May Your Words Be My Words

Perhaps it’s not intentional, but I think a lot of pastors manipulate congregations with their prayers.

used with permission

I remember hearing a pastor ask a question about using prayers to preach. I forget the way he worded it exactly, but the idea was “is it okay to use prayer to preach?” I’ve heard many hypothetical questions like this asked by pastors from the pulpits over the years. In this case, as in most cases, the pastor answered the question differently than I expected. His answer was “yes.”

I guess I can see his point. Perhaps, when it’s done responsibly, there is nothing wrong with using the opportunity to pray as an opportunity to preach, but the idea still smacks of insincerity to me.

In any case, the preaching shouldn’t be manipulative and self serving. I think enough preaching is self serving, so I don’t want to hear it in prayers. Yet, I think it happens all the time.

Think of the last time you heard someone pray something like “let my words not be my words, but Your words Lord” or something similar to that. Doesn’t that strike you as dangerous. Perhaps manipulative is the wrong word. Perhaps many pastors do this without thinking about it, but I don’t think that makes it any better. If my pastor teaches me that prayer works, and then he prays that the Lord use him and make his words the Lord’s words, then how am I to respond when the pastor says something I disagree with. Should I assume I now disagree with the Lord?

It might seem ridiculous when it’s spelled out like that, but many people absorb this kind of lesson without thinking about it.

How does the Lord make my words His words anyway? Does He magically transform my notes into his words as I talk, does He simply cause me to skip over the parts that are not inspired?

And think about inspiration for a second. I think I understand the spirit of most pastors when they say things like this, but I would argue they need think more carefully about how listeners will interpret these kinds of prayers. Most pastors, I assume, are not asking God to make their words equal to the inspired Word of God. Are they?