Just Help Me

A few years ago, I heard a well-known pastor open his sermon with an old Scottish prayer:

“Father, what we know not, teach us; what we have not, give us; what we are not, make us. For your Son’s sake. Amen.”

I grew up in a church where prayers were spoken extemporaneously—prayers from the heart. I can’t remember a single time when I heard anyone in church repeat someone else’s prayer. Somehow, I came to think of that as a kind of cheat, like the plagiarism I’d sometimes see when students who struggled with grammar and sentence structure turned in papers with flowery language, punctuated with semicolons.

Most of my own prayers are simply the thoughts and concerns of a man communing with God.

My wife says my prayers are beautiful, but I know God is not impressed with eloquence. That’s a comfort, because too often my prayers are awkward and unrefined. When I’m weighed down by fatigue, confusion, or a heavy load of stress or anxiety, my prayers have all the eloquence of Tarzan’s lines in one of those 1960s jungle movies I used to watch on Saturday afternoons when I was a kid.

My words become as blunt and primitive as: “Tarzan help Jane.” But whatever you think of Tarzan, the legendary ape-man’s language skills, there was never any ambiguity in what he said. It all circles back to the simplicity and directness of that old Scottish prayer.

There’s another example I love from Scripture: Peter stepping out of the boat to walk on water toward Jesus. As soon as he was unnerved by the wind, Scripture tells us:

He was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”

Let’s face it: sometimes reciting something like the Lord’s Prayer just isn’t practical.

“Lord, help me” is a great prayer—and one most Christians have prayed again and again. And what was Jesus’s response to Peter’s cry? The Bible tells us that immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him.

In the end, I’m grateful that God doesn’t require polished words or grand speeches—just honest hearts. Whether our prayers are borrowed from tradition or spoken with the blunt urgency of “Lord, help me,” He hears them all, and sometimes the simplest cries carry the greatest faith.

Maybe that’s all any of us need: honest words, honest hearts, and faith that God hears us—however we pray.

And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Matthew 6:7-8

. . . and that’s what I know today.