George Buttrick in his large book simply called Prayer tells of why
the Acoma Indians in Colorado chose to live on the mesa. The rock
gave them safety. The Apaches on the South and the Navajos on the
North made them sitting ducks down on the plains, and so they headed
for the rocks. A narrow path up the steep rock-staircase made it
impossible for an enemy to get to them. A few men could defend
against an army, and so they felt secure on the rocks.
The rocks provided natural cisterns to store water, and soil
carried up to the rocks was kept cool, and so the flowers bloomed in
splendor. They had security and beauty. They could watch the
drifting clouds above ever changing, and the shifting sands of the
desert below were being blown by the wind into new eddies. Earth
and sky in ceaseless change, but they stood on the solid rock that did
not change.
Buttrick says this is the longing of all men to have a solid place on
which to stand and live. They long for permanence in a world of
change, and that is what prayer is all about. Prayer is about
connection with the Rock, and with the God who is permanent and
changeless. Prayer is about security and stability in a world where
there is so little solid ground. Prayer is our link to the Permanent. He
quotes Henry Francis Lytes famous hymn Abide With Me.
Abide with me: fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide!
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
Swift to its close ebbs out of life's little day;
Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changes not, abide with me!
This prayer for the permanent presence of the Rock in our lives
is based on the conviction that there is no solid ground in this world on
which to live and stand. Prayer is saying that I must reach out to a
world beyond this one or be forever trapped in the shifting sands of
time. Prayer is the conviction that there is another realm above time,
which is the realm of eternity, and it is determined to get in touch with
that higher realm which is permanent. So prayer is not just the kid's
stuff of gimme, gimme, gimme. It is the stuff of deep philosophy and
theology, for it deals with the essential issues of the meaning of life and
the purpose for our existence. Prayer is so amazingly simple, and yet
so awesomely profound that both children and scholars deal with it
everyday. It is to be a perpetual part of every believer's life.
Any day that we do not pray we disobey for Jesus expects that we
will give thanks for our daily bread as we make our other petitions.
The Lord's Prayer is quite short, and so Jesus does not imply that we
must all become mystics who spend many hours in prayer. But the
fact is, he does expect that His followers will be people that maintain
daily contact with the heavenly Father. Jesus had His quiet time, and
often we are told He got up early and went off to the hills to pray
alone. But prayer for Jesus was not limited to any time or place. He
was ready at any time to pray. For Him prayer was just including
God in His daily activities.
In Luke 10:21 Jesus, just all of the sudden, stops in the context of
a busy day to acknowledge God. It says, "At that time Jesus, full of
joy through the Holy Spirit, said, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven
and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the
learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was
your good pleasure." We think of prayer so often as being limited to
some formal setting, and we miss the joy of Jesus in just spontaneously
saying, "Thank you Lord," when we feel something positive about life.
Spontaneous prayer is much more meaningful and real than
planned prayer. Planned prayer is usually locked into formulas, and
we repeat the same requests over and over. This kind of prayer gets
dull, and it is seen as a duty rather than a joy. If you want to improve
your prayer life, do not assume you have to add more to your formal
times of prayer. Instead, add the spontaneous prayer that we see in
the life of Jesus. He had His formal times, and He said grace before
He ate, but the informal times are what most of us need to develop to
add new life to our prayer life. This kind of prayer is developed by
practicing a perpendicular perspective. This means learning to see
how heaven relates to earth, or how God is involved in the things we
experience all around us.
Our horizontal or humanistic perspective causes us to see only the
physical reality, and we miss the reality of the unseen. We miss the
things all about us that should lead us to praise God. For example, I
read of three men who stood gazing at Niagara Falls. One was a
mechanical engineer, and he said, "What a waste of power. I could
turn the wheels of industry with all that wasted power." The second
man was an artist, and he was positive. He saw great beauty and he
longed to reproduce it on canvas. The third man was a man with
perpendicular perspective, and he said, "What a great God is ours!"
All three could have been Christians with equal commitment to
Christ, but the first two were weaker in their prayer skills because
they did not see in power and beauty a reason to praise God first of
all.
