Being
led to guide us into the true purpose for which we were placed, I assigned that
we all look through the Epistles to find out how the Patriarchs, (Paul, Peter,
John etc.) prayed. To discover the hows and whys, in an effort to find
out just how WE should pray. This miraculous undertaking has been
filled with spiritual road pointers, so that there is NO DOUBT as to what God
has in mind. I just was led to this article that I simply must
share. May YOU find it enlightening as I did.
Pray Until You Pray
A Simple Way to Begin Each Day an article by Jonathan Parnell Pastor, Minneapolis, Minnesota
You begin every
day with prayer, one way or another.
In
his book The Common Rule, Justin Earley explains that unless we create new habits of
gospel prayers in the morning, we’ll start the day with some kind of “prayer”
we’ve borrowed from the world. Whether it’s anxiety-ridden regret or
self-sufficient resolve, something fills our minds as soon as we awake,
directing us to look beyond ourselves, or at least deeper within. And here’s
the thing: unless we intend for our prayers to accord with truth, they won’t.
What
would it mean to start the day differently — to pray according to truth? It
would mean, for starters, that we don’t merely look beyond ourselves (and
certainly not within), but to God alone. That sounds simple enough: start every
day praying to God according to truth. We soon realize, however, that praying
truth as a daily habit can feel complicated.
For
one, regularly praying truth means we say many of the same words again and
again. We address God in the same ways, declaring the same realities. We don’t
say them in vain repetition,
but we do repeat them. For example, God is truly our Father in heaven every time we pray,
and so we say it — if not every time, at least repeatedly.
And
unless we’re only asking God for various things, our praying will involve
adoring God for his attributes (which never change) and thanking him for his
gifts (which are constant), and this also means repetition. But in repeating
the same truths, what if we slip into a kind of wooden formalism? What if we
end up just going through the motions?
One
Problem After Another
This is a danger. Habits, by definition,
become second nature to us; we do them almost involuntarily, without needing to
work up our wills. But if that’s where praying truth takes us, does that mean
our prayers are insincere (or less sincere)? Have we just dug ourselves into a
deeper hole? To remedy the first problem of not praying daily according to
truth, have we now spun off a second problem of wooden formalism?
While wooden formalism is indeed possible, we
also should consider the alternative danger of banking on creativity and
spontaneity to carry our prayer life. How creative and spontaneous do we
suppose we should be? Do we imagine that our praying to God should follow the
same patterns of our dialogue with friends? Are we to approach him with no
agenda, whether his or our own? Perhaps we assume we should pray as we’re
guided by whatever seems to come up during our time together, as if we were
sitting across from a trusted confidant, cup of coffee in hand.
As
romantic and authentic as this idea might seem, the problem with this type of
creative praying — at least for many of us — is its impracticality. It makes
one especially vulnerable to what D.A. Carson calls “mental drift,” which makes
sense given one obvious difference between God and your coffee friend: God is
invisible (1 Timothy 1:17). It’s not easy to carry on a conversation with an invisible
person. It takes locking in our minds and hearts with unusual energy, which tends
to wane. One reason crises improve our prayer lives is that they focus us, at
least for a season.
Mental Drift
Carson
describes what he means by “mental drift” in his book Praying
with Paul, and it’s
safe to say the experience resonates with all of us. He gives the following
example:
Dear Lord, I thank you for the
opportunity of coming into your presence by the merits of Jesus. It is a
wonderful blessing to call you Father. . . . I wonder where I left my car keys?
[No, no! Back to business.] Heavenly Father, I began by asking that you watch
over my family — not just in the physical sphere, but in the moral and
spiritual dimensions of our lives. . . . Boy, last Sunday’s sermon was sure
bad. I wonder if I’ll get that report written on time? [No, no!] Father, give
real fruitfulness to that missionary couple we support, whatever their name is.
. . . Oh, my! I had almost forgotten I promised to fix my son’s bike today. . .
. (2)
At risk in this
experience is that we become so discouraged, maybe even cynical, that we give
up praying altogether. We are so bad at it that trying feels like a waste of
time.
