Work in Progress

This semester I took a Spiritual Formation class called “Prayer”. One of our assignments:

This paper is to reflect a synthesis of what you personally learned about prayer from the classroom lectures, the reading, the retreat and the doing of your prayer project. Include your intended prayer commitments for the future”

And so because I have a huge conviction that prayer is a vital aspect of ministry, I decided to post my paper. Feels weird!
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Prayer is a mystery! It is an amazing gift that God bestows upon His children allowing us to communicate with Him directly—I will never comprehend how or why this is the case! I enrolled in this Prayer class because I wanted to grow in both my knowledge and my ability in the area of prayer and God has taught me several lessons over the course of this semester that have allowed me to mature in my relationship with Him.

Prayer is one of the areas of life where the human and the divine collide. It is as normal as having a conversation with a friend, yet it is deeply mystical. This mystical aspect of prayer has contained one of the biggest lessons I have learned about prayer so far. Foster describes our prayers as a “perfect soliloquy” and quotes P. T. Forsyth who calls it the “monologue of divine grace”.

I have never thought of this side of prayer before. I always think of prayer going from Earth to Heaven—from humans to God. Scripture clearly shows people calling out to God and it exhorts us to do likewise. I know that Scripture shares the wonderful truth that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express (Rom 8:26, 34), and that Jesus intercedes for us from the right hand of the Father (Heb 7:25), but I had never taken these thoughts beyond this point. It blew me away to think that God is “in communion with himself through my stumbling bumbling prayers”. I always understood prayer to be transitive between me and God, but what an amazing thing it is that God would use me in a reflective way.

When I pray, the Holy Spirit calls out to God from inside me translating my prayers to God the Father, and at the same time Jesus Christ is praying to God the Father on my behalf. Both the Spirit and the Son are praying in line with the Father’s will and so every time I open my mouth to come to God I enter into the amazing perichoretic relationship of the Trinity. This has had such a powerful impact on me, so much so that I struggle to put into words the perception of God’s grace that I have been allowed to experience. In prayer I don’t just enter the throne room and approach my Heavenly Father, I participate in the Divine Love between the Trinity.

Another lesson I have learned through the combination of materials and exercises we’ve covered in class is that through prayer we change perspective. As I come to God in prayer I bring my issues to Him looking at them from my human standpoint, but as I call out to Him and lay them at His feet, God in His infinite grace allows me to change my perspective and view them from a Heavenly perspective. This is what lies behind all of the transitions that are seen in the prayers of the Bible when someone comes to God with negative emotions and leaves praising Him. This has helped me to understand why God allows us to come to Him with our questions, complaints, arguments, and wrestling matches. In a situation where I am wrestling with God I am not changing His mind. A different process occurs as I wrestle where my heart is softened. I begin to see things from a Heavenly perspective and it is my mind that is changed. I leave seeing things from God’s point of view and confident that He will sustain me. In the past I had read about ‘Holy Arguments’ where we “lay our case” before God. This works in the same way. We don’t change God’s mind by laying it down before Him, but through this process we see things from His point of view. We will either realise how foolish we are being and surrender those desires to God, or we see that it is something that God does want for us and are empowered to continue praying with boldness. I see this goal of our changed perspective in any negative type of prayer. Seeing this principle at works helps me to make sense of the Imprecatory Prayers existent in Scripture. God wants us to come to Him with everything. It is foolish to censor our prayers when we come to God because He sees our heart and hears the joys and frustrations that exist there. God wants me to come to Him with all of my emotions in the same way I would share with my friends both joy and anger! This means being completely honest with what my heart is feeling as I approach Him in prayer.

Prayer is relational—and relationships involve getting to know someone. I have always understood that in prayer I get to know God, just as in any relationship you get to know the person by spending time with them. Through prayer I get to take the things I learn about God from His Creation and His Word and have them embedded in my heart. But there is another kind of knowledge that is uncovered in prayer and that is knowledge of self. As we come to God with the desires of our hearts, they are revealed to us. As I come with my perspective on life God allows me to see it from His perspective and I gain a new outlook on the condition of my heart. In some instances God shows me areas of sin that I have to repent of, while in other situations I can see the godly desires that He wants to continue fanning into flame. It is through prayer that we invite God to “search my heart” (Psalm 51:1; 139:23), and as He does that He reveals to us what He sees there. As we come to God in prayer we not only get to know Him in an intimate way, but we get to know ourselves more intimately.

