship but make no attempt to connect to everyday life. David Crump does a splendid job of bridging the gap between exegesis and application in this stimulating book on petitionary prayer. One does not need to agree with all of Crump’s conclusions to benefit from his careful study of the biblical text, his attention to biblical theology, and his theological synthesis that speaks to our contemporary situation.” Thomas R. Schreiner, James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“By limiting his focus to petitionary prayer, David Crump is able to deal thoroughly with the kind of prayer that raises the most problems for believers and unbelievers alike. In this work, he has made accessible a wealth of recent New Testament scholarship while engaging in a theological critique of the most revered ‘prayer warriors’ of the last two centuries—a bold move that is both refreshing and long overdue.” Sharyn Dowd, professor of New Testament, Baylor University

“This is not just another book about prayer. David Crump has achieved a very satisfying blend of exegetical analysis and theological reflection in a volume that provides insightful and, at times, challenging perspective on the tough questions. His presentation of the biblical teaching on prayer is very helpful and needs to be heard.” Clinton E. Arnold, professor and chairman, department of New Testament, Talbot School of Theology

For Terry, who prays for me

Contents

Cover Title Page Copyright Page Endorsements Dedication Acknowledgments Introduction When Prayer Becomes a Burden 1. All Things Are Possible for Those Who Believe Jesus Curses the Fig Tree 2. I Believe, Help My Unbelief Prayer, Faith, and Miracles 3. Persistent Prayer The Parable of the Friend at Midnight 4. Patient Prayer The Parable of the Widow and the Judge Theological Reflections on Prayer in the Synoptic Gospels 5. Praying to the Son’s Father The Lord’s Prayer, part 1 6. God’s Will and Our Wishes The Lord’s Prayer, part 2 7. Our Wishes and God’s Will The Lord’s Prayer, part 3 Theological Reflections on the Lord’s Prayer 8. Asking in Jesus’s Name Johannine Prayer 9. The Early Church at Prayer The Acts of the Apostles 10. The Impossibility of Petition and Prayers of the Spirit Pauline Prayer, part 1 11. Petitionary Prayer in the Life of Paul Pauline Prayer, part 2 12. Paul the Intercessor Pauline Prayer, part 3 Theological Reflections on Pauline Prayer 13. Asking Ethically

Petitionary Prayer in the General Letters and Revelation 14. Petition, the Hiddenness of God, and the Theology of the Cross

Bibliography Subject Index Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Writings Notes

Acknowledgments

I have the good fortune of teaching at a college that is not only serious about scholarship but is generous in providing the institutional support necessary for its accomplishment. My work on this manuscript would have taken much longer to complete were it not for the teaching relief I enjoyed through a Diekema research fellowship (2002–3) and sabbatical leave (2003–4) granted to me by Calvin College. For this, I am grateful.

Introduction When Prayer Becomes a Burden

T he young woman entering my church office was a stranger to me, but it took only a moment to discern that she had been crying for a long time. Her sobs were more groans than sighs, deep groans that rumbled upward from the wellspring of a fractured heart. I sat waiting and praying, asking for wisdom. After a few moments, she told me why she had come to my door. Only the day before, her best friend had died of cancer in the prime of life, leaving behind a husband and several small children. But this young woman now found herself mourning not one but two shocking deaths, for she discovered that her own Christian faith had begun to die soon after her friend. Both women had attended the same church. Once the cancer was diagnosed only a few months earlier, their pastor had organized an around-the-clock, 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week prayer vigil. He told everyone that they would storm the gates of heaven, claim their sister’s healing in the name of Jesus, and if they only had enough faith, then they would prove that the God who brings healing is still more powerful than the devil who breeds cancer. So the church prayed. Now, this broken, deflated woman stared at me through swollen eyes and asked, “Pastor, why did God lose? How can the devil be more powerful than Jesus?”

