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David Hansen - "Long Wandering Prayer"
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Long Wandering Prayer: An Invitation To Walk With God
David Hansen
InterVarsity Press
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“TELL US ABOUT YOUR SPIRITUAL JOURNEY - HOW DID GOD
PREPARE YOU TO WRITE THIS BOOK?"
The title of the book describes a way that I have prayed for over 30 years.
However, long before I prayed this way, I thought this way. I started
wandering through woods, swamps and even empty lots when I was about four years
old. I needed open air and movement to think. During my childhood and early
adolescence I had no idea of God or personal prayer or any feeling of the
presence of God as I walked and thought. I felt alone. When I became a
Christian in high school I kept walking and thinking, but God was there. I
didn't think of it as prayer, though I would address God intermittently in the
process. In my freshman year of college in Salem, Oregon, I spent many
afternoons walking in the soft winter rains through the streets, parks and the
capital district of that beautiful city. I walked and thought through pressing
concerns which forced my thinking more and more into direct address to God.
Still, however, much of it was just thinking things over, even talking to
myself, in the presence of God. That became a pattern for my life. In order to
pray for more than fifteen minutes, I've always needed to be moving. I found
that I could do "other things" while I prayed this way. I walked, rode a bike,
skate boarded, fished, golfed.
As I wandered around bodily, I also wandered around mentally and spiritually.
Since the basic process started out as nothing more than wandering around and
thinking in a random kind of way, for many years I didn't call it prayer. I
didn't think it deserved to be called prayer. When I became a pastor and I had
huge and heavy things to pray about, I found that if I went out and did my old
routine - wandering and praying - that God met me and things happened. That's
when I realized that when Christ met me and I began thinking in his presence, my
way of thinking became prayer. So long wandering prayer developed outside of
the normal definitions of prayer, because it developed out of an idiosyncratic
way of thinking. Since I never thought of it as prayer, I never felt compelled
to make it anything other than what it was. What it did become was an
absolutely vital part of my weekly schedule. I can't make it as a pastor
without it.
I didn't give the prayer a name until much later when I started writing about
it. When I began to write about pastoral ministry I tried describing it as a
part of my work with a few paragraphs here and there. When I spoke to pastors
about my work, I would speak a few minutes about it. But it didn't connect. In
March 1997 I spoke at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary at an all day seminar
for pastors. I spent the whole day talking about long wandering prayer trying
to cover it from many angles. That seemed to work. As it turned out the
receptionist for the Ockenga Institute called me sometime later to tell me that
she had heard the talks, and she had been doing this kind of prayer for years -
and the talks had encouraged her to continue with consistency and intensity. A
pastor who attended the seminar told me that he started going out and praying by
the ocean and it helped him in ministry tremendously. That's when I decided to
write a book - the subject seems to need some elucidation. However, now that
the book is out, many Christians have told me the same thing, "I have been
praying this way for years, I just didn't know it was prayer..."
"EUGENE PETERSON IS QUOTED AS SAYING 'DAVE HANSEN FREES US
TO PRAY THE WAY WE CAN INSTEAD OF URGING US TO PRAY THE WAY WE CAN'T.' - WHAT
DOES HE MEAN?"
I hope Eugene is right - he has stated quite nicely my goal for the book. Let
me say that I believe strongly in the importance of disciplined prayer. For
instance, I do morning devotions in the Word. I love the prayer of corporate
worship. But when I try to expand my prayer and devotional time beyond, say, a
half hour of reading and prayer - I get stuck. And when I try to pray for
extended periods of time stationary, I simply can't do it except in the most
unusual circumstances. So I move and pray. I also find that when I pray for
long periods of time, my mind wanders. I can't stick to a list. I find myself
talking to myself. It's embarrassing. How can this be prayer? And yet, when I
look in the Psalms, I find the Psalmists alternating between talking to
themselves and talking to God. It is extremely common in the Psalms - even in
the 23rd Psalm.
