Week 31 Sunday
Week 31 Sunday
Prayer Is Revision
Acts 9:10-17
We come to our next step in our thoughts about prayer:
(5) Prayer is Revision. A revised version of your life is put out every time you pray, really pray. For in the silence before God, you bring more and more areas of life under God’s control, more and more powers are put at God’s disposal, more and more channels of receptivity are opened, more and more alignments of your will are made to the will of God. Someone has defined education as change. Then prayer is life’s deepest education, for in prayer you are being educated at the place that counts—at the center of life. You are being educated in being.
Dear Lord, three things I pray:
To see You more clearly,
Love You more dearly,
Follow You more nearly,
Day by day.*
If prayer is revision, then prayer means pruning. “He . . . cleans every branch which does bear fruit, to make it bear richer fruit” (John 15:2 Moffatt). Cleans it of what? God cleans it of sucker branches that sap the life of the branch, suckers that bear no fruit, that only keep the branch from bearing fruit. These sucker branches are not bad, they simply take life that should go into definite fruit bearing. Many of our lives are overgrown with the unimportant. We are busy with the nothings. Prayer brings the important to the center of consciousness and pushes the unimportant to the edges.
An artist had beside him as he worked a collection of precious stones of many colors. When asked why, he replied, “I have to wash out my eyes constantly in the colors of nature.” These colors clarified his colors. I look at Jesus and a sense of the worthwhile comes upon me. I wash out my eyes in his colors.
Someone tried to get slum children to clean up. They didn’t respond to these appeals until another method was tried: A child with a clean face and clean clothes was brought to them. Then they went off one by one and washed their faces. I look into the face of Jesus, and I know when I do that, that I must wash my own face, my heart, my life. Prayer prunes our purposes and our persons.
O Christ, I look into your face, hear your voice, and I go away feeling as though I want to throw away something. I want to empty my hands to grasp a whole Christ, I want the eternally worthwhile. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “How can a young man keep life clean? By keeping to thy word” (Ps. 119:9 Moffatt).
*Adapted from Richard of Chichester (1197–1253) prayer.
Week 31 Monday
Prayer Is Relaxation
Romans 15:13; Philippians 4:6-7
(6) Prayer is Relaxation. After Jesus had given the Disciples’ Prayer in Luke 11, he told of the man at midnight going to a friend and asking for bread, because a traveler had come to his home, he had nothing to set before the traveler. If I were an artist painting the picture of “The Christian,” I would paint this man at midnight, stretching out one hand toward the Friend asking for bread and stretching out the other hand toward the one in need. We might call him “The Mediator,” mediating between Fullness and emptiness. We might call him “The Pray-er.”
Jesus gave this picture to stress the importunate side of prayer. The man hung on and got what he wanted. Prayer creates persistent personality. But lest this parable should create tense, anxious personality, Jesus corrects this in the verses following by stressing relaxed receptivity. Three times he stresses the active, “ask,” “seek,” “knock”; but ten times he stresses the relaxed receptive side, “shall be given you,” “shall find,” “shall be opened unto you,” “receiveth,” “findeth,” “it shall be opened,” “will he give him a stone?” “will he give him a serpent?” “will he offer him a scorpion?” “give the Holy Spirit” (Luke 11:5-13 KJV). Here Jesus gave an emphasis of ten to three on the accepting side of prayer. But we cultivate the asking side rather than the “shall be given you”; the seeking instead of the “shall find”; the knocking instead of the “shall be opened.” We are active-talking instead of active-taking.
In breathing, the exhale and the inhale are equal. But suppose it were all exhale and no inhale? You’d die—on a half emphasis. In prayer, you must breathe out, remind God of your need; but you must also breathe in, receive from God for your need. The rhythm of prayer: Outreach/Intake; Outreach/Intake.
In the heart of man—a cry;
In the heart of God—supply.
This, then, is another rhythm: Cry/Supply; Cry/Supply. But the supply depends not merely on the supplication but upon the relaxation, upon relaxed receptivity. Plead the petition, pay the price, pick up the gift, and go away rejoicing. Talk faith to God and yourself. But the faith must not be only talking faith. It must be a taking faith.
O Christ, I have asked you and now I must go a step further. I must take from you. I grow bold in you since I am surrendered to you. So everything is mine. I take it. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “We are being transformed into the same likeness as himself ” (2 Cor. 3:18 Moffatt).
Week 31 Tuesday
Prayer Is Release
1 Thessalonians 5:17-19, 23
We saw yesterday that prayer is relaxation. It is opening the depths to God, learning the art of listening. Hearing comes through attention. You can shut off your attention and thereby shut off the hearing. Or you can turn on the attention and hear when others hear nothing. You can cultivate attention and therefore cultivate hearing. Relaxed attention to God—that is prayer.
