Category Archives: Prayer

The Fight to Pray (25/28)

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prayPrayer and distractions… anyone else know an undeniable tie between those two words?

I’ve listened to friends and read the words of strangers, together trying to find some resolution for my ADHD prayer life.  Some practical little tidbits have been found to be helpful; much of it though makes no difference.

Today, I read the most significant thing about distractions that plague prayer.  Tell me if this doesn’t speak to you.

From a Brit named Herbert McCabe…

“People often complain of ‘distractions’ during prayer.  Their mind goes wandering off on to other things.  This is nearly always due to praying for something that you do not really much want; you just think it would be proper and respectable and ‘religious’ to want it.  So you pray high-mindedly for big but distant things like peace in Northern Ireland or you pray that your aunt will get better from the flu–when in fact you do not much care about these things; perhaps you ought to, but you don’t.  And so your prayer is rapidly invaded by distractions arising from what you really do want–promotion at work, let us say.  Distractions are nearly always your real wants breaking in on your prayer for edifying but bogus wants.  If you are distracted, trace your distraction back to the real desires it comes from and pray about these.  When you are praying for what you really want, you will not be distracted.  People on sinking ships do not complain of distractions during their prayer.”

Boom!  Herbert, you are on to something, my friend.

Now go and pray with your heart.  That kind of praying may prove dangerous enough to see your life transformed and your prayers shaking things!

Parents Pray (23/28)

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My job, along with some of the relationships I enjoy, gives me regular chances to pray with people.  My efforts to pay attention to those encounters have led me to a conclusion.  You can mark this down as fact–the first thing every parent I know prays for is their children.  Barring a crisis of some sort that receives first mention, parents’ prayers are consumed by their kids.  I’m even talking about parents who don’t “pray”.  Hand-folding and head-bowing aside, every parent I know has their deepest desires (spoken or not) tied into the lives of their sons and daughters.

When you become a parent, you become a pray-er, whether you believe in God or not.

If you’re a parent, you’ll know what I mean.

If you know me, you’ll know that I only recently began knowing what I mean.

I’ve heard the most heartfelt prayers and sensed the deepest emotion in prayer when parents pray for their children.  Rooms get quieter, as it seems as if heaven itself stops to listen in.  And joy?  You’ve never heard relief or thankfulness in a voice until you’re heard a father or mother’s prayer of gratitude for a lost child finding their way or for a faithful child thriving in every way.  There’s no doubt why the prodigal’s return home spawned a bash that rocked the whole neighbourhood–because that is what kids to their parents’ hearts.

The sweetest thing of all this is that we are not limited to our families in experiencing feelings of this intensity.  Love flows from person to person, and there is no exclusion for those whose parents don’t fit the above descriptions.

THE Father feels these things for us.  THE Son is our non-stop intercessor, bringing our name before God with a flow that never stops. I have taken comfort before in the promises of friends or relatives to pray regularly for me.  It is a sobering thought that my name arises in prayers spoken by divine lips into divine ears.  In a sense, we are encircled by the highest prayers available.

My experience says that this is what parents do to their kids.

Praying Like a Complete Idiot

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I bought this book while in line at the supermarket a while back…

Flipping through it, I’ve concluded something: I’d do well–exceedingly well–to pray idiot-prayers like these!

Take this one from Christina Rossetti:

“O Lord, the Lord whose ways are right, keep us in your mercy from lip service and empty forms; from having a name that we live, but being dead.  Help us to worship you by righteous deeds and lives of holiness; that our prayer also may be set forth in your sight as an incense, and the lifting up of our hands be an evening sacrifice.”

So for all the morons out there, I’ll bring you more occasionally so that, yes, even folks like us can learn to pray.

Re-Thinking Prayer

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A hundred and some pages into Yancey’s book, here are a few quotes worth sharing…

Walter Wink:

“Biblical prayer is impertinent, persistent, shameless, indecorous.  It is more like haggling in an outdoor bazaar than the polite monologues of the church.”

Soren Kierkegaard:

“The true relation in prayer is not when God hears what we prayed for, but when the person praying continues to pray until he is the one who hears, who hears what God wills.”

Eugene Peterson:

“Be slow to pray.  Praying puts us at risk of getting involved with God’s conditions….  Praying most often doesn’t get us what we want but what God wants, something quite at variance with what we conceive to be in our best interests.  And when we realize what is going on, it is often too late to go back.”

Karl Barth:

“To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

“A day without morning and evening prayers and personal intercessions is actually a day without meaning or importance.”

The Prayer that’s Less (23/30)

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All right, the disclaimer: Most of what follows is stolen. And many of those parts are worth stealing. Feel free.

“Simply put, prayer is all the ways in which we communicate and commune with God.”

I can buy that.

In fact, I quite like that because it describes a fair bit more than the old childhood “prayer entry” song ever sang about: “Let’s fold our hands and bow our heads and close our eyes and talk… to… God.”

I’ve met few people of faith who don’t confess to a struggle with prayer. Even the occasional one possessing sufficient will-power to muscle through with such a habit often wonders if they’re “doing it right”. Every God-loving individual eventually hits a cold and dry season in prayer.

What if such a season is to serve a purpose? What if it is meant to direct us towards a new place?

“It signals an invitation to deeper levels of intimacy that will move us beyond communication, which primarily contains words and concepts, into communion, which is primarily beyond words.”

What about a prayer life that is not primarily about speaking? I’ve got to admit that I’m greatly attracted to, and slightly frightened by, the idea.

But I can’t help wondering if it’s not exactly what most of us are in serious need of.

Take Nouwen’s question, for example…

“How can we possibly expect anyone to find real nurture, comfort and consolation from a prayer life that taxes the mind beyond its limits and adds one more exhausting activity to the many already scheduled ones?”

What’s the taxing part of “prayer as we know it”?

Isn’t it frequently the creating of the words? We spend our energy most moments in “making” and “building”.  Then we enter the presence of our Father, the Maker of makers, and we feel the pressure to keep it up.

I’m increasingly aware of another way.  Here’s a couple voices that have spoken to me about this way…

John Climacus…

“When you pray, do not try to express yourself in fancy words, for often it is the simple repetitious phrases of a little child that our Father in heaven finds most irresistible. Do not strive for verbosity lest your mind be distracted by a search for words. Single words by their very nature tend to concentrate the mind. When you find satisfaction in a certain word of your prayer, stop at that point.”

And Ruth Haley Barton…

“We are purposely not very wordy in our intercessions, because we realize that this is another place in the spiritual life where human striving and fixing can easily take over.”

Fewer words?  Deeper places?  Show me more please.

Why?

Because I think I’m needy of what waits to be found down such a path.