Into Prayer: When? Where? How? (Prayer IV)

So, how do we set our hearts to prayer, that we may learn to “always pray?” We learn to always be in prayer by setting aside time dedicated only to prayer. We’ve covered the “what” and the “why” above, but what about the “when,” “where,” and “how”?

When?

Whenever works! Many will tell you—and Christian tradition seems to uphold the idea—that morning is the time to pray, before your mind is crowded with thoughts. Yet Jesus is often recorded praying at night, sometimes in the deep night. Some people say we should pray in the morning, then at noonday, then at evening, then at bedtime. Some say taking a couple of long prayer “baths” each week is better than taking a daily “shower.”

Clearly then, there’s no one way to pray. What’s moreimportant isthat we have some consistency, fueled by our longing—and even better, our love—for God, and our desperate need to be aware of His nearness and goodness, no matter the storm or calm. I’m sure Jesus prayed with intentionality daily, though it appears he also set longer, dedicated times of prayer throughout his week and month. The main thing that influences the “when” is personality and temperament. We need to discern how we, as individuals, best posture our hearts to pray and hear. At the same time, we may need to discipline and train our personality and temperament.  

What’s clear for all of us is that it will take work. Practicing prayer means creating free, unhurried space. There’s a reason we order our spiritual practices starting with The Slow Life. Unhurriedness, silence, Sabbath, and hospitality are boulders that create space for the power of grace to fill our lives, but they also create space for more practices, like Scripture-reading and prayer. 

Personally, I do think it’s important, generally speaking, to do some intentional prayer around the time when you’re getting up for the day. The Scriptures say that God’s mercies are new every morning.[1]C.S. Lewis said, “Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.”[2]I also find it easier to create unhurried space in the morning. That being said, I think it’s also important to value flexibility by avoiding stringent rules. I do pray every day, although with two kids and a full schedule, it looks different from day to day. I make sure to dedicate longer times of prayer a couple of times throughout my week, wherever I can make it work. This works well for my introverted temperament, with its weekly pull to “get away from it all.” Discerning what works for you is part of your journey, and the consistent orientation of our lives around prayer, with discipline, is part of each of our journeys. As long as we remember that these are “connection times,” not just “times to get through a prayer,” we can come to prayer with anticipation, our feet fully outside of the hamster wheel of The Human Paradigm. The important thing is to see not that we have to pray but that we need to pray. 

Where?

Wherever works best! In the above passages from Luke, we see Jesus withdrawing to a deserted place, to a mountaintop, and to a place alone with his disciples. Clearly then, not all places are created equal. While we can pray everywhere, dedicated prayer happens more easily in certain places. 

Practicing in community of some sort is also important, as Jesus demonstrates with his disciples, taking them aside for dedicated times of prayer. A life liturgy (a spiritual order and structure to our days, weeks, months, and years) that involves regular prayer in community is an important anchor for our individual life before God. 

Again, it’s probably best not to be stringent with rules. Commitment, discipline, and dedication are the important things, no matter which structures best fit our lives, temperaments, and personalities.

How? 

Notwithstanding the fact that there’s no “one way” to pray, Scripture does give us clear and helpful guidelines. Nothing could be clearer, in fact, than what we call “The Lord’s Prayer,” which is one of the few times that Jesus answered a question with a clarion-clear answer.[3] 

Jesus makes it clear in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), of which the Lord’s Prayeris a part, that we are not to pray as the religious people of his day prayed. We are not just to memorize words or orations and then pray them loudly or at great length or for others to see, as if that impresses God. Many people approach God this way, through the perspective of The Human Paradigm, thinking they can appease or impress Him by doing the right dance steps, even if their heart is not in them. But the Father is interested in union, not in performance. So we are to pray with our hearts fully engaged. At the same time, Jesus does gives us words to pray, and words which are easily memorized. How then, can we take the words Jesus prayed and yet keep them from becoming rote? How can we approach with a both-and in mind, praying as Jesus taught us while also always keeping prayer fresh in our hearts?

The answer will involve praying with words in our heads but also coming to a place beyond words, where we are more in touch with our hearts than our heads. Prayer is a unique balance between these two realities, and moving into the heart is how we grow into the “always praying” posture that we see in Jesus. Sometimes we know what to pray, sometimes we don’t. Rather than seeing “not knowing what to pray” as bad, we can see our lack of knowing how to pray as a huge opportunity to get beyond ourselves and fall into God. 

For all of these readings in one place, order my book 'Learning to Live and Love Like Jesus.'

[1]Lamentations 3:22-23.

[2]C.S. Lewis, “A Letter to Mrs. L.” http://cslewiswisdom.blogspot.com/2011/06/relying-on-god-has-to-begin-all-over.html [June 6, 2017].

[3]Matthew 6:9-13; see also Luke 11:1-4.

Prayer Stories (Prayer III)

At first, tuning into the reality of God’s goodness can be difficult or unnatural. It’s like tuning into a radio station and we can’t quite get the dial right. Because of the things that have been done to us or the things we’ve done, we can easily become deaf to hearing who God really is.[1]But through prayer, the station becomes louder. Somehow, we start to find it more easily, more quickly. We start hearing the song of God’s goodness, and that changes everything. Pray long enough, and you’ll soon have stories about all the ways that God speaks. 

When I moved to California, I felt I was ready to meet someone—the someone. I’d had a string of super dysfunctional relationships. If someone could be paid for creating unhealthy relationships, I would have been in the Big Leagues. Maybe an All-Star, too. But I had experienced some wholeness and healing, and after having sworn off women for a long season (I know that might sound dramatic; I guess you have to be dramatic sometimes), I felt ready.