We come to the next step:
(7) Prayer is Release. First of all, it is release from ourselves. Prayer is the most self-transcending attitude and act of which we are capable. It is a flight from the alone to the Alone. And then we are not alone; we are with Another. And being with that Other, we lose our aloneness, we become merged in God. We cannot tell where our thoughts end and God’s thoughts begin, where our acts end and God’s acts begin. For we are merged. Merged, not submerged. We are not swamped by God. We retain our sense of identity, and we are never so much ourselves as when we are most God’s. Someone, surprised at a famous surgeon pausing to pray as he began an operation, asked about the habit. The surgeon’s reply, “When I am operating, I feel the presence of God so real that I cannot tell where God’s skill ends and mine begins.” There was no ending and no beginning. They were one.
On the wall of a room of a church school, I saw this placard, “I can do very little, we can do anything.” That is pertinent to prayer. I can do very little alone; we can do anything together. Prayer is working out life’s solutions together. Here is a striking example, “My husband had an attack of angina pectoris. The heart specialist said that he could not live through the night, as the artery leading to his heart was closed and hardened. When I asked how long it would take to open, the doctor said: ‘It will never open again.’ I called our group to prayer. My husband lived on, is back to his office again, and has never had a return of it in any way. He really works harder than ever before, but the more intense part of his activities is for others, and he uses God’s strength rather than his own. This attack was ten years ago.” If God and she handled that desperate situation together, cannot God and you handle your lesser situations? Prayer unties knots everywhere.
O Christ, in myself I am a mass of festering weaknesses. In you I am able for anything. So I shed my weakness and take your completeness. I am no longer little, I am in you. That suffices. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Leave all to him, rely on him, and he will see to it” (Ps. 37:5 Moffatt).
Week 31 Wednesday
Prayer Is Rejoicing
Philippians 4:4; Colossians 4:2-6
We come to our final consideration:
(8) Prayer is Rejoicing. There is a rejoicing at the heart of prayer; a rejoicing that you have the answer to anything that may come. The prayerful heart is the confident heart, not confident with a self-hypnosis but with a realization that anything that happens can now be overcome, mastered, and used. One translation puts a familiar verse (Ps. 91:1) thus, “He that chooses as his permanent abode the secret place of the Most High shall always be in touch with the almightiness of God.” This is the secret of our inward hilarity. You can laugh at life for you are more than a match for life.
Someone asked a joyous modern saint if Jesus ever laughed, and his reply was, “I don’t know, but I do know that he fixed me up so that I can laugh.” And this laughter is not at jokes, but a deeper laughter, a laugher at life itself, a triumphant laughter that knows that now in God you can meet life whatever happens.
Psalm 16:11 (Moffatt) reads, “The full joy of thy presence.” The joy of the presence of God is “full”—not a joy of a part of life that leaves you in conflict with the rest of life but a joy that brings harmony to the whole of life, body and spirit. The trouble with prayerless joys is that they leave a conflict, a satisfying of one portion of the person, for instance sex, and leave the rest of the person frustrated and in conflict. But prayerful joy is “full joy.” It is unalloyed joy. An hour spent in the presence of God brings the purest joy known to humankind. “The joy of elevated thoughts,” of which Wordsworth speaks, is good, but this joy in the presence of God is not merely of elevated thoughts—something from us up—but a joy of descending thoughts, thoughts poured in from above. That is “the full joy” of God’s presence. Prayer creates the simple heart.
A friend speaks of how “heaven lit upon my lips,” and we think we can understand—he spoke heavenly words. But heaven not only lights upon our lips; it also settles in our hearts, runs along our nerves, thrills in our bodies, and permeates our beings. Joy, joy, joy—the full joy of God’s presence.
O Christ, I thank you from the depths of my being that I have found in you a joy that knows no recoil and from which I do not have to recover. This joy is recovery, is health, is life. I kneel in speechless adoration at the wonder of it. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Wait, wait for God. . . . I shall again be praising him, my saving help, my God” (Ps. 42:5 Moffatt).
Week 31 Thursday
Steps Toward a Real Prayer Life
1 Timothy 2:1-2, 8; James 5:13-16
We come now to the steps we may take to establish a real prayer life. I give these suggestions as scaffolding that may be taken down when the building of real prayer has been established.
A student said to me, “I go to these socials with these girls, but I don’t know what to say to them. Can you help me?” I asked him whether he was in love with any of them, and he replied that he didn’t think he was. I replied, “Then, that’s your trouble. If you fall in love with one of them you’ll know what to say.” It is so in prayer. Fall in love with God, and you’ll know what to say. Religion is a long falling in love with God. But love needs to be cultivated. It is not always “love at first sight.” Love often comes through insight, insight gained over a long period of contact. So these suggestions are in order to let love through.
(1) Breathe a prayer for help as you begin life’s most important exercise. You are beginning something that will make the difference between weakness and strength, between defeat and victory.
(2) Remind yourself that God is more anxious than you to set up this relationship of two-way prayer. You do not have to overcome God’s reluctance. You have to lay hold of God’s highest willingness. All of God’s barriers are down. All you have to do is to take down your barriers. Prayer lets God’s love in.
(3) Determine that a vital prayer life is worthwhile, the most worthwhile thing in life. If patience in failure is necessary to earn any worthwhile thing, then you must determine to be patient with your failures here. But remember they will be your failures, not God’s.
