7th June 2026

Talking to God.  06/06/26   Martin Mowat

Readings Psalm 86: 1 – 13 & James 5: 13 – 20

The Lord’s prayer appears in two forms in the New Testament: a shorter version in Luke’s gospel and a longer one in Matthew’s, as part of the Sermon on the Mount.

Luke’s version says that one day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray …

That begs the question “Why?”  Why did the disciples want Jesus to share with them his insights on prayer?  Answer, because they could see how important it was to him.

This might seem somewhat frivolous, but I vividly remember the telephone that we had when I was a child. It was black, as they all were, with a chrome dial. The handset was really heavy and the cable to it was braided, twisted also, I think.

I remember too when they brought out the new ones and you could choose from a limited range of colours. My parents chose the cream-colour.  When that happened, you could also have more than one telephone on the same number, so we had a green one in my father’s farm office.

Our number was Ellesmere 38. That was brilliant because it was really easy to remember, and you had to remember it because when you answered the phone in those days, you didn’t say your name, you said your number.

“Ellesmere 38, hello”. So much easier than something like Birmingham 37482. Or today I would have to say, “06 25 49 56 49, can I help you?”

So, imagine our family’s chagrin when we were told that because there were going to be more than 99 people with phones in Ellesmere, our number would have to change and that we would henceforth be Ellesmere 2538.

In those days telephoning was expensive so you kept your calls brief and to the point. If you wanted to chat and chew the cud with friends and family members, you did it after 6 in the evening, when calls were cheaper.

Long distance calls were called “trunk calls”, but I’m not sure quite why they used that word.

Today we take all that for granted.  It’s all free.

Had I said to my parents, when they were still alive, that when I would be their age phones would not be permanently wired into the wall, that you’d be able to see the person you were talking to in real time, that you could also use your phone for writing and sending letters, messages and even documents. That it would also be an address book, a calculator, an interactive map of the world, a radio, a record player, a camera that could store thousands of photos (that was still in the days of colour slides), and much, much more, they would have been incredulous.

I’m not sure what my father would have said, but I’m pretty sure that my mother would have said “Don’t be so ridiculous.”

We were in London a couple of weeks ago and I was aware that nearly everyone was either speaking on their phone, looking at it, typing into it, or just carrying it.  Nearly everyone.  Walking along the pavement, crossing the road, in the shops, and in the cafés and restaurants.  Next time you’re in a town, you’ll see. When we were on Bali in 2015, the days when you still needed wifi to go online in restaurants, in one bar there was a sign saying We don’t have wifi, talk to each other.

Phones and other “devices” of today aren’t necessarily a bad thing, but the better they get at putting us in touch with each other, the more isolated we actually become, but that’s another matter completely. 

What I’m trying to say is that amazing though today’s smartphones are, there is, and there always will be, one thing that they will never be smart enough to do.

To make calls to God, and to receive calls from him.

Certainly, there are apps like Lectio and Pray the Word that can help and encourage us to pray, but they can’t connect us to God. We have to do that for ourselves, and what an awesome privilege that is.

That’s why prayer is the subject of our Bible study at the moment. As Pete Greig says “Everyone prays, but no-one finds it easy. We all need a little help.”

In these days when there are so many distractions, not just from square screens, distractions of all sorts that occupy almost our every waking moment, we need to remind ourselves to pray, and learn how to do it better.   

In the foreword to Pete Greig’s book, Nicky Gumbel says “How to pray, a simple guide for normal people, Justin Welby, the previous Archbishop of Canterbury said this “I am so glad that Pete Greig has written this book. Prayer is the most important activity of our lives. It is the way in which we develop a relationship with our Father in heaven. Jesus prayed, and taught us to do the same. Prayer brings us peace, refreshes our soul, satisfies our spiritual hunger, and assures us of our forgiveness. Prayer not only changes us, it also changes situations.”

We heard an amazing example of answered prayer on Friday’s Lectio, but there are times when God doesn’t seem to answer prayer.  Many of us here this morning have experienced this.

Justin Welby, the previous Archbishop of Canterbury says “Pete Greig comes from a tradition within Christian faith that expects the intervention of God. So when that doesn’t happen as expected, and especially when it doesn’t happen as needed, there are a number of normal reactions. They apply to all of us. People think that they must have sinned or done something wrong which has caused God to be angry with them. They feel that God has perhaps abandoned them, or they come to the conclusion that God is not interested in them, or they assume that God does not exist.”

That’s in the forword of God On Mute, another of Pete’s books, this one addressing this very subject from his own painful experience of his wife having a brain tumour, and ongoing epilepsy.  There’s a 5 session course, much like the one we’re doing at the moment, that I think it would be good for us to do too.

I like Pete Grieg, very much, for three reasons.

1.   He co-founded 24/7 prayer in 1999 when he received a vision from God. Twenty-seven years on, 24-7 Prayer has become an international movement with countless stories of God breaking in across the world. 

He’s variously described as a bewildered founder of the 24-7 Prayer movement, an award-winning author of ten books, and a co-host of the much-loved daily devotional Lectio365, used by more than 400,000 people.
What he doesn’t know about prayer, certainly can’t be worth knowing.

2.   But despite that, and this is the second reason, he is extremely humble and approachable.

3.   He has such a reader friendly way of writing

Many of us here use the Lectio 365 daily devotions, morning, midday and/or evening, and I can’t recommend them enough.  You might be interested to know that as a church, we have recently donated 500€ to that ministry.

Another useful prayer tool that I mentioned earlier is an app called “Pray The Word”, which is exactly what it says on the cover, a daily prayer based mainly on the psalms.