THE MYSTERY OF SHORT PRAYERS

I have often wondered about Jesus’ prayer at the tomb of Lazarus, not only about its brevity (given the seriousness of the matter at hand) but especially that He would say, “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me” (John 11:41).  We would usually thank someone for what they have done, not for what we hope that they would do; and you can only say that someone has heard you after you have said something, not before.

When and where did Jesus say the prayer to which He was referring when He said, “thou hast heard me”?  It’s not there in the chapter.  How could He have been “heard” before He had said anything? Properly, “thou hast heard me” should be the conclusion to a prayer, not the introduction to the prayer, or nearly the entire prayer.  What is the mystery behind that powerful short prayer?  Let’s find out.

Here is the resolution of the puzzle.  The short prayer at the tomb was not the first time that Jesus was praying about the matter of Lazarus His friend.  From the day that He got the sad news, long before He was at the tomb, He had been praying.  While Martha and Mary worried accusingly that He had not come since their brother was sick (vv. 21, 32), He had been praying.  It was not just about securing the proper timing in the mind of God for His mission to Bethany in that season of death and tears; it was also about amassing the right energy for “this kind” of a new challenge that He was about to confront (Matthew 17:21).   The power behind the public short prayer, therefore, was the secret long prayers He had prayed before coming on the scene.

For how many days had Jesus been praying?  Again, let’s find out.

Even if Lazarus had died as soon as the messengers had left Bethany to seek Jesus at Bethabara where He was at the time, some thirty miles away (John 1:28; 10:40); even if it took them a whole day to get there from Bethany, it was at least three days before Jesus got to Bethany, in the four days during which Lazarus had been dead and buried (John 11:6, 39).  So, Jesus had been praying those many days and nights before He showed up at the tomb, even during the tiring day-long foot-trip to Bethany, and He was the Son of God!  He entered Bethany to confront the uncommon grave only when He had been assured that the Father had heard Him.

Why didn’t Jesus rush off as soon as He got the SOS?  Wasn’t Lazarus important to Him?  Wasn’t it emergency enough that a close one had died?  Wasn’t He the Son of God, after all? For what, then, was He waiting?  Maybe every emergency in the physical is not an urgency in the spiritual, and the profuse tears of the afflicted are not usually Heaven’s standard measure of a matter’s importance.

“Thou hast heard me” is not a magic formula for performing mighty miracles.  “Lazarus, come forth” is neither a ‘prophetic code’ for raising the dead.  Those were short atomic words compacted with days and nights of prior centrifugal prayer-energy.  If you think that it is a formula, try it at a cemetery after you have had your days and nights of bountiful banquets and crawled off your cozy table to that place of contest; or try it on a madman, like the seven audacious sons of Sceva (Acts 19:14-16), and we shall know how the formula still works.

From The Preacher’s diary,

July 27, 2025.