Over the course of this semester God has been correcting the way I evaluate my time with Him. A few years ago God showed me the importance of intentionally setting aside time to be with Him. I love to get up in the morning and spend time with Him, but when I think of spending more time with God, I have come to view this as setting aside a bigger chunk of time to intentionally be with Him. There are only so many hours in a day and so I find myself frustrated at not being able to spend as much time with Him as I’d like and often flirt with the unrealistic dream of locking myself away in a monastery for a year to be alone with Him! For some reason I find it difficult to view aspects of my day outside of my quiet time as time with God. Through the books we have read, the conversations we had in class, and conversations with friends back home God has been rebuking this mindset. I have relegated prayer to encapsulate only the speaking and listening part of my time with Him. I had imagined Unceasing Prayer as a perpetual conversation in my head between God and I. This semester has taught me that action is also a part of prayer.

The desires of my heart pray to God on my behalf—He hears the groans and sighs and they please Him. When I spend time ministering to people, this act of service (when done for His glory) is lifted up as prayer on my behalf. When I revel in the beauty of the Created World, my thoughts and feelings come to God as prayer. Unceasing Prayer is about living in a constant awareness of God’s presence rather than in a 24-7 discussion with Him. It is about allowing Him to become part of every area of my life, and not cutting out my life to sit alone with Him!

Prayer involves both parts: It begins by setting time aside to be with Him intentionally helping me to fix my eyes on Him, but then it spills over into living out the life He has called me to, while being continually aware of His presence with me. With this awareness, every thought is for His glory; the natural response to any event is first to seek Him in prayer and then to act; and like Moses, that presence produces a countenance that is noticeable to the people around me (Exo 34:29; 2 Cor 3:7)! God wants me to be attentive to Him during the unintentional times with my day just as much as He wants the time I specifically set aside for Him!

This semester has strengthened one of my convictions—that Prayer should not be separated from the Word. Over the years I have witnessed people who spend much time in the Word but little time in prayer and those who spend little time in the Word but much time in Prayer. When their time is focused on the Bible, I often see someone with a great head-knowledge of the Bible, but a disconnection between their head and their heart. They know the answers but don’t understand or live them fully. Conversely, when there is a huge prayer focus to the exclusion of time in the Word, these people although appearing “spiritual” have a very weak understanding of who God is and thus their prayers seem empty. Prayer and the Word go hand-in-hand. It is through the Bible that we learn who God is and are able to know the various aspects of His character. Through the Bible we learn how to live in communion with God, and also find instruction on how we are to pray. This builds an important foundation for when we come to pray, allowing us a greater grasp on who we are praying to and how to do it, making our prayers rich! The world fuels our praises, shows us what to confess, what to be thankful for, and how to engage in petition and intercession. On the other hand, prayer allows us to digest the things we learn in the Word. It puts the words into action by coming to God as we read about Him in the Scriptures. We take the descriptions of God that we read and call out to those aspects of His character, giving more detail to our picture of Him. When we pray God convicts our heart and empowers us to turn our lives around. In prayer we allow God to open our hearts so that the Scriptures sink in. In prayer we know God and He allows us to know ourselves. It is circular—the Word fuels our time in Prayer, and our prayer helps us digest the Word! This connection has been most evident to me in working through the Reflections on the Life of Christ project.

Along with this, I have gained a new appreciation of liturgy this semester. I have never had anything against liturgy but have never really appreciated its benefit. As we talked through the Lord’s Prayer in class and read through Foster’s book on prayer I began to realise the power in using prewritten devotional material. I have marvelled at how unifying liturgy is within the body. When we pray the prayers of the Bible or lift up the Psalms as our own we are united with the voices of the saints who have gone before us and those who will come after us. These words are prayed all around the world by people of all ages and races in a plethora of languages. The unity extends beyond the plain Biblical text to church liturgies and other devotional writings that have circulated the globe allowing the church to stand united in prayer. Of course the Lord’s prayer has to be the most used of them all! How many times has the Lord’s prayer been prayed since Jesus first taught it to the disciples? Every believer has uttered those words at some point! What an unbelievable picture of unity!

I had never heard the term ‘breath prayers’ before this semester and I was blessed abundantly by the exercise in Postema’s book Space for God. It amazed me how such a simple exercise can have powerful results. As I have matured I have seen the time I spend in prayer increase, specifically the amount of time I can spend talking to God about things. Through praying the prayer “I belong to you, O Lord”, I have learned more about the transforming power of prayer than through any other time of prayer I have had! In praying these simple words God allowed me to experience a deeper sense of “belonging” to Him, and opened my eyes to see the ways people around me trying to fill their hearts need for belonging. By spending a few minutes a day praying these words I was led into some extremely rich times of prayer for both myself and others. This has poked me from another angle, showing me that prayer is more than my ability to talk to God for a long period of time, but includes a cast array of methods!

I think the biggest area of growth for me as I progressed through this semester was in evaluating various spiritual resources. For the last 4 years I have had a fairly consistent quiet time which has been very powerful in my life. I was excited about the various tools and projects we were assigned this semester but it didn’t take long before they went from being tools to burdens. At the start, when they were novel, they were somewhat inspiring, but as I progressed through the semester I realised how much they hindered the time I usually spent with God, placing restrictions on my time and preventing me from flowing with the Spirit.

