How Now Shall We Pray?

I read an article over at CCEF.org and it resonated with me at a very deep level concerning prayer. This is the journal entry I wrote after reading it, and a link to the original article is at the bottom of this entry.

One could be totally depressed from reading most prayer lists and attending prayer sessions. The number of requests for illness, surgery and a never ending litany of horrible things (not being at all facetious) including divorce, depression, loss of income and so forth is enough to make one totally not want to hear or read anymore. It truly is depressing. Without a doubt, this is one of the reasons that I don’t like prayer letters and requests and meetings a lot.

I have always felt like something is missing in prayer sessions and lists and the most stark thing to me is the lack of abundance of thanksgiving and praise. I read this in a longer piece the other day (see end of post for link to original article) and it really struck a chord within me:

[I say, “Change the way you make prayer requests, and the way you pray for each other.” When prayer requests deal with matters of consequence, when we learn to pray for each other about the actual struggles of our souls, when prayer aligns with God’s deepest purposes, then we simultaneously are making a huge start at becoming alert, effective counselors. For example, the Bible’s prayers are rarely about health, travel mercies, finances, doing well on a test, finding a job, or the salvation of unsaved relatives. Of course, these are legitimate things to pray for, but they are a minor emphasis in Scripture. Even so, these topics typically dominate most church and small group prayer requests. They easily miss the real action of God’s dealings with his beloved people.

In contrast, the driving focus of biblical prayer asks God to show himself, asks that we will know him, asks that we will love others. It names our troubles. It names our troublesome reactions and temptations. It names our holy desires. It names our God, his promises, and his will. When someone asks you, “How may I pray for you?,” imagine the impact of responding in a manner such as this: “I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, and have been inattentive and irritable to those nearest and dearest to me. Please pray for me, that I will awaken and turn from my preoccupation with work pressures, recreations, health problems, or money. God promises to help me pay attention to him. Ask him to help me remember and focus. Ask him to help me to take my family and other people to heart. Pray that I will take refuge in him when the pressure is on. The Lord is my refuge, but I’ve been taking refuge in TV and food.” This kind of prayer gets things that matter on the table—things that matter both immediately and eternally.]

One cannot help but think that if we focused more on the matters mentioned here, our lives and our prayer lives would be totally different. God forgive me, but most prayer requests to me are just whiney and begging. This is not to say that I don’t understand them! Truly when one is ill or dying or dealing with horrid things in their lives, one wants both to pray and to be prayed for. But what I’ve found is that these things tend to be the vast majority of things that folks focus on to the exclusion of anything else. But if we look at the so-called Lord’s Prayer, what do we find?

First we find an acknowledgement of God as our Heavenly Father and recognition of Him as our Sovereign Lord. Then we align our will with His and recognize the supremacy of His will. Next we petition Him for our needs. Then forgiveness realising that as He forgives us, we must forgive others. We ask from power from temptation and the wrong in ourselves. Then we end by again acknowledging His sovereignty.

If we look at the way we routinely hear prayer in churches and even as we may pray ourselves we find that most of our prayers are ultimately selfish or focus too much on healing be it of ourselves or others. Oh, sure we acknowledge God as our Heavenly Father, but it’s almost like we want to get that out the way so we can rush to our needs. And He knows how much we need him. But when I pray for someone like ****, I pray for his healing, yes, but I also pray for him to be able to grow spiritually in the midst of his pain; I pray that he may grow closer to God as a result of his pain and that through and in spite of his pain he may learn to depend more upon his Heavenly Father. Part of the problem, as I see it when we pray for people like ****, is that we can’t even begin to image what they’re going through. Poor **** is constantly in pain and at times it’s unbearable. I know that that level of constant pain is beyond my understanding. By the grace of God I have not suffered that level of physical pain in my life up until now. And in spite of how much we pray for his relief he still suffers and at that continuously. I recall that Paul prayed three times for relief from his pain and was told that “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness”. (2 Cor. 12:9) So I pray that **** will realise that Christ’s strength is sufficient for him and that he can find strength in weakness. I don’t want to diverge into a tangent on the subject of suffering but I think it’s important to realise that suffering may in fact be part of God’s plan for our lives and to acknowledge this reality in our prayers. I have heard it said and written, and I tend to believe it’s true, that pain can drive us more deeply into our Saviour’s arms and draw us closer to Him than any amount of comfort ever can. Now I would not seek pain and I don’t desire it, but I would pray that if I ever come to it I would flee to my Master’s arms and find comfort and closeness there.

Prayer is communication with our God and no one has a conversation with anyone where all they do is implore the other party for anything. We need to look for God’s purpose in everything in our lives and praise Him for Himself. We need to acknowledge his sovereignty over our lives. We need to place all our needs and desires in His hands. We totally need to surrender ourselves to Him. But more than anything we need to follow the example that Christ gave us in the Lord’s Prayer.

I have written these things and yet have not expressed well what I want to say. But I think I’ve at least gotten to the sense of it. Lord teach us to pray in a manner worthy of Thee.

Here is the link to the original article over at CCEF: http://www.ccef.org/blog/prayer-great-place-begin-biblical-counseling

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