Thursday, October 11, 2018

The Path of Discipleship - The Need to Pray


There was time when I wondered about the need to pray.  As I thought about the nature of God, prayer, as I understood it, seemed a superfluous.  If God knows everything about me, then God already knows my needs and concerns.  God knows about the people I am praying for at a much deeper level than I ever will.  Why not just trust God to handle the world as God sees fit rather than bothering God with information that God already knows.

                Some will argue that it is a matter of obedience.  We may not know why we pray but we certainly know that Jesus was an example of prayer.  In Matthew, he does not teach the Lord’s Prayer with an “if you pray” but “pray then this way…”  Jesus calls us to prayer.  The Psalms call us to prayer.  Paul calls us to “pray without ceasing.” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).  Prayer can be listed as one of those activities of discipleship that Christians are just supposed to do.

                Some might argue that it is a matter affecting the will of God.  In my last article I talked about folks who attach power to the number of people who are praying for God’s intervention or the intensity of those prayers.  In the book of James, the author writes, “The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up…The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.”(James  5: 15, 17)  For me personally, this can fall into somewhat magical thinking, seeking God to change the laws of matter and physics, almost treating God as a genie granting wishes.  At the same time, there is a long tradition of valuing intercessory prayer.

                In my own understanding of prayer, I would say that we need to pray more than God needs our prayers.  One purpose of prayer is to come into acceptance of the will of God.  In the Lord’s Prayer, we pray that God’s kingdom/reign would come and God’s will be done.  In this most basic form of prayer, we are not praying to change the will of God but to accept the will of God and become part of that will, participating in God’s reign.  In essence, we are praying that we might be part of the answer to our own prayer.  As Martin Luther wrote in the Small Catechism, “In fact, God’s good and gracious will comes about without our prayer, but we ask in this prayer that it may also come about in and among us.”

                A second purpose for prayer is taking the time to encounter God’s presence.  In the contemplative view, we are never far from the love of God; God’s grace is constantly with us; peace is always near.  Yet we go about our lives distracted, always seeking that which we cannot quite find and thinking the next shiny object will make us whole and satisfied.  Prayer provides us with an opportunity to realize that we are already whole and complete in the love of God.  It is the celebration of the way things already are.  God already loves you.  Salvation has already happened.  Everything necessary has already been accomplished so that you can be acceptable to God.  This is the essence of the good news that is the story of Jesus.

                We need to pray because we are distracted and because there are many conflicting message in the world, voices that say we are not good enough or healthy enough or smart enough.  In prayer we turn down the volume of the voices around us, even the voice of our own self-doubt, and listen for the constant whisper of a loving God.  This kind of prayer is God’s gift to us.  It asks for nothing but our attention.   It reminds us only of what we already have:  God’s love, God’s promise and God’s peace.

                A helpful way to carry out this kind of prayer is through the use of a version of what is known as the Jesus Prayer.  Commit to sitting still for five to ten minutes.  Sit comfortably away from any distractions like televisions, computers or phones.  Each time you breath in, say in your head, “Lord Jesus Christ.”  As you breath out, say, “have mercy on me.”  As with any contemplative practice, you will have thoughts roaming around your mind.  Acknowledge them and then turn back toward the prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.”  As being still becomes more comfortable, you might try extending this time to twenty minutes.  It is a beautiful way of prayer to begin or end (or both) your day.

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