Monday 27 May 2013

Engineer - or poet - of prayer?

I will make a bold claim: We tend to be engineers or poets of prayer.

Engineers take a disciplined, structured approach to their jobs.  Poets prefer creativity, letting the imagination fly.

Transferring this picture to prayer, some authors insist that we must set aside the same time every day for prayer and sit down with a prayer list.  They are the engineers of prayer.

Others say they have tried the list approach and have rejected it.  Instead, they pray as they feel moved - at any time of the day and on any subject.  They are the poets of prayer.

I have read good books on both sides of the fence.

Over my lifetime, I have leaned more towards the poetic approach.  But I have grown to appreciate the engineer style more and more.  Now, I try to incorporate both in my times of prayer.

Let me outline the advantages of both.

Engineers

I have come to see that having a prayer list is important if you want to see how God is working. 

It is easy to forget a prayer issue unless you write it down.  It builds faith to see that God is answering those prayer requests.  I always date my initial request and God's answer.

Years ago, I used to set aside a time in the early morning to read the Bible and pray.  Then, the busyness of life interfered and I wound up reading the Bible in the bus to work and praying silently in my seat.

Now that I am retired, it is easier to have a regular time for prayer and Bible study and I schedule it in.  I admit that I sometimes still miss it.

I agree with those who say that if Bible study and prayer is important, we should make room for it - pushing aside some of the leisure activities we allow to fill our time.

Sticking to a regular time of prayer prevents me from gradually letting life sweep me away from my time with God.

Poets

I have been attracted to the poetic style of prayer ever since reading Brother Lawrence's The Practice of the Presence of God in my 20s.  I have written about this little book elsewhere in this blog.

Brother Lawrence, a French Catholic monk in the 1600s, spent his life washing dishes and being chief wine-buyer for his monastery.  He prayed continually during the day - talking with God as he washed the dishes and listening to his responses.  He obeyed the strict prayer times of the monastery, but felt more at home in this easy, spontaneous way of praying.

I have talked more about Brother Lawrence here: http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3617534320094379788#editor/target=post;postID=3782699526223019291;onPublishedMenu=overviewstats;onClosedMenu=overviewstats;postNum=3;src=postname

This kind of continual conversation with God helps strengthen our love for the Lord and our awareness of his presence.  We develop a deeper understanding of Jesus.

A great advantage of this kind of listening prayer is that you pray as God prompts you.  It may be vital that you pray for someone precisely at that moment.  There are many stories of people whose lives have been saved through prayers prayed at exactly the right time.

So, now I am trying to grow as both an engineer and a poet of prayer.


 

Sunday 19 May 2013

God's partners

God is calling us to be his partners in his great work - his plans to bring history to a dramatic, triumphant climax to his glory.

He has given us prayer as the means to carry out his plans.  Will we be silent?  Or, will we throw ourselves into the mission he has given us?

It has taken me decades to realize that the most important thing about prayer is that we seek what God wants, not what we want.  I am still dipping my toes - very tentatively - into this wonderful truth.

Watchman Nee, a great Chinese Christian who died in a Communist prison camp, wrote in his little book Let Us Pray that the one who prays "must allow his will to enter into God's will, his thought must be allowed to enter into God's thought". 

"Since he habitually lives in the Lord's presence, such a person is given to know His will and thoughts.  And these divine wills and thoughts quite naturally become his own desires, which he then expresses in prayer."

This is important for God chooses to work through us and the world around us as we pray. 

"How many things the Lord indeed desires to do, yet he does not perform them because his people do not pray," says Nee. "He will wait until men agree with Him, and then He will work."

In Matthew 6, Jesus gives a model prayer which includes the line: "Your (God's) will be done on earth as it is in heaven."  We are to pray that what God wants accomplished on earth will be carried out - just as his command is obeyed in heaven.

The great prayers of the Bible reflect this truth.  Nehemiah and Daniel pleaded with God on behalf of his chosen people, prayers that God graciously answered.

