talking in the dark 19

Our church journeyed through January with a focus on prayer. Our preaching series was “Questions of Prayer,” which aimed to be honest about questions we share about prayer and give us orientation points for our praying. An optional step past Sunday morning is working through Steve Harper’s book, Talking in the Dark: Praying When Life Doesn’t Make Sense.

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In the previous post on this book, we covered the first half of the Lord’s Prayer. Let’s complete our look at this prayer today.

By way of introduction, Steve Harper points out that when we transition from the phases that center our petitioning in God and what he wants, we see how the first three petitions “set the boundaries that enable us to then move into making specific requests for ourselves” (p. 105). The “us” phrases that follow are clearly focused on our needs, but “are correct and safe only when preceded by the view of God and ourselves that he first section of the prayer provides.”

Give us daily bread

Notice the plural, “us.” Now that we are formed by the first half of the prayer and re-oriented around God’s character and what he desires, even when we pray for ourselves, we pray not only for our needs, bur for the needs of “us” – all who are in need of God’s provision. Steve points out that “we pray for the bread we need, not necessarily all the bread we want. That is, we pray as stewards, not consumers.” (p. 106)

Forgive Us

Again with the “us.” We may not speak in terms of sin and guilt, but they are real. And we need forgiveness. We are obsessed about guilty feelings, which are not insignificant. But it seems to me that our interest in not being made to feel guilty about something we’ve done, are doing, or want to do, serves as a distraction from discerning whether or not we are guilty. So Jesus teaches us to forgive and to seek forgiveness.

Lead us away from temptation… deliver us

Think about this: Everyone has “a ‘first day’ of temptation—a moment when the temptation resembled a flicker more than a fire, or a pesky fly more than a savage beast” (p. 108). But temptation grows when it is not resisted, when it is not dealt with. Steve points us to the classic prayer from Psalm 139:23-24 as a way to deal with temptation before it has its way with us: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

Praying “deliver us” acknowledges that God can deliver, can save. That’s why “despair,” as Steve says, “is not the final word in the Christian’s vocabulary; hope is.” (p. 111)

talking in the dark 18

Our church journeyed through January with a focus on prayer. Our preaching series was “Questions of Prayer,” which aimed to be honest about questions we share about prayer and give us orientation points for our praying. An optional step past Sunday morning is working through Steve Harper’s book, Talking in the Dark: Praying When Life Doesn’t Make Sense.

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After Steve’s beginning reflection on the difference between thinking as a “self” versus thinking as a “person” (see previous post), he moves into the practical application of that point in how the Lord’s Prayer can shape our praying. He says, “To be a person is to be like God, who is a Person. And this likeness to God (imago dei) is the starting point for praying for ourselves.” (p. 102)

Our

When we conceive of ourselves as a “self” we are considering ourselves isolated individuals. But when recognize that we are persons, we see that we are in relationship—first, to God, and second, to others. Steve witnesses to this insight’s effect on his praying: “Therefore, I will pray for myself with the spirit that says, ‘God, I ask only those things for myself that will glorify you and make me a fuller and finer member of the human family.’”

Father

Praying in a relational act, not a transactional one. It is family conversation with the God who is the parent any good father or mother strives to be like and any poor father or mother should have been. Good parents work for what is best for the child, whether the child understands and agrees to that or not. “The One to whom we pray is the one who made us, loves us, and wants to do more for us than we can ask or imagine” (p. 103).

In Heaven

This does not mean that “God is distant or aloof” (p. 104). Rather, “when I prayer for myself, I pray against the backdrop of the eternal and unchanging.” We can depend on God, and our praying can lean into God’s dependability in the face of our immediate reality.

Thy kingdom come / Thy Will Be Done on Earth as it is in Heaven

There is a realm in which God’s reign is perfectly followed and lived out. We want our world to be more like that. I once heard Dallas Willard say something to this effect: the point is not merely about getting us to heaven when we die; the point is getting heaven into us while we’re alive on earth. Amen. Praying the Lord’s Prayer this way asks for God to get heaven into us—individually and collectively—while we are on earth. “Rather than being egocentric selves, we are persons abandoned to God—people who want God’s will to be done, not their own. We pray for ourselves as consecrated and yielded selves.” (p. 105)

In the next post, we’ll take up the second half of the Lord’s Prayer.

talking in the dark 17

Our church journeyed through January with a focus on prayer. Our preaching series was “Questions of Prayer,” which aimed to be honest about questions we share about prayer and give us orientation points for our praying. An optional step past Sunday morning is working through Steve Harper’s book, Talking in the Dark: Praying When Life Doesn’t Make Sense.

