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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