So my goal became simply praying the way I could instead of beating my head
against a wall trying to pray like someone else. I'm happy for the way other
people can pray for long periods of time in disciplined ways. I do not feel
like my undisciplined way is better at all. If all of a sudden I could pray for
hours sitting still, in a room with a candle and a list or some such fashion, I
would do it. So far I can't - and God seems quite happy to accept what I am
able to offer him in prayer instead of what I can't. It isn't a matter of
giving God second best. It may not be as good as what others can offer, but
long wandering prayer is not my second best. Long wandering prayer is the best
I've got.
"WHY IS THIS GOOD NEWS TO PASTORS OR PRAYER LEADERS WHO
ARE NOT SUPER-INTERCESSORS; LEADERS UNABLE TO PRAY FOR LONG PERIODS OF TIME?"
For some of us long wandering prayer is the only way we can spend long hours at
a time with God. I'm here to say that any possible way that we can spend many
long hours with God is absolutely wonderful! I love letting my mind wander in
the presence of God. All kind of things come up. Some are new and creative,
some are old and ugly. God can handle them all and he wants to handle them all.
Nothing inside of me is news to him. He doesn't need me to censor my prayer
life, after all, what I tell him, is just a tiny bit of what he sees inside of
me. It isn't what we pray about that weakens our relationship with God, it is
what we refuse to pray about that weakens or even destroys our relationship with
God. I want to be with God anyway I can. I don't need to be a super anything.
I will always pray the best way I can. If someday I find a better way to pray
for long periods of time than long wandering prayer I'll pray that way then.
"IN YOUR BOOK YOU SAY, 'IF THE ACTIVITY ON THE OUTSIDE IS
TRIVIAL (such as fishing) BUT THE ACTIVITY ON THE INSIDE IS LIFE CHANGING (such
as repentance), WHY FEEL GUILTY ABOUT CALLING IT PRAYER?' HOW CAN PASTORS APPLY
THIS TO THEIR PERSONAL PRAYER LIFE?"
First off, one of our biggest struggles as pastors is our definition of work.
We want to be known as people who really work. Naturally we import our
definition of work from our culture - we have no choice but do this if we want
to impress people (including ourselves.) So we imagine that work is something
we do in our office, or in meetings, or when we are planning something,
counseling someone, writing something, making a hospital call and so on. We
can't win this game. A lot of what we do doesn't look like work to us and it
doesn't feel like work. It may be tiring and it may be effective, but a lot of
what we do looks like something our parishioners do on their day off. Almost
none of our parishioners understand what we do and how difficult our work is. I
say this from the experience of knowing a number of adult lay people who in the
middle of their lives have taken full-time staff positions in churches, or have
become pastors. To a one they are astounded at how difficult the work is, how
misunderstood they feel and how completely different the work feels from what
they expected. Interestingly, the same surprise occurs when a staff person
shifts to a position of solo or senior pastor. They are never ready for what
they encounter.
So, I keep my office hours and I do my work that looks like work. But I also
spend time doing things that don't look like work, because I get so much done in
the process. For instance, when I lived in Montana, most of my very best
sermons came from weeks in which I studied the text throughout the week and then
disappeared on Friday to wander rivers, to fish and plead with the Lord for the
sermon. How can you call that work? Now that I live in Cincinnati, the same
thing holds, my best sermons come when I am able to find a place to golf alone.
If I can't golf, I do yard work, or wander around a park somewhere. I have a
whole chapter on this in the book. I admit to my people what I do - and they
accept it - not many of them want my job anyway - but I'm still embarrassed to
admit it!
By the way, one of the curious contradictions of pastoral work is that many of
our people wonder if we really work but very few of them want our job. Nowadays
I just tell people that anyone who wants my job can have it. And I really mean
it. But I know if I had a real job I would miss those incredible days of
prayer. Getting paid to pray. What a deal. Maybe my people have something,
maybe I don't work for a living at all...