But
if we understand that prayerlessness is the greatest danger, then a wandering
mind or mindless repetitions suddenly become more normal, part of our humanness
in this age. It’s redeemed humanness in that we’re praying, but humanness still in
that praying is a struggle.
Repeating True Prayers Habitually
Carson
addresses these and other ailments with several lessons on prayer, including,
first, that we should plan to pray; and second, that we should adopt practical ways to impede mental
drift during those appointments. Among these practical ways he
mentions vocalizing our prayers, praying over Scripture, and journaling our
prayers. Following the same line of thought, I would add repeating true prayers habitually.
In other words, pray the same truths at the same points every day.
This method applies both pieces of Carson’s
advice: it makes prayer a regular practice, and it keeps our prayers on track.
By repeating true prayers habitually, we kill a few birds with one stone: we’ve
eliminated prayerlessness, we’ve mitigated the possibility of mental drift, and
inasmuch as these repeated prayers are indeed true, we’ve directed our prayers
according to truth, which was our problem from the start.
The
final piece, and the one impossible to script, is how we keep these
prayers real.
For that, we need the ongoing grace of God. At the same time, it’s worth noting
that repeating certain sayings every day doesn’t necessarily make them
insincere. For example, I say the exact same things to my wife and children
every single day, even multiple times a day, and I’ve never not meant it, even
if sometimes I might say it with more zest than at other times. Zesty praying
is a worthwhile hope — and may God grant it! — but our first goal should be
starting the day with genuine prayer that accords with truth. Now how does that
look?
Starting Every Day
Every day, at the earliest possible moment —
before you check your phone or your mind starts preparing for what’s ahead, but
after you’re mentally aware enough to think — consider reciting a simple prayer
full of truth.
In The
Common Rule, Earley
provides this example: “Spirit, I was made for your presence. May this day be
one I spend with you in all that I do. Amen.” Another example is a four-part petition taken from Psalm 51, or
perhaps one from Psalm 143, or many other such examples found in The Book of Common Prayer.
If our prayer lives accompany a life of Bible reading, then we have fresh opportunities
each day to stumble into another pathway for prayer. Listening to God is one of
the greatest preparations for speaking to God.
If
possible, consider making this simple prayer habit a mile-marker throughout
your day, with different prayers repeated at morning, noon, and bedtime. But
start with the morning, since it marks what many call a “keystone habit.” The
idea there, popularized by Charles Duhigg’s best-selling The
Power of Habit, is
that not all habits are equal. Some habits have the power to start a chain
reaction. Duhigg writes, “The habits that matter most are the ones that, when
they start to shift, dislodge and remake other patterns” (101). Repeating true
prayers, every morning, can have that effect.
Learn to Pray by Praying
To
be sure, this is not the only praying we do, but it is the
praying we’re sure to do. Often, it can become a jump-start to longer, more
conversant prayers — as the Puritans liked to put it, we “pray until we pray.”
Carson reminds us of this Puritan persistence, which means we should pray “long
enough and honestly enough, at a single session, to get past the feeling of
formalism and unreality” (18).
Indeed,
would that
God would make that our habit! If it already is, then
disregard all that’s been said here. But if that goal is still ahead, fellow
redeemed humans, repeating true prayers habitually,
every morning, might be your best next step.
The late J.I. Packer puts this all in context,
as quoted by Carson:
There is no recipe for prayer
that can work for us like a handyman’s do-it-yourself manual or a cookery book,
where the claim is that if you follow the instructions you can’t go wrong.
Praying is not like carpentry or cookery; it is the active exercise of a
personal relationship, a kind of friendship, with the living God and his Son
Jesus Christ, and the way it goes is more under divine control than under ours.
. . . As in other close relationships, so in prayer: you have to find out by
trial and error what is right for you, and you learn to pray by praying. (19)
Jonathan Parnell (@jonathanparnell) is the lead pastor
of Cities
Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he lives with his
wife, Melissa, and their eight children. He is the author of Mercy for Today: A Daily Prayer from Psalm 51.
