A cab driver and a pastor died on the same day and show up in line to get into heaven. St. Peter is there at the gate. The cab driver is first, and Peter says, "I see you were a cab driver." He responds, "Yep."
"Well," Peter says, "I'm in charge of housing, and I've got everything worked out. You see that mansion on the hilltop over there? That's for you." The cab driver is ecstatic: "Wow! This is awesome!"
The pastor is behind him thinking, "Oh, this is good. If a cab driver got that big of a mansion — I can't wait to see mine!" Peter says to him, "I understand you were a pastor." And the pastor sticks his chest out, feeling really smug.
Peter responds, "See that shack down there in the valley? That's for you!" The pastor is indignant. "Wait a minute," he says. "I just saw the cab driver go through, and he got a mansion up there, and I'm a pastor and I got a shack down in the valley! This doesn't seem right."
Peter shrugs. "You see, it's all based on results," he says. "When you preached, people slept. When that cab driver drove, people prayed."
The good news is that heaven's not about results, but all about Jesus Christ — but you get the point. Prayer is the essential component of both knowing God and connecting with the power of God.
That's why Jesus frequently retreated away from the crowds to pray while alone. In the first chapter of Mark's Gospel, Jesus had spent most of the night healing crowds of people. By the time He fell into bed, He must have been exhausted. But Mark records: "Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray" (Mark 1:35 NLT).
I would have slept in after working into the wee hours of the morning. Not Jesus. He got up before sunrise to pray. Prayer was His connection to God and His lifeline to God's power that enabled Him to minister to people.
In the Gospels we discover that prayer was a pattern and rhythm in Jesus' life and ministry. So much so that the disciples asked Him to teach them one thing: how to pray. Not how to do miracles. Not how to multiply food. Not how to raise the dead. No, they asked Him to "teach us how to pray" (Luke 11:1).
Throughout the book of Acts, the practice of prayer was the heartbeat of the early church. And over the millennia of church history, the men and women who God used in powerful ways to impact and touch the world were people of prayer. People such as John Wesley, who God used to spark a spiritual awakening in both Europe and America. Wesley's strategic plan was simple yet profound. In his book "A Plain Account of Christian Perfection" he wrote: "God does nothing but in answer to prayer."
Today, we don't need more manuals on how to do church. We need Immanuel — "God with us"! We need the vital connection to God and the power of the Holy Spirit — and that only comes through prayer.
The Rev. William Thomas is pastor at Hereford United Methodist Church. He can be reached at pastor@herefordumc.org.