"HOW CAN THE INSIGHTS OF LONG WANDERING PRAYER BENEFIT
PRAYER GROUPS (Pastors' Prayer Groups, Weeknight Church Meetings, Fellowship
Groups)?
To be honest, I'm not sure. I've never thought of asking a group of people to
make a commitment to pray long wandering prayers at particular times or for
particular needs. As I have thought about your question, it has occurred to me
how powerful it might be for a group of Christians in community to go out
separately and pray long wandering prayers for discernment, healing, an
outpouring of the Word in power or any number of concerns - or just to do it and
see what happens. The potential seems quite exciting. I hope the book will
teach well in classes on prayer. I've never taught a class on one of my books
and I don't think I would know where to start.
But a lady in our church here in Cincinnati just started teaching an adult
Sunday School class on long wandering prayer. When she read the book, she said
that she had been doing this kind of prayer her whole life, even as a child
growing up in Kentucky. She never had a name for it, nor had she read about
anyone else praying this way. She says the class is going well.
"DAVID, YOU HAVE A WONDERFUL PASSAGE IN YOUR BOOK ABOUT A
STYLE OF PRAYER THE CHURCH HAS TRAGICALLY FORGOTTEN OR NEVER KNOWN -
IMPORTUNITY. TELL US WHAT THIS IS AND HOW IT COULD REVOLUTIONIZE OUR APPROACH TO
PRAYER..."
To importune means to, press an issue upon someone with intransigent urgency; it
means to beg, hassle, pound away, to persist. Jesus crystallizes this type of
prayer in the parable of the Importunate Widow: "Then Jesus told them a
parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, "In a
certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for
people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying,
'Grant me justice against my opponent.' For a while he refused; but later he
said to himself, 'Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet
because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may
not wear me out by continually coming.'" And the Lord said, "Listen to what the
unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to
him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them?" (Luke 18:1-7 NRSV)
Importunity is an old kind of prayer in which we batter God with our requests
day in and day out. We pray for the same thing, over and over, using every
theological and personal argument we can possibly muster, turning ourselves
inside out in the process. Of course the whole point is that God wants to draw
us out, every bit of us. He isn't waiting for 500th request, like some kind of
test or game, he knows that as we pray harder and harder and get more desperate,
we will dig deeper into the Word, we will pray out of our truest self and our
toughest thinking and we will learn more about his nature and ours in the
process.
After true importunate prayer we experience the answer as pure grace. We are
more tempted to take spiritual credit for the answers to our easy prayers than
we are for our hard fought prayers. In the book I call it, "battering the heart
of God." It's a little twist on John Donne's "Batter my heart, Three-personned
God..." It may not be far from what he meant. Naturally, long wandering prayer
and importunate prayer were made for each other. Long wandering prayer allows
us to batter God relentlessly, seeking more and deeper arguments and reasonings
- and it allows us to see our real motives for praying, as we pray.
When our mind wanders in prayer we learn a lot about ourselves that we never
wanted to know. Perhaps this is why we esteem discipline in prayer so highly.
By exercising tight control over our minds in prayer, we exercise control over
what we know about ourselves. Exercising control over what we know about
ourselves, i.e. only seeing what we want to see, is deadly to prayer and to
discernment for leadership. It leads to "...thinking more highly of ourselves
than we ought..." (Romans 12:3) Thinking more highly of ourselves than we
ought keeps us from hearing God.
"PLEASE WRITE A PRAYER THE ENTIRE NPPN CAN PRAY TOGETHER
THAT WILL FREE US TOWARD LONG WANDERING PRAYER ... AN INVITATION TO WALK WITH
GOD."
