What Charlie taught about prayer
His favorite prayer in the whole Bible is three words: Lord, help me.
“Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.”
Matthew 15:25 (KJV)
“So a couple of things of how we can counter it, which is number one is prayer. This church is a great prayer church. In fact, I want to compliment you and encourage you. You are a phenomenal prayer church and you need to do more of it and continue to do what you're doing. Because again, if we do not get in this position of vulnerable prayer, of letting the Lord just capture who you are and your spirit, then we're always going to be bonded to the earth.”
Charlie made prayer sound possible. Preaching on spiritual warfare at Awaken Church, he named prayer as the first way to counter it. He asked the church to keep going, and he described the kind of praying he meant: vulnerable prayer, where you let the Lord capture who you are and what is in your spirit.
Then he told the room his favorite prayer in the whole Bible. It is three words, and he said it was spoken by one of the women Jesus healed: Lord, help me. In Matthew's Gospel a woman comes to Jesus, kneels and says exactly that, and she is not turned away.
“Now, my favorite prayer in the entire Bible is three words. It was said by one of the women that Jesus healed and it was very simple. Lord, help me. Lord, help me. That's it. Now, let me be very clear. Your prayers must be sincere. They do not have to be sophisticated. You do not have to write a doctoral thesis submitted to Stanford with citations and footnotes of all the different biblical citations. It has to be just Lord, help me. Lord, help me.”
“My wife and I pray together. We fast together. We go to church together.”
He wanted people to hear what that prayer leaves out. Your prayers must be sincere, he said, and they do not have to be sophisticated. No doctoral thesis, no footnotes, no polished speech. It can be just Lord, help me, said honestly, as many times as you need to say it.
That is a relief to anyone who has felt they pray badly. He called that sincere, broken-down prayer one of the ways we counter the onslaught of spiritual warfare. The words are small. What matters is that you say them to him.
Charlie also described prayer as something a marriage does, not just a person. Speaking about the habits he and his wife keep, he listed spiritual disciplines: they pray together, they fast together, and they go to church together. Prayer, in his telling, was part of ordinary life with the people closest to you.
Living it today
Pray the three words today at the moment you most want to fix something yourself: Lord, help me. If you are married or live with family, pray one short prayer out loud with them before the day starts.
A prayer
Lord, help me. I do not have the right words, and I do not need them. Capture my heart and my spirit today. Teach me to come to you honestly, in good times and hard ones, and to pray with the people I love. Amen.