PRAYER OPTIONS

Prayer Options



If I want to communicate with a friend, I have options galore these days. I can phone him, fax him, e-mail him, or send him something by snail mail (or two-day mail or overnight mail). I can page him or call his cell phone. Or, I can do it the old-fashioned way: I can go and see him and talk to him face to face. And then I've got all sorts of options on how to travel.

Likewise, though we tend to think that prayer consists of one or two activities, there are all sorts of ways to communicate with God.

Rational and Beyond

Let's begin with the big picture. There are two ways to break down our options.

First, there is what I call "rational" prayer. That is to say, we use our usual logical abilities, our reason, to form sentences and express thoughts to God. We use language, which has structure and meaning, to express those thoughts. This is the type of prayer we usually think of when we think of prayer, and it is the primary subject of this book. Rational prayer is, after all, something you can talk about in a book.

But there is another way to approach prayer, what I'd call "experiential prayer." Here the idea is not so much to tell God something, or even to hear God say something back. The idea is simply to allow yourself to experience God's presence.


Again the analogy of husband and wife is helpful. Most of the time, my wife and I use reason to communicate with one another. We use words talking, whispering, shouting to tell each other what we're thinking. Other times, though, we just want to be together.

I remember when I realized how important this aspect of our relationship had become to me. We were driving somewhere one evening, and we were both silent for a long time when my wife broke in, "Are you angry with me?"

"No," I replied, wondering what she was talking about.

"Well, you're not speaking to me," she said. "You said you wanted to spend time with me, and now you're not speaking to me."

I examined myself to see if I was angry. I was not. I just didn't feel like talking. But I also didn't want to be alone. I just wanted to be with her. That's it.

We'll look at this more in "Listen Up"; for now, it is enough to know that not all prayer has to be jabbering away at God.

Shhhh

Another type of non-talking prayer is "listening prayer." Here the idea is to shut up for a while, to lean forward, to turn our ears to God, and to really listen to what God might be saying to us.

Listening can be a rational experience. Some people not many, mind you, but some literally hear a voice. During a high school church retreat I attended, we were asked one evening to go off by ourselves and spend some time in prayer, and to spend some of that time listening to God. For me it was the usual experience: praying for a couple of minutes, then thinking about the baseball game I was missing, then thinking about a girl, then praying for a couple of minutes. And so on.

But suddenly I heard some shouting coming from the center of camp. I rushed over, and in the excitement I finally figured out what was going on. One of the girls was saying that she had heard a distinct voice, which she was sure was from God: "You will be my missionary."

This was electrifying to a lot of the kids, though at the time I was pretty skeptical. I don't know if the girl ever became a missionary, but in the years since, I've become less skeptical about such matters. Not that I believe every report hardly. There are a lot of confused people out there who think God has told them all sorts of strange things. But I've read enough history now to know that, indeed, sometimes God speaks to people as in a voice.

At other times people experience God's voice as explicit thoughts. Other times still, we just "sense" what God is saying to us.


As a favor to a friend, I phoned a man 2,000 miles away who was offering me a job. I was pretty happy doing what I was doing pastoring a church but I thought I'd at least do my friend the courtesy of phoning his boss and finding out what the job in journalism was all about.

It was a typical conversation about a job. We talked about qualifications, range of pay, and so on. We ended the conversation simply saying we'd take the next step: He'd send me application forms and I'd think about it.

But when I hung up the phone, I suddenly was aware of something I hadn't been aware of: I knew I was going to not only get accepted for the job, but I was going to take it. I hadn't talked to my wife. I hadn't even decided to do it yet. But I had this "sense “some people call it a premonition that it was all going to work out. It did. To this day I believe that "sense" came from God.

More about listening prayer comes in "Listen Up."


For the Verbal

When I was taught to pray as a kid, I just assumed that if I were praying by myself, I'd think my prayer to God. I'd basically think sentences to God. Then one evening I walked into my cousin's room, and my idea of prayer expanded.


She was living at our home at the time, and she had recently become a Christian. That night, she was on her knees beside her bed, head bowed, and she seemed to be saying something aloud to no one in particular.

"Judy, what are you doing?" I asked. She lifted her head to look at me. "I'm praying." There was an awkward pause as I tried to take in this new idea. "Did you need me for something?'' she asked.

"Uh, no." And I stumbled back to my room wondering why someone would say her prayers aloud when no one was in the room.

Since that time, of course, I've learned about how people have different learning styles: Some need things diagrammed; others learn best by listening; others by manipulating objects.

The same is true in prayer: Some people don't feel like they're praying unless they are actually using their vocal chords. And there have been times in fact, a lot of times, for some reason, when I'm driving in the car when I pray aloud. It's just another way to pray.

Hodge-Podge Prayer

I come out of a tradition in which linear prayer is the ideal. By linear prayer, I mean praying in a logical sequence, sticking with one topic until you move on to the next.

Growing up, we were so linear that we had prayer lists, which mostly contained names of people, categorized by relationship (family, extended family, friends, coworkers), to make sure that we prayed for everyone who needed to be prayed for.


