The Power Of Prayer
Wow. I have a few posts in the hopper, but I keep coming across this great stuff to share.
Michael Spencer (the ‘Internet Monk‘) had an incredibly challenging piece about how we look at prayer. [UPDATE: For some reason Mr. Spencer has removed this posts from his site. I can find no trace of it, so I have removed the link to the specific article.]
I believe we can pray for God’s revealed kingdom purposes. I believe we can pray boldly for all things related to the Gospel. But that Mrs. Smith’s niece will make a better choice in a boyfriend? I don’t think he’s that kind of God.
…
I can’t ask for God’s protection and expect that bad things that happen to other people won’t happen to me. I can’t ask for God to straighten out messes in a miraculous way and still honestly say I believe what scripture says about what it means to follow Christ in my life.Jesus doesn’t run a protection racket, and he isn’t a rescue squad. He gives meaning to suffering and shows us the way of kingdom repentance and the cross. That’s where I am these days. I don’t want to tell unbelievers that God works things out for me because I’m on his team.
Read the comments, too, especially the great one by “J.Michael Jones”:
It is my humble opinion that the emotional reasons that these strange views are so wildly held by Christians (and scripture is so misinterpreted) is because of:
1) To make sure that their God is big enough, (omniscience), they assume that he is the extreme micro-manager.
2) To make sense out of the daily life, every event MUST have a big reason.
3) To feel secure, they must believe that there is no real danger in this world because a loving God controls every atom.
4) Evangelicalism is deeply invested in Gnostic Dualism. So events in this physical world, controlled by God’s wonderful laws of physics (as described by Newton) has no meaning unless they are spiritualized . . . strings going up to the Heavens or down to Hell. To them, only the “spiritual matters.
This is incredibly relevant to us right now because we’re struggling with prayer. In our small group we’ve moved away from the traditional model of group prayer. We found that we’d spend a half hour going around the circle asking for prayer requests and listing off the things that we were requesting prayer for. Then we’d have a time to pray, where there would always be a tension in the air. “Did we get them all? I’d better keep one eye on my notes and see which ones haven’t been prayed for yet and hit those ones.”
Then we realized two things: Firstly, the prayer that we were spending time on was already done. When we share our requests with each other we are sharing them with God. As we discuss them and support each other, that’s prayer. There’s no “magic” in saying something with your head down and eyes closed that doesn’t happen when you share a concern with another believer. The second thing we realized is that we were destroying the freedom to pray for what we felt we should pray for. Our egos, or the concern for others egos, got in the way because we didn’t want anyone to feel left out. Our process had the potential for hurting people in our group and it also broke the whole model of prayer as conversation with God.
So, now our small group prayer model is to share requests and support each other and discuss them and commiserate, and then have a short summary prayer. The requests and discussion is summarized and emailed to everyone the next day as a list for prayer through the week. It’s still weird somehow not to have that long “prayer time”. Habits die hard.
In our simple-church services, we still don’t have a good handle on group prayer. We’ve been simply having a quiet time, and people are praying for what they think is appropriate as they feel the need. Sometimes we sit for 15 minutes or longer in silence, as we all pray and wait for the spirit. It’s a powerful time, all sitting in silence together. It changes the whole concept of group prayer, so it’s still a bit uncomfortable, but it seems to be working for us.
What are you doing for corporate prayer? Small group prayer? What are your thoughts on praying for Aunt Bessie’s corns? Praying for less hugely broad post topics?
We just started doing “one accord” prayer in our small group, and it certainly is an improvement!
One person shares their specific prayer requests, then pray for themselves, then it is open the group - anyone can pray for that person and their request, and you can pray more than once if you’re led to, until the requester says ‘amen’ to signal that the group can move on to the next person.
“One accord prayer is a conversation between our Father, you, and the other (people in your group), so keep your prayers short and simple as you cover one topic at a time. The Holy Spirit will guide each of you and weave all your prayers together into a colorful tapestry of His own design. All your prayers – long, short, eloquent, fumbling – are beautiful to the Lord.”