"Lord, give me the courage to leave my concept of work, to do what I need to do
to get the job done. What my culture calls work doesn't give me a lot of
answers for life in the Kingdom. I need to spend time with you. Give me the
humility to spend my time with you in a way which is truly possible for me,
instead of insisting on a way that gives me something to be proud of in the
community. Lord, as I open my heart and mind to wander in your presence, things
will come up that I don't want to think about, or pray about. You are a great
and kind God, gentle and patient, ready and desirous to forgive, heal, provide
leading and accept praise. Indeed, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test
me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in
the way everlasting." (Psa 139:23-24 NRSV)
Pastor David Hansen
Kenwood Baptist Church, 8341 Kenwood Road, Cincinnati, OH 45236
Church: 513-791-0355 / FAX: 513-792-5784 / Email: kbc@fuse.net
SELECTED QUOTES FROM THE BOOK...
Long Wandering Prayer
InterVarsity Press, 2001 by David Hansen
P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60615-1426
http://www.ivpress.com / mail@ivpress.com
Maybe it's a confession of weakness, but I can't pray for more than an hour
unless I'm doing something else, whether it's listening to birds in a wood or
hacking at a golf ball. If the activity on the outside is trivial (fishing), but
the activity on the inside is life changing (repentance), why feel guilty about
calling it prayer? If I can pray all day while I fish or golf or bird watch due
to my weakness, isn't that better than spending the day not praying because I
can't address God in a grand, disciplined way? Isn't it better to pray the way
we can, instead of not praying because we can't pray the way we think other
people pray?
Long wandering prayer is not normally indoor prayer.
You can't pray for someone else to be healed until you yourself are unafraid to
die.
Long wandering prayer is not like a meeting with your boss or your ruling board.
It is like lovers wandering with one another, without a plan, without hiding
thoughts, not knowing where the trip will lead--and not caring. Yes, such
moments are risky. Disagreements surface and wrangling ensues, but not without a
purpose and rarely without time to settle grievances. And because the Other is
the Beloved, the desire to wander and speak will be renewed again and again.
We live in such a noisy, distracting world. The soul tends to get neglected
first. Many people, I think, are not even aware of this center, this core within
them we call soul.
Prayer comes to us from a people who spent the first thousand years of their
existence living in tents.
Wandering lay at the core of their psyche from the beginning, and it shaped
their life with God.
We have interpreted prayer as something we do sitting, standing or kneeling in
one place.
I dare say that David himself would have fallen asleep trying to do what we call
prayer for more than ten minutes. Rather, he danced.
The body matters in prayer, as does the physical world around us. We know this
and yet many of us understand prayer as an exercise in which we should ideally
subdue, quiet or otherwise discipline the body so that it remains dormant while
we engage in the spiritual exercise of prayer. There is no question about the
fact that prayer is a spiritual exercise. Prayer is in its very essence our soul
in communion with the Spirit of God. The fallacy lies in the idea that the body
must be subdued in order for the soul to commune with the Spirit of God. The
very term quite time (the fullest term being quiet time with God) implies this
very thing--that we go to a quiet place and quiet the body so that we can be
with God in quiet. Whey can't we call it noisy time? Why can't we call it moving
time? Whey can't we say, "I had a great noisy time with God this morning." I
know of no biblical mandate for quiet time. For me, quiet time always turns into
sleepy time. I think what we have been calling quiet time should really,
biblically, be termed alone time.
Doesn't Jesus tell us to pray in our prayer closet alone? Indeed He tells us,
"But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your
Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you"
(Mt. 6:6). Jesus tells us to pray in secret, not in quiet.
Doesn't it say "Be still, and know that I am God (Ps 46:10)? Yes, it does. But
in the context of Psalm 46 the injunction mans "be still" in the presence of
war's violent destruction and mountains that are shaking and falling into the
heart of the sea. It means to be still in the midst of chaos.
We pray body and soul and no other way. The body is neither the prison of the
soul nor the enemy of prayer, though we have treated it as such. Instead of
denying the body in prayer, we must deny bodyless prayer. When the body falls
asleep, praying stops. When the body awakens, prayer continues. When the body
stays in one place, prayer issues from that place and is affected by the
environment of that one place. Prayer issues from the place where we are and is
affected by the places the body moves in and out of. To pray for a community,
walk through the neighborhoods during prayer. The prayer will be longer because
walking keeps the body alert. The prayer will be broader because moving past
dwellings, churches, schools and businesses reminds us to pray for persons and
community concerns that never would have entered the mind otherwise. The prayer
will be deeper because the sum total of the sights and sounds weighs heavy on
the soul.