I'm not knocking linear prayer as you'll see in Chapter 10, "ACTS Now," I suggest a linear model for guiding prayer. Linear is good because it can help us stay focused.

But linear isn't everything. In fact, most conversations are not linear, if dinner table conversation is any indication. We move from what happened in school to what's on TV to who's got a game on Thursday to who's baby-sitting on Saturday all in about 18 seconds.

If conversation with loved ones is like that, why couldn't prayer be like that? Well, it can be. It doesn't have to have a plan of attack, an outline, or a goal. It can simply be a hodge-podge of thoughts or words directed in no particular order to God. It can be, well, like a conversation with a loved one.


Short and Sweet

And another thing: Free yourself from the stereotype that a good prayer is a long prayer.

That's no truer than saying that a good speech is a long speech. Let's never forget that the most famous and most moving speech in American history, the Gettysburg Address, is a mere 265 words.

Sometimes the best prayers are the short ones. In fact, if I waited around until I had a large block of time in which I could really get into prayer, I'd probably hardly ever pray. That's why many people make use of "arrow prayers." Here are single-subject, single-sentence prayers:

"Thank you, God, for this sunset!" "God, give me wisdom in this meeting." ''God, help!"

Don't get me wrong. We need to have times when we spend a lot of time with God, when we pray long and hard. But our prayer lives can be enriched immeasurably if we can learn to punctuate our days with short prayers as well.

On the Fly and on the Page

You've probably guessed that I'm an advocate of extemporaneous prayer, prayer that comes from the heart and that is spoken freely at the moment.

But I'm also taken with formal, written prayers though this was not something I appreciated for a long time.


For years and years, as I attempted to pray each morning, I fashioned my own prayers. I said what was on my mind in the best words I could think of a lot of mornings those probably weren't the best words. In fact, I realized slowly that they were pretty mundane words and that they just didn't express what exactly I was trying to say.

For instance, I'd want to pray that I would trust God during the day for his guidance. On one day I'd pray, "God, help me to trust you today." And then the next day, "Lord, help me to be open to your guidance today and to trust it." Or, I'd pray for forgiveness: "Lord, I've sinned again. I don't know what is the matter with me. Please forgive me."


Certainly, God hears such prayers because they come from the heart. The problem was not with God it was with me. I got tired of what I was saying, and I wasn't saying what I wanted to say.

Then I ran across the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, the church's prayer book. There I found prayers for trust and guidance, like this one:

Heavenly Father, in you we live and move and have our being. We humbly pray you so to guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit, that in all the care and occupations of our life, we may not forget you, but may remember that we are ever walking in your sight; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

And I found prayers of confession, like this:

Most merciful God,We confess that we have sinned against youin thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and left undone.We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.For the sake of your son, Jesus Christ,have mercy on us and forgive us;that we may delight in your will,and walk in your ways,to the glory of your name. Amen.

When I first read that, I said to myself, "That's what I've been trying to say!" And that's what I often say when I come across a well-crafted prayer. Using written prayers isn't for everyone, but it is another way to pray.

Journaling

Another tactic I use when my prayer life gets boring is journaling. Instead of thinking or speaking my prayers, I write them in a journal.


I can't recall where I got this idea, but it is a long-standing tradition. The Confessions of Augustine, one of the most remarkable books in Western Civilization, is one long prayer journal. It begins, "Man is one of your creatures, Lord, and his instinct is to praise you," and God is addressed in nearly every paragraph throughout the book.


I don't know that I've ever tried to craft a formal prayer in my journal. It's more along the line of expressing my thoughts and feelings to God as they come to me. I also use it as a means to examine myself in the presence of God:

"Lord, this morning I'm anxious about my work. Part of it is the pressure of trying to get so much done in so little time. But part of it is this continual struggle I have: I want to prove myself worthy to others. I know I'm worthy. So why do I so want to please others? Is it that I don't really believe you think I'm worthy? Help me to think through this issue so that I can work with energy but without anxiety."

Writing is slower than speaking or thinking, of course, which means that I pray about fewer things. But it does help me focus in prayer, and for that reason it is one of the most meaningful ways for me to pray. It also helps me in two other ways:

1. It helps me to pray when I can't find the words to pray. For some reason, when I can't think of anything to say, if I put pen to paper, the ideas start flowing.

(By the way: When I said, "I put pen to paper," I meant it literally. I've tried to journal on the computer, but the clicking and pounding of keys, the in-your-face light from the monitor, the having to sit erect in a chair all work against a prayerful attitude, at least for me.)

2. I can monitor my spiritual growth. Every once in a while, I read through old journal entries. I'm usually surprised. I often run across a description of a dream I was trying to understand a dream I had completely forgotten about but that came back in full force when I read about it again. Sometimes I'm surprised by my insights; I didn't know I had been thinking those thoughts way back then I thought this was a new insight! Sometimes I'm amazed at how long I've struggled with certain sins or concerns.


Now What?

I'm not going to go on and on about this. I think you're getting the idea that there is no one right way to pray and that I've probably not covered every option. So how should you pray? Certainly, rational prayer is the dominant style, as it is in all human relationships. But our prayer lives are richer when we open ourselves to other ways of praying. So as time and interest allows, experiment!