Start practicing your perpendicular perspective. Set a goal of
seeing reasons to praise God for seven things in your daily life. If you
only get two, that is better than missing them all. This will help you
see prayer as more enjoyable, and not just as a duty that you have to
do. This kind of prayer is also a form of witnessing. When you see
God's hand in life, and you thank Him and praise Him, you display a
spirit that is seen by those around you, and this is a witness. Jesus
used prayer this way at the tomb of Lazarus. John 11:41-42 reveals
Jesus again in a spontaneous prayer: "Then Jesus looked up and said,
Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I know you always hear
me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they
may believe that you sent me." Here is Jesus using prayer as a tool
for witnessing. Prayer is offered to God, but you limit prayers value if
you think it is only for God. Prayer is for people to hear also. Jesus
prayed so people could hear Him thanking God, for He wanted His
relationship to God to be known so that people could see and believe
He was from God.
Public prayer is for men to hear. Public prayer communicates the
faith of the one praying to other people who are listening. It can
communicate knowledge, wisdom, joy, and a host of other values.
Most of us do not have many occasions to witness by prayer, and Jesus
is not revealed to be doing this often either, but we need to be aware of
the potential of prayer to touch men. When I see people praying in a
restaurant before they eat I experience their witness of faith. Verse 45
shows that the prayer of Jesus was answered. It says, "Therefore
many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what
Jesus did, put their faith in Him." Back up your prayer with a life
that impresses people with your faith, and you have the potential of
winning them to Christ.
In Jesus we see also that prayer is a tool of self-persuasion.
Counseling is 90% listening to other people. People talk about their
problems and trials and in so doing they get them out of their
sub-conscious into their consciousness, and they deal with them. The
counselor may say little, but they go away helped, for they come to
some decision about how to deal with what is disturbing them. Prayer
is counseling with God. All He may do is listen, but as we pour out our
needs, frustrations, and desires, we come to see the way we need to
respond and deal with them. Jesus did this in Gethsemane. In Matt.
26:39 we read, "Going a little further, he fell with his face to the
ground and prayed, my Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken
from me. Yet not as I will but as you will."
Jesus wrestled with God in prayer, and we do not hear God saying
a word, but Jesus came to His own conclusion as He prayed: "I will
surrender to your will Father whatever it is. If the cross is the only
way, then so be it, thy will be done." Jesus had counseled with God in
prayer and came away committed to the cross. Prayer is not just
asking God for something, or praising Him for something already
received. It is a decision making process where we talk out the
options and come to some conclusion to which we make a
commitment. Jesus was single and so He could not talk it over with a
mate. But He needed a second opinion, as we all do in times of stress,
when the decision is of enormous consequences. We all need to talk
things through with someone, and this is a good and valid purpose in
prayer, as we talk things over with God. The Psalms are loaded with
prayer counseling, where there is honest sharing of emotions that help
one come to some wise conclusion.
Jesus needed prayer as a counseling tool, and we all need to learn
to use prayer in this way. All our fears, emotions, doubts and
hang-ups can be worked out if we expose our total being to God, and
face the reality of our problems squarely as Jesus did. The failure of
Christians to be honest with God in prayer is the reason you have
thousands of Christian Psychiatrists working every day to help
Christians cope with all of their hidden sins and neurotic feelings.
Jesus did not need a counselor because He knew how to be honest in
prayer. Until we learn this we will need the aid of man, it is not all
bad, but it is a sign of inadequate prayer skills, which can be learned.
Prayer for Jesus was also a tool for practicing what He taught.
Jesus said in the Sermon On The Mount that we are to love our
enemies and pray for those who persecute us. He did this on the cross
when He prayed, "Father forgive them for they know not what they
do." In prayer we can do many things that are hard to do, for in
prayer we can be open and honest with God. You cannot be very
Christ-like if you go up to someone you do not like, and who has been
treating you like dirt, and say, "I know you are just a blundering idiot
stumbling through your pathetic life, but I want you to know I forgive
you." It is better if you deal with this issue in prayer. Struggle before
God to forgive them, and then just treat them as forgiven. There are
just too many ways to make a good thing go bad if you deal with
people. But if you deal with God in prayer you can get it all worked
out in your mind and not spoil a good thing.