And when the early church was under attack in Acts 4, the believers called on God to help them speak boldly about Jesus - not for their own protection.  God responded by bringing many new believers into the fold.

Nee refers to a great passage in Isaiah 62 which is a call to me and to you today:

"O Jerusalem, I have posted watchmen on your walls; they will pray day and night, continually.  Take no rest, you who pray to the Lord."



 

Sunday 12 May 2013

The power of praying parents

My wife and two other women spoke of the power of prayer in family life in a video shown at our church this morning.

My wife mentioned how we prayed for our children - and still pray for them.  And now we pray for our grandchildren, too.  We rejoice with what God is doing with them and through them.

Another woman said her mother used to arrange pictures of her family on a table and pray for them daily - for an hour.  Now she does the same with her family.

Still another woman talked about her mother and father's faithful praying for her over the years, even when she was wandering away from the faith for a while.  Now, she is praying for her children in the same way.

Throughout history, we read of the importance of praying for our families.

Augustine, one of the greatest Christians in the early centuries of the church, was prayed into the kingdom of God by his mother, even though he rejected Christ for years.  John Wesley, one of the greatest Christian leaders in more recent times, had a faithful, praying mother.

We are children of God and he loves it when we pray for our children.

Jesus had a special place in his heart for children.  In Matthew 19, the disciples tried to shoo away parents who were bringing children to Jesus.  And he said: "Let the children come to me.  Don't stop them!  For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children."

Young children have a trusting faith that is the envy of many older people.  It is nurtured by faithful praying parents.

Joyce Huggett, author of Listening to God,  says that her introduction to prayer came early on as she watched her father sitting by the fireside, reading his Bible and then closing his eyes to pray.

"Children are great imitators of people they love," she writes.  "Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that I cannot remember a time when prayer did not feature in my life."

I remember reading somewhere that one woman learned the importance of praying from her mother who had a large brood of children.  The mother had hardly a moment to herself.  So she would sit in a chair and throw her apron over her face, a signal to her children that she was praying and was not to be disturbed.

God works with us as we pray.  He wants to meet our deep needs and our children's needs.

Some day, we will learn how important our prayers were when we stand before God and he shows us the fruit of our prayers.

Monday 6 May 2013

When God seems silent

Pete Greig, a world leader in the 24/7 prayer movement, has written a compelling book called God on Mute about his struggles with God as his wife Samie was ravaged by a life-threatening illness.

Grieg was shocked to the core of his being when his 29-year-old wife, mother of two small boys, was suddenly struck with seizures.  Doctors discovered the cause - an orange-sized tumour in her brain.

The tumour was removed but Samie was unable to shake the seizures which were often frightening.  Over time, the illness hovered over the Greigs, ready to strike at any moment.

Very honestly, Greig writes about how his prayer life suffered as he watched his wife suffer.  He began a long process of trying to understand why God did not heal his wife the way others had been healed.

I appreciate this deeply personal book because it voices the questions we "prayer warriors" are reluctant to raise.  We prefer to talk about the many times God says "Yes" to our prayers.  Yet we are all aware that often our prayers are not answered the way we wish they were.

Over the centuries, people have offered various reasons for God not giving us the answers we want.  Among these suggestions:
  • We don't have enough faith;
  • A "yes" answer would be bad for us; and
  • God cannot give us what we want because there is sin in our lives.
But suppose none of these reasons explains the situation?  For example, Job was a fine, upright man with no discernible flaws.  God was pleased with him.  Yet he lost all his children and his wealth and was stricken with disease.  Through it all, he remained loyal to God, although he eventually asked questions of the Lord.

In Job's case, God essentially told him that he - God - knows what is right and good and man cannot put himself in the Lord's shoes.

Grieg talked to a lot of people about prayer and Samie's illness and he shares their answers and their experiences in his book.

He navigated this trial with his faith intact.

Towards the end of the book, he says: "The greatest miracle in the world - greater than any healing or any revelation - is the grace unleashed by a life refined through suffering."

As he notes, it is the grace unleashed by Jesus on the cross so that others might live.