My sister had told me to pray for my wife in specific terms. Like, “God, I’d like her to be like this… and this… and this… with brown eyes.” What the heck? I thought. I’ll give it a try. So I drove down Spring Street in Long Beach, praying for a few things, personality traits and whatnot. Then I started thinking about her looks. 

I’d always had an attraction to dark-skinned women. I spent some time in Israel and I had come away thinking dark hair, dark eyes, yes, the Lord is good. So, I opened my mouth to ask for that. And, as I live and breathe, I could not open my mouth nor bring myself to pray it. My body refused. Something within me—surely the Holy Spirit within and all around me—said, “Nope…don’t pray that.” I don’t know how to explain it, but I knew on a gut level that I wasn’t to pray those words. I literally said, “Wow, okay. I guess that’s that,” and kept on driving.

That week, I met the woman who would become my wife. She is gorgeous. And white as the Alpine slopes. Not what I had in mind. And absolutely perfect. I learned something from the encounter: on some intuitive level, I could hear the Holy Spirit. It wasn’t some magical voice in my head, it wasn’t even a communication in words per se, but I had heard—in the form of a tug on my mind and a clear sense of instruction, like an invisible stop sign—the voice of God. 

I heard pastor and author Greg Boyd tell the following prayer story: A man who had basically nothing and had been reduced to living in his car felt led to attend a church service at Greg’s church. Further, he felt led to put his last twenty dollars into the offering. A member of the church (let’s call him Bill) saw the man from the back of the room and, knowing nothing at all about the man, had a clear sense that he was to give the man twenty dollars. So after the service, Bill found the man and said, “I feel like I’m supposed to give you this.” The man broke down, because it was like God saying to him, “I see you, I have your back, and I want to have a relationship with you.”[2]

The moral of the story? The Spirit of God wants to make Jesus known, but his people have to learn to listen. Bill was listening, and because he was, God could make His love and goodness known. Bill was in prayer, even if he wasn’t trying to pray. The more we incline our hearts to hear the voice of God, the more we will hear, always. 

These two stories are simple examples of God wanting to bring someone—in one case, me, in another, a man whose name I don’t know—into His goodness. They are somewhat “sexy” stories, in that they have a twist in the tale. But the reality is that sometimes (most of the time?) our faith walk does not feel sexy. Sometimes those “wow” stories recede into the past like oak trees along a suddenly treeless path. But even in the most mundane parts of the walk, the voice of God is there, to remind us that He is with us and that He is at work. And that He is leading us somewhere. Wherever we are in our walk with God, Jesus wants to keep us aware of a constant experience of life through his love.

For all of these readings in one place, order my book 'Learning to Live and Love Like Jesus.'

[1]See the ongoing realities of Exodus and Exile in ‘Chapter 11: The Grounded Life: Scripture.’

[2]I am going from memory, so I’m no doubt missing a detail or two about this story, especially since it’s not mine and I’m paraphrasing.

What is Prayer? (Prayer II)

You need not cry very loud: He is nearer to us than we think.[1]
-Brother Lawrence

Jesus was always in prayer, but Jesus also arranged his life for dedicated moments of prayer. 

Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer.[2]

 Jesus took Peter, John, and James up on a mountain to pray.[3]

Once Jesus was in a certain place praying. As he finished, one of his disciples came to him and said, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”[4]

Jesus dedicated himself to intentional times of prayer, and he went to places where he could pray easily. The wilderness. A mountain. In community with his disciples. Already, we get a sense of some practical “how-tos.” But what exactly was Jesus doing during these times of prayer?

Was he asking for things (perhaps for “a Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time”)? Indeed, that’s how many of us relate to prayer. We simply ask God for things, as if He’s the great Gumball Machine in the Sky, or better yet, our Cosmic Butler.[5]

Of course, prayer is a lot about requests, and Jesus tells us certain things to ask for, but the first thing that matters in prayer is our posture before God. Because prayer is the place where we learn to relate to God as Father as Jesus did. It’s a conversation with God that allows us to become aware of His presence, nearness, and goodness in a way that continually transforms us. We can only fully ask from prayer in the way that Jesus tells us to if we are in prayer with this posture.

When I was growing up, I was scared of approaching my dad most nights. If, say, I needed him to sign my report card or ask him for money. He had this big blue armchair in his study and he’d there watching TV, his back to the door. I was terrified of interrupting him and annoying him.

Guess what? I pretty much learned to relate to God—and to prayer—in the same way. Our adoption into our identity as children of God is often messy because there’s a part of us that has to die in order to be resurrected into an awakened understanding of who God is. The part of us that doesn’t think we can trust God, that thinks we have to earn His love or approval—that part has to be put to death.[6]And even if we don’t like those parts of us that are put to death, they are still part of us, so it’s still painful to have them die.

What gets resurrected, though, is glorious and fully worth it. In prayer, we learn to see the reality of who God is. He’s not aloof. He’s not sitting in some heavenly armchair. He’s not angry, absent, or ambivalent. He’s far better than you can imagine. We get to awaken to this reality. This is what prayer is all about.

For all of these readings in one place, order my book 'Learning to Live and Love Like Jesus.'

[1]Brother Lawrence in The Practice of the Presence of God. Whitaker House. New Kensington, PA. 1982. See “The Seventh Letter.”

[2]Luke 5:16.

[3]Luke 9:28.

[4]Luke 11:1.

[5]See Skye Jethani’s With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God. Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, TN. 2011.  Cf. Chapter 3, “Life Over God.” 

[6]Often, even what we’ve learned in the Church has to be put to death, if it doesn’t reflect the reality of who God is.