Postscript to Christians Becalmed in Their Praying
Postscript to
Christians Becalmed
in Their Praying
We began this book in hope of helping Christians who want and try to pray, but who feel that their praying is somehow stuck and that they need some form of jump-start. The image of a sailing ship with no wind in its sails illustrates their feeling exactly. What causes this feeling may have no direct relation to prayer as such: the sense of getting nowhere in prayer may be a byproduct and thus a sign and symptom of some physical or mental or circumstantial condition that strikes at the life and balance of the mind; or from a trough of emotional exhaustion after a high of some kind, sustained perhaps over some length of time; or from long neglecting the sabbath principle of programming periodic variety, regular rest, and sufficient sleep into one’s life, all of which conditions make our hearts unfit for prayer just as having pneumonia unfits our bodies for playing hockey. When we feel stuck in prayer, all these possible reasons why should be checked out first. It may be medication rather than spiritual discipline that is needed to remove the blockage. But if the problem really is as it feels, then we would like to offer here some practical suggestions that may help.
Prepare to pray by first thinking over who it is that you will be addressing, what he has done to give you access to himself and a permanent claim on his attention, how you stand related to him at this moment, and how little you deserved the gifts of forgiveness, freedom and a place in the Father’s family that you enjoy now. Think of the truly breathtaking fact that through his Word and Spirit the Lord Jesus is building a friendship with you, sinful though you are, and that he is looking to you to be building a friendship of love, trust and obedience with him through your responsive words to him in prayer. Then start talking to your Father and your Savior in terms of the thoughts that are now in your mind.
Pray aloud, at least in a whisper. Speaking your words, even if under your breath, “lipping” your prayers as some call it, helps you to concentrate on what you are doing and guards you against wandering thoughts. In the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries (to look no further), praying Christians regularly spoke their private prayers aloud, and the idea that private prayer should always be made in total silence is quite recent, just as it is quite silly. Moreover, when you are on your own, it will ordinarily help you if you punctuate your out-loud praying by singing or reading aloud favorite hymns and songs of praise. The older Methodist way was to take a hymn book as well as a Bible into their place of private prayer and to use both, and their example, we believe, remains one to follow.
If ever you find yourself lost for words, especially when you contemplate God’s holy majesty at the start of a prayer time (and who has not known that experience?) but also at any other point when your heart feels blocked and in need of uncorking, turn to the Lord’s Prayer (a model for disciples, Jesus said, as well as a set form: see Mt 6:9; Lk 11:2), and use each clause of this prayer as a hook on which to hang amplifying thoughts of your own. Martin Luther, who used and taught others to use the prayer this way every day, recommended making “a garland of four twisted strands”—first, a celebration of the gracious truth(s) that each clause displays; then, words of thanks to God for all the good gifts from him of which the clause reminds you; then, a confession of your failures, of whatever sort, to take those words seriously as a guide to life; and finally, a voicing of whatever specific petitions the clause might prompt. C. S. Lewis had a similar routine, which he called festooning the clauses. Doing this gets your thoughts going, and where thoughts go words will follow.
Have handy secondary sources of help, such as the original Anglican Book of Common Prayer (an enormous help, being so closely attuned to Scripture, sin, grace and the heart). Use prayers composed by others, not as mantras to repeat as if they were spells (a common mistake) but as launchpads for your own thinking about whether this is what you want or need or ought to be saying to God. When you are clear on this, write out your thoughts as your own prayer, which you then actually pray, and you will find that that gets you going in thoughtful personal praying about other things.
Listen for God as you pray your way through the Lord’s Prayer. Continue listening as you precede or follow your moments of prayer with the reading of Scripture. What Luther said about listening in prayer is as fruitful as and perhaps more fruitful than anything that has been said on the subject since his day. For Luther:
It often happens that I lose myself . . . [literally, “that my thoughts go for a walk”] in one petition of the Lord’s Prayer, and then I let all the other six petitions go. When such rich good thoughts come, one should . . . listen to them in silence and by no means suppress them. For here the Holy Spirit himself is preaching and one word of his sermon is better than thousands of our own prayers. . . .
If the Holy Spirit should come and begin to preach to your heart, giving you rich and enlightened thoughts, . . . be quiet and listen to him who can talk better than you; and note what he proclaims and write it down; so will you experience miracles as David says: “Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law” (Ps 119:18).
Writing what you hear from God as you read and pray remains wisdom: it takes you beyond the monotonous ruts of generalized piety to a variety of insights, realism about both God and yourself, and deepening discovery of God’s holy ways, leaving you with more than enough to pray about every day.
Form a prayer partnership with someone whose concerns match your own, and share with each other what God shows you as you experiment with some of these suggestions, or maybe along other lines or even as you work your way through the questions and exercises appended to the end of this book.
Find what works for you; if you experiment, you will! And then stay with it. What your heavenly Friend has in mind for you is not unending frustration in prayer but that you should latch on to the way of praying that makes for the closest, most honest and most enriching fellowship between you and him. It will not be quite the same for everyone, yet it will always be similar. We must never forget that our God will not allow us to let the good become the enemy of the best, or the comfortable obstruct the profitable, or what captivates the head insulate us against what activates the heart, or what gives ease get in the way of what brings growth. That explains some of the rough places in our pilgrimage and the dry places in our praying, which even the most faithful Christians experience from time to time: it is our heavenly Friend doing his job unflinchingly well. In character as the Great Physician he is leading us on with himself into perfect health, and he knows what will do us most good at each stage.
So let the last word be Paul’s in 1 Thessalonians 5:17: “Pray without ceasing” (KJV); “Keep on praying” (NLT); “Pray all the time” (The Message); “Pray on” (J. I. and Carolyn). And see what God will do.