Wandering does matter in prayer. I spend many hours wandering before the Lord in
our church building. When the place is quiet, I pace up and down the rows of the
sanctuary or in the fellowship hall, speaking to the Lord, not knowing where I
am going. Of course I am going nowhere. But I can wander through the church for
thirty minutes or several hours, and not only do my body and mind stay awake,
but as I walk I am reminded what to pray for. Who needs a prayer list? As I walk
by empty classrooms, I pray for the teachers and assistants who teach on Sunday
morning and Wednesday night. I walk past a pew. I know who sits there every
Sunday, and I pray for them. I see the pulpit. I pray for the ministry of the
Word of God. I see the piano. I pray for the music ministry. I see the stained
glass dove. I pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the the
congregation. I see a bat. (Yes, several times each summer bats wiggle through
the heating vents into our sanctuary.) And I pray, Lord protect us! The church
building is the best prayer list I could ever have. To pray this prayer list, I
must walk through my prayer list. The physical act of wandering in the church
multiplies by many ties the number of hours I can pray for the church. The
reasons are simple. I can stay alert longer walking than sitting, and seeing a
piano produces a more graphic influence on my mind than reading "Pray for the
music ministry" on a prayer list--thus a more vivid prayer.
In true prayer God draws us into prayer, and God draws prayer out of us. In
long wandering prayer, as we let our subconscious generate our thinking in
prayer, we open up our vast personal wilderness before God.
In long wandering prayer, sights on the outside catalyze visions on the inside.
Pictures appear as we pray--numerous pictures--pictures of the persons we pray
for, pictures of our childhood, pictures of the future, pictures of the future
of the persons we pray for. This is visionary thinking in the presence of God.
One of the reasons why some Christians will not pray the Psalms is that the
Psalms are filled with pictures of painful self-reflection. We cannot bear the
honesty of the Psalms, and we cannot bear the honesty of long wandering prayer
until we learn that honesty before the Lord precedes healing.
David petitions God: search me, test me, know me, see me, lead me. These visual
petitions call for visual answers. David wants God to see his soul, and he wants
to see what God dredges up. David does not fear knowing his soul in the presence
of God; he fears refusing to know his soul in the presence of God. This is why
he asks God to search, test, know and see even though he knows perfectly well
that God already knows everything about him, past, present and future. He knows
that God knows; the difference is that he welcomes God's knowledge. He desires
God's audit. Why? Because he wants God to lead him. How can we say we want God
to lead us if we don't want God to tell us who we really are? The "deep down" of
spiritual discernment is knowing who we are in relation to who God is. If we
don't want to know who we are and we refuse to face our past, we cannot
distinguish visions from God from the projections of our infantile self.
In long wandering prayer our secrets make themselves available to us, and as we
pray through them, we offer them to God.
As we learn to be honest with ourselves, looking at our stories unflinchingly in
the presence of God, we can listen to others as well. We can live in
forgiveness. Genuine Christian community is not freedom from sin; it is freedom
from unforgiveness.
Long wandering prayer is about being alone with ourselves in the presence of God
so that we can be in community with others in the presence of God.
How odd to have to look up a word in a Bible subheading. The subheading names
one of Jesus' parables "The Importunate Widow."
I don't use the word importune. Yet the words importune and importunity describe
a necessary quality of prayer taught by Jesus himself. Perhaps we dropped the
word because it describes extremely unpleasant people. To be importunate is to
be burdensome, troublesomely urgent, unreasonably solicitous, overly persistent
in request or demand and rude. We do not like importunate people. They spoil
social engagements. They sour work. Importunate parishioners disturb pastors. We
do not seek the importunate as friends, we flee them. But God eagerly desires
our importunity in prayer. P.T. Forsyth observed, "Does not Christ set more
value upon importunity than on submission?