The books and exercises that are associated with Spiritual Disciplines are designed to inspire people as they pray, but not all of them will be beneficial to me. In going into full-time ministry I will be faced with a lot of Spiritual activity and I need to know when to say “no” to some of those tools. This semester God has taught me the importance of guarding my quiet time. He has taught me a pattern of meeting with Him that works well for me, drawing me deeper into His presence and causing me to fall more and more in love with Him. Along the way He drops resources or exercises on my path that inspire me and teach me for a time and in these situations I should use them. But, if I reach a period where using that resource reduces the effectiveness of my time with Him, then I should discard it. I felt that it was important to persevere this semester with the things I was using which has increased my endurance and made it possible for me to learn some of these lessons. God gives us “crutches” to lean on, but it is pointless using a crutch when both legs work fine! If I’m running towards God I should carry on as I am, and if I find myself in a dry spell in my walk with Him, then I should reach for the crutches He provides and allow them to fuel my prayers.

Knowing that I am going into full-time ministry God shows me on a daily basis the necessity of prayer! We minister out of the overflow of God’s love in our lives. If I want to be effective in ministry I need to ensure that I spend quality time in God’s presence pouring my heart out to Him and listening for His guidance… DAILY! In reading Foster’s discourse on unction and this week a similar discussion in a Spurgeon biography God continues to grow in me a longing to be so immersed in the Word and Prayer that any ministry He asks me to serve in will have a powerful effect on the lives of many. Serving God faithfully starts on my knees with the Word of God in my hand!!!

Moving Forward
I took this class wanting to learn more about prayer and I certainly have! Funnily enough, true to what I have written above, through the process of praying I have learned much about myself and about how God and I interact.

I feel that this semester has served to affirm that I have a healthy prayer life and that I am moving in a good direction. I intend to carry on meeting with God as I did before the class begun – spending a couple of hours with Him in the morning involving a combination of prayer, Scripture memorization, and journaling.

Over the semester I have tried various postures of prayer and find that my prayer times are most focused when I pray out loud as I pace back and forth. If I play worshipful music quietly in the background it prevents people from hearing me as I pour my heart out to God and when my words fail me it inspires me in things to pray for! In weighing the advantages and disadvantages that inspirational tools can be, I feel that when used correctly these resources can have great benefit to my prayer life and so I plan to invest in a few books that I can keep on hand and feast off on occasions. This will include some kind of artistic book as well as something more liturgical (Like A Guide to Prayer For Ministers and Other Servants by Job and Shawchuck). Knowing the impact words have on my devotional life and being richly blessed by Foster’s book Prayer, I have ordered one of his other books Devotional Classics which will introduce me to other sources of inspiration.

I was really challenged by Foster’s chapter on Meditative Prayer to get back into the habit of memorizing Scripture and so when this semester ends I am intended to finish memorizing the book of Romans. It has had a powerful impact on my life so far and I really want to keep that as a regular part of my devotional life. It not only helps me know God better, the Word better, and inspires rich prayer time, but it helps to train my mind to be more continually focussed on the things of God.

Through the lessons learned this semester I have become more discerning in following God’s leading in my personal times with Him. Over the last month God has been moving me in the area of Intercessory Prayer and has challenged me to step up the amount of energy I spend interceding for certain people in my life. I intend to follow His leading and so (taking Dr Blom’s advice) I plan to assign people to certain days of the week and see if that helps me to remain faithful in praying for them. Along with this, I loved the story told by Foster of the woman who kept a photo album of the people she prayed for, and so over the summer I plan to make one of my own, following her example and praying through the album on a weekly or fortnightly basis.

I have been amazed this semester as I listen to people talking about how God has met them through the books, projects, class and retreat. We all had the same assignments and read the same books but God met with us all in such vastly different ways. God of course is the Ultimate Teacher and He has each person on a curriculum that He hand-designed for them. While God spoke to people through the Art in Postema, I was moved by the prose. While some people had profound experiences of God in the visual exercises we were assigned, I met God most profoundly when I sat quietly reflecting on the Scriptures. While some people grasped God’s truths by talking about them out loud in class, I received revelation as I processed internally and journalled my thoughts. God has designed us all to meet with Him in different ways, and thankfully there are a huge number of resources out there to inspire us as we come to Him! Prayer is incredibly diverse, and I have come to realise that prayer is not something that can be mastered. I can mature in my ability to pray, I can increase the amount of time I spend in prayer and I can learn new ways to pray, but I will never be an expert in all that prayer entails! I rejoice that we serve a God of Mystery who mingles the human and the divine and who works differently in ever life. We could study Him forever and we would still have more to learn!

With His glory in mind along with the lessons I learned, I end with a prayer from Foster:

May [prayer] become, in the name of Jesus Christ, the most precious occupation of my life”