My friend’s son had just been released from the hospital because there was nothing more to be done. The twelve-year-old wanted to return home in order to spend his last few days of life sleeping in his own bed. The boy’s grief-stricken father, a local pastor and community leader, had always believed in God’s power to heal the sick and had led his family (friends and church members included) in fervent prayer for many years, asking that Jesus would heal his son’s leukemia. There were brief periods of remission, but overall the boy’s condition only deteriorated. Late one night a group of men from the church knocked on the family’s front door. A spokesman stepped forward and announced that they had been sent to deliver a message from God: the boy was dying because his father lacked faith. That was why God had refused to answer the family’s prayers: my friend was not praying faithfully enough. God had told them that if the family would allow the group’s leader to lay his body down over the boy, shielding him from the family’s unbelief, and then pray once more for his recovery, he would be healed. My stunned friend stepped in between them and the bedroom door, blocking their march into his son’s room, and angrily insisted that they leave his home immediately. As they reluctantly turned and walked out, the group’s leader looked over his shoulder and said, “You are now responsible for your son’s death.” My friend buried his twelve-year-old child later that year. He also left the pastorate.

My wife and I had been dependent upon prayer to pay the bills from the very beginning of our married life. For a seven-year period, while we started a family and I pursued graduate studies, we never knew the possible sources of all the income needed for next month’s expenses. We learned to pray daily for regular, monthly miracles. Eventually, I began to sense God’s nudging me to pursue doctoral work overseas, a project that would involve the daunting task of relocating our young family to a foreign country with no savings, no regular income, and no prospects of financial support once we arrived. This would not be the first time we had done something that friends and neighbors might describe as crazy, but it certainly

was on a much larger scale. So, I did something I had never done before; I asked God for a very specific sign—a fleece, if you will, much like Gideon’s (Judg. 6:36–40). My wife, Terry, and I began to pray for a financial sign. We often received anonymous financial gifts to buy groceries and keep the bills paid, so we needed to ask for something noticeably out of the ordinary. We prayed that if the Lord wanted us to move overseas, then he needed to send us $2,000, above and beyond our normal expenses, to begin a travel fund within the next four weeks. My wife and I kept this prayer to ourselves and waited to see what would happen. About two weeks later, I walked into town to check our post office box. As I opened the small metal door, I could see a bulging white envelope lying on top of the junk mail. There was no identification of any kind. When I opened the flap, all I saw was a thick bundle of cash! In fact, there was $1,000 in cash, all in twenties. No name. No note. I raced home to show my wife. We knelt together and thanked the Lord for his Gideonesque gift and then promptly reminded him that this was only half of what we were asking for. He needed to send at least one more miraculous thousand within the next two weeks before we could interpret this gift as a signpost directing us to move overseas. To make a long story short, before those two weeks were over, we had received two more substantial gifts from distant friends (who knew nothing of our plans), bringing the four-week total to almost $2,500. We gratefully interpreted these windfalls as God’s answer to our prayers and began making preparations to embark upon a marvelous adventure in exercising the same type of faith in Great Britain.

Like most of us, I periodically receive alumni newsletters from the various schools I have attended over the years, updating me on the unfolding life stories of old friends and casual acquaintances. It is always a shock when you hear that someone you know, someone in your own age bracket, has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. In this instance, the news was particularly unsettling because it was an instructor for whom I had been a research assistant. We had once worked closely together, so the news grabbed my attention. His prognosis was bleak. One month later, in the next edition, my former teacher had written his own reply to the school’s announcement. Confidently professing the biblical promise that “the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective,” he was claiming that his disease would be removed through the power of faith. In fact, as testimony to the reality of God’s miraculous response to the power of believing prayer, he had declined all medical treatment. His healing would give glory to God and God alone. Several months later, the same college newsletter announced my instructor’s death from cancer.

I believe in the possibility of miracles, but I am also wary of whose stories I believe. There are, after all, many imposters even within the church. I once had a good friend who had grown up in central Africa. Her parents were missionaries in the bush, and she was well acquainted with primitive living conditions. I knew her as a sane, well- adjusted woman, not prone to fantasy or exaggeration. Yet, on more than one occasion, I heard her tell the story of how her family’s vehicle had once run out of gas on a long cross-country trip. Her father had underestimated the length of the journey, leaving them stranded in the blistering African sun miles away from anywhere. While his wife and three children tried to find some refuge in the vehicle’s shade, the young father prayed, knowing that his miscalculation had placed his family in a life-or-death situation. The spare gas canisters were empty, but they did have a large canister of water. Raising the water to heaven, he confessed his foolishness and asked the Lord to perform a miracle in order to save his family. He then poured it all into the gas tank. After loading up the family and climbing into the driver’s seat, he turned the ignition. The newly baptized engine roared to life, enabling them to drive nonstop to the next village, where they promptly told anyone who would listen about their Lord’s miraculous answer to their desperate prayer.