Many of the Psalms are prayers we say to God to get anger and
hostility off our chest so we don't blurt them out to people and start a
war when the goal is to achieve peace. If you are offended by some of
the harsh language of the Psalms, remember that they represent the
dark inner emotions being released before God in prayer so that they
are not released before men in damaging ways. Jesus had to deal with
His emotions and find release, and He did so in prayer. The only
group of sinners He verbally lashed out at with severe language was
the Scribes and Pharisees. It was because they were so evil with their
legalism, and they cared more about rules than about people. The
only people Jesus ever hurt were people who were hurting other
people. It is legitimate to cry out against injustice and oppression.
But much of the anger of life is due to personal conflict, and things
that may hurt us, but which are not a problem for the world. These
need to be dealt with in prayer so that they do not become problems
blown all out of proportion.
Because Christians did not do what Jesus did in prayer on the
cross, and because they did not get rid of their desire for revenge
against the Jews who killed Him, they started persecuting the Jews in
the Middle Ages for being Christ-killers. They wrote one of the most
disgraceful chapters in Christian history. Christians killed and
enslaved thousands of Jews for a sin that Jesus forgave on the cross.
This is why there is a day of judgment for Christians, for Jesus cannot
let such rebellion go unjudged, for that would be a violation of His own
law of love. Christians make their biggest mistakes by not using
prayer as a tool of emotional release. Instead, they take matters into
their own hands, and they proceed to do what is clearly not the will of
God.
Could Jesus have been perfect without prayer? I doubt it. I
think we think it was easy to be the Son of God living in the world in
the flesh, and being able to avoid all of the folly of human nature. But
I think that this thinking is wrong. If it was a snap, why was Jesus
always praying, and why does the Bible tell us that Jesus really
understands our battles and our weaknesses? It is because He has
been there, and He knows the pressure and the danger of yielding to
it. Heb. 4:15 says, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to
sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who is tempted in
every way, just as we are, yet was without sin."
He knows because He fought the same battles we fight. He won all
of them, and that is the difference, and prayer was one of His key
weapons for victory. That is why the next verse says, "Let us then
approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive
mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." In other words,
let us do what Jesus did. He prayed to God and by means of prayer he
was able to remain sinless in a sinful world. We may not be able to be
sinless, but we can follow His example and find the grace we need to be
victorious over the enemy. Without prayer we give the enemy and
advantage over us. Every time we fail to be like Christ it is because of
our failure to use prayer as the tool it was meant to be. We go off on
our own without checking in with our Counselor, and the result is that
we blow it.
Jesus of all people did not need to pray, we would think, for He
was perfect. But we fail to see that the reason He was perfect was
because He prayed without ceasing. He took everything to God and
was able to face all of life with the right attitude. We also need to use
prayer, as He did, as a tool for release and for guidance. Pray without
ceasing, and do not limit your prayer to when you rise, or when you go
to bed. We need to learn spontaneously as we go about our daily life.
We need to be aware of our needs and take them to God at those
moments of awareness. Thank God at those moments of awareness
when you think of things to be thankful for. Don't let your mind be
idol, but praise God frequently as you go through your daily routine.
I have read the experts in this area of prayer, and they tell of how
difficult it is learn. It is a wonderful habit to develop, but it is far from
easy to pray without ceasing, and to be ready at any point to
spontaneously praise God or intercede for others. It is a life changing
habit, but it will never happen unless you discipline yourself and make
a commitment to consciously develop the ability to escape the
domination of your mind by the things of time. To be able to escape
into eternity and pray at any time is a powerful weapon in the
spiritual life. But it will not happen without practice anymore than
playing an instrument will come without practice. You can only
spontaneously go to a piano and play music if you have first of all
disciplined yourself to practice. So it is with spontaneous prayer.
You will have to work at it to develop the ability to pray without
ceasing, and be ready at any moment to go to the Lord in prayer.
May God help us to be motivated to develop this marvelous skill of
spontaneous prayer.