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Chapter 8 of Talking in the Dark is titled “Praying for Yourself.” Steve begins by sharing the concern of a woman who attended a prayer workshop he was leading. “She remarked that she was weary of praying ‘give me, get me’ prayers” (p. 101). I’ll share the first part of his response here, which deals with our misunderstanding of ourselves.

It is, of course, alright to pray for ourselves. Plenty of biblical stories tell of people praying for themselves and many of the psalms are prayers offered to God with specific requests.

When there is darkness in praying for ourselves, what is at issue?

Steve tells us that the problem is our secular, rather than biblical, notion of the self: “The secular notion tells me I am an independent, individual self that is supposed to be affirmed and actualized. In other words, we are egocentric.” (p. 102)

But the bible tells a different story. “Instead of the psychologized understanding that I am a self, the Bible teaches that I am a person.” To say we are persons is to say that we are made in the image of God (imago dei is the Latin phrase). Understanding ourselves as persons in the image of God, imago dei, is square one for praying for ourselves. “Fundamentally, imago dei means that I am a being in relation to others. …As a self, it is possible to understand life in isolation. But when I realize that I am a person, I understand that I am always in community.”

When realize that we are “persons in community” rather than “individualized selves,” the way we pray for ourselves is different. The “give me, get me” prayers the woman was weary of are the prayers of an egocentric individualized self. The truer prayer for oneself as a person is praying that seeks what will help us glorify God and become “a fuller and finer member of the human family.”

In the next post, we’ll look at how the Lord’s Prayer helps us to pray as persons.

talking in the dark 16

Our church journeyed through January with a focus on prayer. Our preaching series was “Questions of Prayer,” which aimed to be honest about questions we share about prayer and give us orientation points for our praying. An optional step past Sunday morning is working through Steve Harper’s book, Talking in the Dark: Praying When Life Doesn’t Make Sense.

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Today I want to share one last post on discoveries concerning intercessory prayer, praying for others. I have only one discovery from Steve remaining to share, but it is a practical one with more application options.

The Management of Prayer

That may seem like an awkward discovery to make, but Steve points out that “the mystery and magnitude of prayer can overwhelm us if we are not careful.” Going through a lengthy list on a daily basis can become stale or seem needlessly redundant. That sounds awful to say, but I’m willing to bet that most people have felt that way and, of course, felt guilty about feeling that way.

But practical organization is okay, and maybe even to be preferred. Steve tells us that “John Wesley divided his intercessions over a seven-day cycle.” He had a focus for each day—virtues to cultivate and persons or situations for which to pray.

Steve reports his own pattern for years: “to use a weekly cycle with people and topics recurring once a week.” In addition to this, he includes a monthly prayer list for people and ministries to lift up in prayer.

Also, prayer guides can be helpful. Different Christian traditions have different approaches that can be used to structure one’s praying. The Book of Common Prayer is a good example, as is Phyllis Tickle’s The Divine Hours series of prayer books. Steve reports using various resources from Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox traditions, adding, “I do this as a way of ensuring that I am praying with the whole church, not just my preferred part of it” (p. 97).

Scripture itself is a rich resource for intercessory prayer. “Weaving its way throughout my intercession is my growing comfort in praying the scriptures back to God. …Sometimes I find that praying the Word gives me a perspective on my intercession that I would not have if I had limited my praying to my own words.”

Final Thoughts

Most important is developing a heart for intercessory prayer. “I believe it is an expression of God’s heart for the world,” Steve writes. And intercession can be our point of contact with God’s heart that moves us to action. The missionary Frank Laubach “began each day praying, ‘God, what are you doing in the world today that I can help you with?’” (p. 98). That is a prayer that seeks how God may want to use us as an answer to intercessory prayer—our prayers, or others’.

