Week Two

Prayer

 Most of us would define prayer as communication with God which it is.  Communication involves both talking and listening.  But it we are honest with ourselves, our prayer lives are more about talking rather than listening.  We approach God as if God is the cosmic Santa Claus.  Yes we employ the ACTS acronym that we learned in Sunday school:

     Adoration (praising God for who God is)

     Confession (admitting our sins)

     Thanksgiving (thanking God for blessings)

     Supplication (asking for needs)

We acknowledge God's provisions for us and we butter God up acknowledging God's sovereignty so that we feel good about presenting God with our Christmas list.  Just like our Christmas lists, we also expect that God will give us what we want.  We TALK, TALK, TALK.  What about listening? 

Prayer is more than mere communication.  It is dialogue.  With communication, we impart information.  With dialogue, we move deeper, beyond the masks that we wear, to the depths of our spirit.  We bear our true humanity to God with all its imperfections.  Richard Foster says about prayer, "To pray is to change.  Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us.  If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives."  Through prayer, we see our need to conform to the likeness of Christ.

Prayer needs to be the fabric of our lives as Christians.  In the Scriptures, we read that Jesus got up early in the morning and withdrew to pray (Mk. 1:35).  Jesus was in the middle of his day, and he stopped to pray (Lk. 11:1).  In sum, the Scriptures encourage us to pray continuously (1Th. 5:17) as our goal.  When I think of praying continuously, Brother Lawrence comes to my mind.  In the midst of the washing the pots and pans, he kept his mind on Christ, seeing God in the ordinary.

While most of us are not Brother Lawrence, we can aspire to try to allow God to break into our day.  One of the ways that we can move in that direction is "Praying the Hours."  When I brought up this suggestion at worship, one of the thoughts is, "That's Catholic."  While Praying the Hours is a part of Roman Catholic monastic life, it predates the monastic movement and was adapted from ancient Jewish prayer practices.  One can use the Liturgy of the Hours (a Roman Catholic liturgy) adapted to our Protestant bent.  But I am merely suggesting that we use the model as a blueprint for prayer that is intentionally dispersed throughout the day.  If we commit to Praying the Hours model, we determine set periods of time, 5 mins, 10 mins, etc., and then we withdraw at certain times of the day, 8 AM, 12 PM, 3 PM, etc.  Obviously each of these times can be adjusted to fit your schedule.  And the prayers that you use can be unique to you.  The important thing is to stop and allow God to break into the day.

Before long, we will be like Brother Lawrence -seeing God in the ordinary of the day - and our lives will a living prayer to God.