thoughts out !oud

a Christian’s news, views, opinions and occasional poetry …

You don’t have to pray … you get to!

Posted by Mathew | 4 August 08

Prayer is essential to the Christian world-view and life-style. It is the heartbeat of a Christian’s spiritual walk with God and a hallmark of his spiritual maturity. The scriptures petition us to pray; we pray predominantly when there appear to be no other options open to us, yet we ought also pray with thanksgiving when times are good. Prayer is not about getting God to do what we want Him to do, nor is it about telling God what He doesn’t already know. Prayer is much, much deeper than these shallow misconceptions of it. Oswald Chambers says of prayer:

Is the Son of God praying in me, or am I dictating to Him?….Prayer is not simply getting things from God, that is a most initial form of prayer; prayer is getting into perfect communion with God. If the Son of God is formed in us by regeneration, He will press forward in front of our common sense and change our attitude to the things about which we pray.

So prayer is really about communion - about frequent, daily communication with God. I would be the first to tell you that my prayer life is below standard - but if I’m honest, I actually pray more often than what I realise. Why do I say this? Well, I think most of us have this idea that real prayer is what you do when you drag yourself up out of bed at 4.30am in the morning and spend an hour at before breakfast. Real prayer consists of you lying prostrate or perched on your knees with your eyes closed, fiddling with beads or facing east.

But this is not real prayer at all. In fact, the prayer beads and the facing of east is not even Christian - we’ll leave those out.

So what is or what does real prayer look like?

Personally, I feel that real prayer is a good balance of different modes of prayer. Like anything else, variety can be very healthy, and it is also very healthy in prayer. You may even be praying without realising it half the time - when driving along, you may find yourself ‘talking to your steering wheel’; when commuting to and from work on the train, ‘resting your eyes’ and silently praying becomes a very effective time to pray; taking walks during your lunch hour, or praying out-loud (or to yourself) while weeding the garden are good opportunities to reflect on God’s goodness to you or for talking through issues with your Heavenly Father. There are many other situations. They do not need to be formal offers of prayer - as Chambers mentions, prayer is about sharing (communion) with God. As long as it involves discussion with God, it matters little that you are not on bended knees or not in a place of worship or that you’re not praying out loud. God’s knows the heart and mind of everyone, after all.

The important point of all of this, however, is that we oughtn’t feel guilty about not praying the way see or hear of others praying. Prayer is not a mandatory requirement for the Christian; rather, it is his great privilege to pray. And it is practical to pray in almost every and any circumstance, so we have every opportunity to do so and to take benefit in this act of on-the-go worship and praise of God the Father.

Having read through Brother Andrew’s short book, Prayer Works, and previously having tackled EM Bound’s volume on prayer, one thing I would have to agree on is that the effectiveness of prayer revolves around how close one is to God. If you share your life with God, read the Bible often, study it and act on it, if you begin to know God intimately through the gift of His Holy Spirit, then, like the biblical saints, prayer becomes something truly magnificent and incomprehensible to those who are spiritually inept.

Those who know God the best are the richest and most powerful in prayer. Little acquaintance with God, and strangeness and coldness to Him, make prayer a rare and feeble thing. –E. M. Bounds

To pray effectively, we need to know God and to know Him as a personal friend.

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