Category Archives: Prayer

Lord’s Prayer

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Oh, man!  Yesterday marked the end of a summer teaching series I was doing on the Lord’s Prayer, and I have GOT to say, “I’m going to miss that stuff.”

I know–it’s not like I need to tuck it away in a lock box.  “You can use it anytime you want, Jason.”  Yes, I know.  But it’s the in-depth soaking that has done me a world of good this summer.  And quite frankly, I’d be up for staying in this pool almost indefinitely.

And I suppose I shall.

An older spiritual mentor told me that in mid-life, his prayer patterns changed significantly.  He gave real shape to them, even incorporating some middle-of-night practice.  And he confessed to me that the Lord’s Prayer, those old and oft repeated words, played a large part in the focusing of his mind along the way.  And I can see why.

They take thirty seconds to speak, and I’m not sure thirty years would be sufficient time to become all that these words force us to voice.

If your prayer life is in need of a boost, or a resusitation, let me be so-not-original: Go back to Jesus’ prayer.  Use it throughout the day, recite it occasionally, re-phrase it in your own terms over and over, sit with single lines of it, and AMEN it as best as you know how.

You may be shocked at the power in those lines.

Why Pray?

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If we can slow ourselves and quiet ourselves, these words may speak into that question:

“It is through prayer… that one will be given the most powerful light to see God and self.” (Angela of Foligno)

Reflecting on her years in monastic life with its prayerful patterns that she didn’t always value, Joan Chittister adds this word:

“It took years of repetition, years of chant strung high as a wire, years of recitation droned into space for me to realize that like water on a rock, the words were melting into my soul, etching furrows in my mind, turning me into themselves, disappearing into the whispers of my heart.  Prayer, the regular discipline of resting in God, had become a way of life.”

Later, I found this, in response to Angela of Foligno’s quote:

“When we turn God into a vending machine, when we pray to ‘get’ things rather than to get God–there is no ‘enlightenment’ in that.  When prayer is a journey into the mind and heart of God, into the nature of life, into the shaping of a holy heart, then it is necessarily enlightening.  We come to understand ourselves: our fears, our darkness, our struggles, our resistance.  Then we are faced with choice.  That is enlightenment.”

Then a final section spoke of one other danger in prayer, that we might try to use it as an escape from life.  This was addressed swiftly:

“If prayer becomes the way we give ourselves permission to escape life around us, it is not prayer.  It is some kind of self-induced hypnotism, at best.  Real prayer plunges us into life, red and raw.  It gives us new eyes.  It shapes a new heart within us.  It makes demands on us.  It requires that we become the hands of the God we say we have found.”

And that is plenty for today.

What I Meant to Say

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On Sunday, I shared a lesson entitled “Unanswered Prayers”.  I hope that it was helpful to the questions that run through all of our minds at one time or another when we bring heartfelt requests to God.

As with most sermons, I can always think afterwards of changes I’d have made.  I might have said THAT differently.  I’d have used a different tone in making that point.  I wish I hadn’t said that at all!  And a million more such thoughts.

And as is usually the case, two days after the fact, I’ve found the right words.  What I meant to say was not much.  I should have just told this story at one point…

“A doctor who worked in a Swiss sanatorium used to pray two prayers as he went to see his patients:

‘O God, if this person will glorify you more by being healed, use us here for his healing.’

‘O God, if this person will glorify you more by remaining sick, let him be sick.’

That would have done a fair bit of what I attempted to do, and it would have been briefer and pointier.  So there it is, two days late.

Prayer and the Unexpected

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As I’ve said earlier, I’m teaching a series on prayer these days.  From within the pile of material and preparation filling my time has come a realization–when we enter conversation with God, odds are good it’s not going to play out how we envisioned.  I know, that could be discomforting because most of the time, we approach God with an idea that we’re pretty certain is a great idea.  We take it to Him, in the hopes that He’ll buy in and put His superior power and influence behind the great idea that we can’t make into reality.

However, what if you don’t get anything near what you went in asking for?

What if your primary agenda item never even gets on the table?

Would you still pray?

Acts 10…

Peter is hungry, and he’s got food on the brain–and we all know the feeling.  (I’m actually feeling it right now.)  Hungrily waiting for lunch to be ready, he enters a trance where a divine dialogue is awaiting him.  Topic?  Food.  Or so it seems.

Animals in a sheet get lowered down.  An invitation to eat is issued.  Peter declines as a matter of religious purity, and God tells him that nothing from His hand is impure.  Repeat this cycle over and over once more, and throw in another Creator-initiated conversation that’s happening to a stranger named Cornelius.

By the end of the story, Peter’s world has turned right over.  He went up on the roof just hungry for lunch.  He came down convicted of racism and hard-heartedness towards the plans of God.  How on earth did he set out for that first point but end up at that last point?  What was in the middle?  A conversation with the Master.

So I’m just saying…

Pray.

But pray carefully.

And I’d advise against going in with rigid expectations–you might just want a sandwich, and God might be waiting to unload the entire kitchen (including the sink… maybe especially the sink!) right on top of you.

Prayer is like Sex

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I’m doing a series at church on prayer right now.

This illustration is actually begging to be used… but it just doesn’t fit any of my remaining lessons.  So to the blog-cave…

“I think prayer is analogous to sex.  (People’s ears always perk up when I say that.)  Most people would complain about their sex lives; a few do really well.  Sex and prayer are intimate and over-glamorized relationships.  We all are led to believe that we should be in the stratosphere in sex and in prayer.  It sets up a false expectation.  And breaks down intimacy.”

The lady who wrote that later spent several months in Africa, which forced her into a slower pace.  From that place, she added to her notes…

“Again, similar to sex, when we are so busy and filled with the cacophony of life, it is hard to relax, be quiet and communicate.”

And in case the analogy still isn’t clicking for you, Philip Yancy chimes in with a few further thoughts…

“As I thought about her unlikely analogy, it occurred to me that reading a book about prayer has some parallels to reading a sex manual.  What sounds so thrilling on paper bears little resemblance to how sex usually plays out between two vulnerable people who approach it with very different expectations.  Like sex, prayer centers in relationship more than in technique, and the differences between the two parties in prayer are far more profound than the differences between two lovers.  Should it surprise us that problems arise”

P.S. I generally like to brighten up my posts with some relevant pictures.  I thought it best not even to think about Googling anything for this particular post.  So what you see is what you get this time.