(4) Decide how much time you can give to this prayer exercise. Begin in a small way and then increase the time. I find I cannot get along with less than an hour and a half a day as a minimum. You may begin with ten minutes.
(5) Organize the rest of the day around this prayer time. Don’t let the rest of the day decide this prayer time. Let this prayer time decide the rest of the day. Fix that time, and let it stay fixed so that each day you do not have to debate the question.
O God, I’m beginning life’s most important lesson. I shall stumble and I shall fall; but if I stumble, I shall stumble in your direction, and if I fall I shall fall on my knees. For in this are the issues of life and death. Help me. I believe that you will. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Those who turn to the Eternal lack no good” (Ps. 34:10 Moffatt).
Week 31 Friday
Further Steps Toward a Real Prayer Life
Psalms 108:1-2; 116:7-11
We continue our steps in the ladder of prayer:
(6) Fix the time in the morning, if at all possible. If you fix your prayer hour at night, it will be backward-looking. If you fix it in the morning, it will be forward-looking. After Gethsemane, Jesus said, “Rise, let us be going” (Matt. 26:46)—be going to meet life’s tragedies. Prayer should end in “Rise, let us be going”—to meet anything, anywhere. The psalmist says, “My prayer comes to you in the morning” (Ps. 88:13 Moffatt). Again, “I sing of thy strength, a morning song to thy love” (Ps. 59:16 Moffatt). And in Isaiah, “Morning by morning he awakens me to learn my lesson” (Isa. 50:4 Moffatt). You are fresher in the morning and can learn better. “A vision of the Eternal’s goodness in the temple at the morning-hour” (Ps. 27:4 Moffatt). “I am up before the dawn to pray, waiting for thy promises” (Ps. 119:147 Moffatt). Wait for God in the morning when the soul of the day is at its best.
(7) Prime your prayer pump by reading from the Scriptures. Let God speak to you through the Word, before you speak to God through your words. It gives a climate to the prayer hour, starts your thinking in the right direction. Take a pen with you and note down what comes to you. That is an act of faith—something is going to come!
(8) Still the mind after reading the Word. In that stillness, God and your deepest desires can meet.
(9) If the mind wanders, do not be dismayed. Pray for the thing to which the mind wanders. In that way, you can redeem the wandering. It will be a prayerful wandering. So you need not worry about mind wandering.
(10) Pray for yourself. If you are purified, then your prayers will be purified. I find myself praying less and less for things, and more and more for right relationships. For if I get the right relationships, then the things needed will come as a corollary. The purification of the loyalties is the essence of purification. If there is anything in your life about which you cannot pray, bring it up relentlessly and expose it to God’s presence and suggestions.
O Christ, search me and see if there be any hidden sin in me, anything about which I do not want to pray. Bring it to your light and let me decide it there, there in the light. And help me to decide it decisively and forever. For your mind is my healing and my health. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Make the Eternal your delight, and he will give you all your heart’s desire” (Ps. 37:4 Moffatt).
Week 31 Saturday
Prayer as the Climate of the Day
Psalms 57:7-8; 85:8; 88:13
We come to the remaining steps in learning to pray:
(11) Pray first for yourself, and then go out into concentric circles, reaching out into ever-widening spheres. You will grow with the reach of your prayers. Hold these objects of your prayers up to God in loving thought.
(12) Pray for people whom you dislike and who may dislike you. That will sterilize any thought that may infect you.
(13) After you have prayed for others, ask if there are any “orders of the day” and then listen. God has purposes and plans to unfold through you. Listen for specifications. Every morning I stand at attention before God to receive the orders of the day.
(14) Pray these prayers “in Jesus’ name.” That is, in his character. That is the sieve through which the unworthy prayers drop. The Christian prayers remain.
(15) Believe that God hears your prayers and will give what you need, at the time needed. Not necessarily what you ask, but what you need. God will supply “all your needs,” not all your requests. God may give you something better than you ask. It will be as good as you ask, or better.
(16) Do everything that comes to your mind that would help answer the prayers. God may answer the prayer through you.
(17) Drop it into the subconscious mind, and let it there be a prayer attitude running through both the conscious and the subconscious attitudes. It will not be a strained attitude, but prayerfully expectant.
(18) Let prayer be the climate of the day. Prayer is the melody you sing as you go about your work. Let it be an undertone as well as an overtone. It will then tone up the day.
(19) If you have to wait for anybody or for anything, such as a train or an elevator, fill in that waiting time with prayer. That saves you from fretful frustration and makes your vacant spaces victorious spaces. You are never nonplussed, and you waste no time. In any case, prayer is a “time exposure” to God, and in every moment of exposure to God you are better. You are the answer.
O Christ, in your presence I am made over again into your likeness. I would emerge from every prayer moment more alive to you, more alive to life, and more alive to others. For I know that the praying itself is the success, whatever comes out of it. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “For the Eternal delights in his people, adorning the afflicted with a victory” (Ps. 149:4 Moffatt).