Jesus follow the Lord's Prayer with a story about a man whose need requires him
to be obnoxious to a friend.
Even though "he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep" (Ps 121:4), God
asks us to pray as though he must be awakened.
In another place Jesus tells a parable about a widow who will not give up in her
demand for her legal rights.
The judge learned to dread her coming. Finally she wore him down. Listen to what
the judge says: "Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet
because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may
not wear me out by continually coming." The phrase"so that she may not wear me
out by continually coming" comes from boxing! The verb hypopiazein means
literally to "hit in the eye."
Thus importunate prayer is theological prayer, not for show r bribe but for
the matters o life and death.
Jesus tells us to pray importunely. Did he pray importunely? How can we doubt
that he did? The writer of Hebrews tell us that "in the days of his flesh,
Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the
one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his
reverent submission" (Heb 5:7).
We know this much: Jesus teaches us to pray as if prayer changes everything, and
tough prayer changes more than passive prayer.
Importunate prayer is not a sign of pride. It is a sign that our pride is dust.
Importunity turns our souls inside out. We learn what we really think as the
Spirit dredges deep. Importunity calls forth all that we are, places it upon the
altar, and we become a living sacrifice. The apostle Paul's admonition, "present
your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is our
spiritual worship" (Rom 12:1), cannot be fulfilled in short prayer filtered by
definitions of cultured courtesy. Only prayer that demands the last gram of
strength completes the sacrifice.
In God's presence we may need to remove our shoes and fall on our face, but when
the talk begins, we need to get into God's face. The English word for this kind
of prayer, importunate, is an infrequently used as the prayer it describes.
God's concern here seems to e stark honesty, the every thing lacking in so many
broken relationships.
The sin that kills prayer is the refusal to confess sin.
Many of us think we cannot pray long because our attention span is short.
However, our short attention span affects our prayers far less than our guilt
about our attention span. On this point we need to remind ourselves that "he
knows how we were made; he remembers that we are dust" (Ps 103:14). A short
attention span does not make us pray short prayers. A short attention span
merely makes us refocus more frequently. There's not sin or failure in losing
focus and refocusing. We love to complain about our culture's short attention
span, but our ranting contributes nothing to prayer. Has anyone proven that
Christians pray worse today than before the advent of television? Are we quite
sure they prayed longer? We have an impression that Christians prayed longer and
better before television, but no one knows for certain. Is the Spirit of God
paralyzed by our culture? We find it easy to imagine that previous generations
could sit still longer. Were they keener in intellect or habituated to boredom?
Why did these very generations flock to movies and sit glued to radios when they
became available? Whey did they invent the television?
Believing that we cannot pray today like saints of old is worthless guilt. It
wasn't easier to pray back then. Former times were not more conducive to prayer,
and less technological cultures were not simpler or happier.
We hypothesize the moral and spiritual superiority of past generations because
of our fixation on the sins of our day.
Start where you are.
Don't force long prayer. Pray shorter until your soul demands longer. Allow the
appetite to grow. Permit the desire to consume. Let it be hard to turn down.
Cherish the shortness of breath as your soul pants for the Spirit. Walk into the
breeze till it becomes a gale.
Faith, from the human standpoint, is an intense mental event. Exercising faith
burns calories, because the brain burns more calories than any organ of the
body.
I've watched television my whole life, and I've been praying for whole days for
nearly thirty years. If it disgusts you that a book on prayer rationalizes
watching television, then you are a lucky person because there must be a hundred
books on prayer written for people like you. On the other hand, if your soul has
thirsted for a book on prayer written by a person who has spent thousands of
hour watching professional football--then you'll feel right at home here.
Prayer is long division in your head.
Instead of giving up things I enjoy for prayer, I give up things I don't enjoy.
Both Mary and Martha expended energy in their chosen tasks. Martha prepared
food; she worked. Many listened to Jesus, and she received the bread of life.