Finally, Steve reminds us that whatever the difficulties we might have understanding intercessory prayer, “it is not the most difficult to practice. …Here’s a suggestion: use the time you might normally spend trying to figure out intercessory prayer to pray for others.”

talking in the dark 15

Our church journeyed through January with a focus on prayer. Our preaching series was “Questions of Prayer,” which aimed to be honest about questions we share about prayer and give us orientation points for our praying. An optional step past Sunday morning is working through Steve Harper’s book, Talking in the Dark: Praying When Life Doesn’t Make Sense.

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We pick up today where we left off in the last post on intercessory prayer, or praying for others. When we wonder about intercessory prayer—how it works and whether we are making a difference—we make several discoveries when we ask our questions as earnest seekers rather than cynics. In the last post, we once again acknowledged mystery. Here are some more discoveries when we investigate intercessory prayer.

The Need to Be Absolutely Honest With Your Questions

Steve shares a helpful tool for assessing how honest we are before God. Imagine the pain chart at the doctor’s office or hospital room with the words “no pain” under a smiley face and “worst possible pain” under a contorted face. When a patient is asked where they are on the chart, they must be honest. Their responses determine the treatment. “Likewise, in prayer, if we lose honestly with ourselves and our situation, we determine who much assistance we are willing to receive from the Great Physician. …Nothing good comes from… denial” (p. 91).

Realizing That Intercession Has Been the Consistent Practice of God’s People

“The saints prayed for others, and they did so believing they were doing something that pleased God and had meaning” (p. 92). They did so in good times and bad, in encouraging conditions or discouraging situations. Further, not only was Jesus a constant intercessor in his earthly ministry (even praying for his crucifiers from the cross!), Hebrews 7:25 teaches that he continues his ministry of intercession at the right hand of God.

So why not learn about intercession from the many that practiced it faithfully? “We want to learn from the best examples [the saints], not the worst ones [the skeptics]. Why should prayer be any different?” Look to church history for solid examples. Renovare’s Devotional Classics and Spiritual Classics collections are a great resource here.

Learning to Pray Your Heart’s Desire

When we don’t know what to pray for in a given situation, perhaps because we’re not confident about what we should pray for, it is okay to simply pray what we desire and entrust the situation or the person to God’s wisdom and care. Instead of getting bogged down in what we don’t know and haven’t figured out, just act on what we do know. Honestly praying for our heart’s desire and trusting God for the best outcome—physical healing, some kind of provision, etc—is a good way to pray. “Such intercession puts prayer in the right arrangement,” Steve reminds us. “Our part is to pray; God’s part is to weave everything into the tapestry of the divine will” (p. 95).

talking in the dark 14

Our church journeyed through January with a focus on prayer. Our preaching series was “Questions of Prayer,” which aimed to be honest about questions we share about prayer and give us orientation points for our praying. An optional step past Sunday morning is working through Steve Harper’s book, Talking in the Dark: Praying When Life Doesn’t Make Sense.

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Chapter 7 is titled, “Praying for Others,” and deals with intercessory prayer. Here there are plenty of questions. The most obvious and plainly stated is this: What difference does it make? Since the connection between intercession and answer is not as predictable as we would like, this is a reasonable question.

But our motive in asking it is critical. Are we asking as cynics, always questioning but never praying (honest frustration is not the same as cynicism)? Or are we genuinely interested in growing as pray-ers? The latter motive is clearly the healthier stance. Approached from this angle, there are several discoveries to be made. We’ll begin looking at them here, and finish looking at them in the next post or two.

We Find Mystery

This is a truth we’ve been acknowledging steadily through this book, but it’s worth saying again. But Steve helpfully points out that he lives with mystery in lots of areas of life: “We operate machinery, use technology, travel…, do business, and form relationships without understanding how everything works. But we press on” (pp. 88-89). The same is true in intercessory prayer. We don’t understand how everything works, but we press on, hopefully. Admitting that some people struggle harder than others with unanswered prayers, Steve confesses, “I must tell you that intercessory prayer was saved for me when I realized that I did not have to understand it in order to practice it” (p. 89). That strikes me as just the sort of obvious and useful point that we need to hear when we wrestle with the question, “What difference does it make?”

Here’s a final admission about the mystery of intercessory prayer that I found convicting and helpful. Steve writes: “I had to come to the place where I could acknowledge that faith I can understand is actually faith in myself, not in God. One of the prerequisites for intercession is an ‘unknowing’ that takes me out of the center of things and allows God to dwell there” (p. 89).