Also see http://www.navpress.com/EPubs/......34.3.html
So I have two thoughts that I’ve been percolating…
The first is about our small group prayer. Although I enjoy the way we’re doing it, I also feel as though we’re still weak on the ‘acknowledging that Jesus is part of the conversation’ bit. Yes, Jesus is with us and listening, but sometimes I personally forget that he’s there and listening. It’s part of a larger lifestyle direction of mine to try to learn to constantly and consciously live in the presence of God. But I’m unsure of how to remind myself and everyone else that as we talk, God is also there in the conversation with us. Well I know how I might to it, but my cheeseometer would hit the roof!
Also, I do miss the times of approaching the throne together, hearing other’s prayers and being able to agree with them. I would like to spend more time in prayer together, not getting through the lists, but just talking with and listening to God together as a community.
Which brings me to my second thought… I read through the source/catalyst articles that you referenced and your own thoughts and I have issue with the underlying premise of prayer that’s being assumed.
It seems that the assumption of making requests in prayer is to get God to do what we want. (It actually seems as though the assumption is that requests are the sole format of prayer, but I’m sure that’s not what anyone’s saying so we won’t go there.) The idea that the primary function of prayer is to pass requests to God to have Him take care of them is wrong.
The reason that we pray is to be reminded of God’s awesomeness (in the true sense of the word), to submit ourselves to His plans for us and the larger world, to focus our physical dependence on Him, to be reminded of the great gifts He’s given us and to remind us to pass them on to others, and to focus our spiritual and mental dependence on Him as well. It’s to remind us to love God and to love others. The reason we pray is to be with God and develop our relationship with Him so that we can become more like Him and submissive to His will.
God as Father delights to hear our thoughts and interpretations of the events in our lives. I imagine (since I don’t have any real field experience) that parents, when they’re not feeling tired and frustrated, love to sit down with their kids and hear all the little events that happened in their day and their thoughts about them. In the course of the telling I’m sure that thoughts of “I’d like for this or that to happen” come out. And the parent listens and thinks, “I’d like that too. That would be nice.” or thinks that the request might not be in the best interest of the kid. They might try to make the request happen, they might not. But they still listen and care about the requests, because they love the person doing the talking. How much more then does God our Father who never tires or becomes sinfully frustrated!
God cares about all the events of our lives. I imagine that it isn’t as important to Him as it is to me that the next light turns green before I get there, but he’s more than willing to listen and if possible in His omniscience to grant that request because He’s a benevolent Father. But for God (and for me) the asking is more important than the getting. When we go down the train of thought that God isn’t involved in and care about the seemingly insignificant events of our day, we start down a dangerous path. At what point does an event become important enough for God to care about? Does someone have to die? Is even death unimportant to God? Does He only care about our eternal soul and the day to day workings are irrelevant? How then should we pursue the daily task of becoming righteous? Are we alone in that pursuit? No! God is intricately involved and cares about every aspect of our lives! He loves us and wants us to become what He has instructed us to become.
So then, I reiterate, the point of prayer isn’t to get stuff done, it’s To Be With and To Become.
However, to give some theological ‘character of God’ balance to that…
God is also the King on His throne. His righteousness and power exceed everything we could imagine. And we have been made friends of The King. For no reason of my own doing, status, or worthiness, the King has said ‘I count you as my friend, come and be in my presence.’ So then, what kind of ungrateful clod am I to come into his presence regularly and spend the whole time prattling on about my thoughts and asking for stuff? How awfully presumptuous and rude! I should be honoured to sit in silence and just be in His presence; to contemplate the great gift that His presence is to me; and to wait patiently for whatever he might deem important to say to me. I don’t think we spend enough time in silence in the presence of the King. Not expecting Him to say anything, but being content to be with Him and thrilled by His presence and interaction with me.
Our interaction with God needs to balance thinking of Him as Father and King. Not easy. Never finished. Lots of potential though!
Yet another long one. Sorry about that. Oh, I forgot about my thoughts on the J. Michaels quote. Oh well. Perhaps another day…