The question is not who expended the most energy, the question is, who the next
day experienced joy in the hope of life?
All the Marthas of the world will never pray long. Leave your dishes in the
sink. Let them set for an hour. Go out and meet the Lord.
Though we have aspired to pray long because of God's call, we have spurned him
over and over. We have dreamed about praying log, but we have dismissed it as
impractical. WE planned time but did not save energy. We tried it once or twice,
failed and never tried it again. Yes, God forgives, but will God listen? Will
God let us pray for a day when we have refused his call for years? Are we left
leaning on the sill because the window of opportunity is closed?
God need not give us the liberty to pray long in a life devoted to work and no
sabbath. If we become habituated to work, God may let us live that way until we
die.
Perhaps you have always thought that missionaries found prayer to be a natural
part of life. Read on and discover the experience of one American pastor
teaching in Lithuania.
The fact that prayer is such a struggle for me demonstrates a number of very
helpful things to me--so helpful--sometimes I hope I never get good at prayer.
First, my lack of proficiency and constant struggle to pray forces to be
mindful that prayer, like everything else in my life with Christ, is based on
grace.
Second, coming to terms with my deficiencies in prayer has given me room to
relax.
Third, being bad at prayer has made me examine my definition of bad. What if
I'm thinking about prayer in a backward sort of way, measuring it by my
standards and not God's?
If I said my prayers were good, would God agree? Sometimes I wonder if I
were proficient at prayer if I would still be as dependent on God.
Fourth, struggling at prayer seems to be the norm even in Scripture. The
psalms show me people who often are just as frustrated at their prayer's end as
they were at the beginning.
Praying is difficult. It's probably the most difficult thing I do. I've decided
it's supposed to be, for its very difficulty forces me back to God, reminds me
that I'm entirely dependent on God and his grace to even pray at all. Prayer's
difficulty pulls me into the very nature of God himself, as Father, Son and
Spirit unite to enable my prayer. My failure at praying keeps me from taking the
credit. It won't let me pat myself on the back. It won't allow me to go off on
my own. I'm forced by the very poverty of my prayers to cling to God only, and
perhaps that is finally the only definition of good prayer.
When the soul is empty, and we feel nothing at all, we pray best. This prayer is
nothing but faith.
Nothing destroys prayer more than thinking we have made progress. We can learn a
few methods. We can learn to avoid a few basic pitfalls. We can learn the
environments in which our body and mind function better in prayer. But these are
of no account in comparison to faith. Methods and insights into prayer are the
tar on the bat. The tar helps the grip, but the tar cannot drive the ball over
the fence. Faith drives the ball over the fence.
But even faith does not save us. It does not make us right with God, and prayer
does not save us, nor does prayer make us right with God. The grace of God saves
us. The prayer of faith apprehends grace, and the long prayer of faith lets the
relief of salvation sink deep. Long laid wounds need anointing, and chaotic
visions need reappointing. Long prayer lets justification sink deep. Long prayer
gives grace time within the soul.
Therefore we cannot pray well if we think that long prayer makes us better
before God. The longer we pray long, the more convinced we become of this. Long
prayer is helpless to save us, and the deeper we know that God loves us even if
we do not pray, the better we pray. Given the time and scope that log prayer
provides, grace enters the catacombs of the heart and calls visions of ancient
terrors out of slumber. To put it in frank terms, many Christians will not pray
long for fear of what's in there.
Jesus tells us to "consider the lilies." Does he mean a quick look or a mindful
meditation? Five minutes or five years? How do we know he doesn't mean five
years?
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National Pastors' Prayer Network
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--->Copyright 2002. However, permission is granted to freely redistribute to
those who will partner in praying for and sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ
with everyone in our nation and beyond.
--->Unless clearly identified as "Personal To _____" or "Confidential" all
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will be considered for use in a future NPPN Update.
--->Opinions reflect the views of each author or respondent, not the NPPN or any
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