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It’s worth pausing at the start of a book like this to acknowledge the unending chorus of human longing: a canticle of sighs and cries and chiming bells, mutterings in maternity wards, celestial oratorios, and scribbled graffiti. In the words of Abraham Heschel, “Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.”[2]
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Abraham Lincoln admitted, “I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom . . . seemed insufficient for that day.”[4]
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After decades of night-and-day prayer, I have come to believe that 99 percent of it is just showing up: making the effort to become consciously present to the God who is constantly present to us.
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THE BEST BIT of advice I ever received about how to pray was this: keep it simple, keep it real, keep it up.
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You cannot grow in prayer without some measure of effort and discomfort, self-discipline and self-denial.
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But the sages teach us that true prayer is not so much something we say, nor is it something we do: It is something we become. It is not transactional but relational. And it begins, therefore, with an appropriate awareness of the one to whom we come.
Devotional
IN A QUIET UMBRIAN town many years ago, a wealthy lawyer heard reports of a twenty-five-year-old ex-soldier called Giovanni who had recently given everything he owned to the poor. Was he mad, or had he really experienced some kind of epiphany? Everyone in the town had their own opinion. Determining to find out for himself, Bernard of Quintavalle invited Giovanni to stay the night and stationed himself to spy on his guest through a secret peephole. As the house fell silent, he watched in amazement as Giovanni sprang from his bed, knelt down, and began to repeat a single, simple phrase again and
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File, Used in devotional for July 27, 2022.
After more than twenty-five years in pastoral ministry, twenty of them teaching on prayer, I have come to the conclusion that most people’s biggest problem with prayer is God.
Starter
“God’s ear hears the heart’s voice,” said Augustine in his commentary on Psalm 148.[6] “It
“Our Father in heaven,” with what immediately follows: “hallowed be your Name.” As biblical scholar William Barclay says, this “saves the idea of the Fatherhood of God from all sentimentality and . . . sets down in unmistakable terms the inescapable obligation of reverence.”[9]
Devotional and file
We have God all wrapped up in Bible verses—hooked up on a tight scriptural leash. There is no mystery, only certainty in our religion. I
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God asks us to ask for at least three reasons. First, because the act of asking is relational in a way that mere wishing is not.
The second reason that asking is necessary is that it is vulnerable.
Third, asking is intentional.
Praying in the name of Jesus means wanting what God wants, aligning our wills with his will, our words with his Word, and our personal preferences with his eternal and universal purposes. It also speaks of family privilege. To ask in the name of Jesus is to approach the
Christian prayer is not wishing but asking, actively addressing specific requests to an actual person.
let me assure you that the gift of greater faith is no less available to you than it was to George Müller, first in the person of Christ, and second in the practice of trust.
Person of Christ not faith
Faith is found in the person of Christ. If you want to trust Jesus more, get to know him more. Look at him more, listen to him more, spend more time with him. It really is that simple.
Devotional
prayer isn’t always wonderful. Sometimes it disappoints us deeply.
mystical experiences are not common, but neither are they rare.
Words become less necessary as prayer becomes no longer something I’m doing but something I’m being in the presence of God.
when I pray contemplatively, I have to show up, shut up, and look up.
this brilliant intellect was not a rationalist but a mystic who argued that “people almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.”[31]
checklist of the various ways in which God speaks: Hearing God in the Bible. Hearing God in dreams and visions. Hearing God in counsel and common sense. Hearing God in personal reflection. Hearing God in action.
while we are reading the Bible, it is reading us—discerning “the thoughts and intents” of our hearts. We shouldn’t just learn from the Bible, therefore; we should also listen to it. It’s a totally different way of approaching the text: While learning about God from the Bible requires study, listening to God through the Bible requires prayerful meditation.
The paradigm shift happens when you realize that the Bible wasn’t meant to be read through; the Bible was meant to be prayed through.
dreams, visions, and prophecies are highly subjective, so we must weigh them against Scripture and apply common sense.
When God chooses not to speak in extraordinary ways—no angelic visitations or prophetic revelations are forthcoming—it’s probably because he wants to speak in more ordinary ways, through conversations with friends, biblical reflection, and the counsel of those we trust.
Most people today miss the voice of God not because it’s too strange but because it’s too familiar.
This is the hardest line of the Lord’s Prayer, but it is also by far the most outrageous.
You cannot be too bad, too broken, or too boring for God’s unconditional love, only too proud to acknowledge how desperately you need it.
Watching this tragedy unfold, child psychologist Robert Coles offered Ruby counseling. Once a week, he sat in the humble home she shared with four siblings and her parents, who could neither read nor write. “You looked like you were talking to the people in the street on your way into school yesterday,” he said on one occasion. “Did you finally get angry with them? Were you telling them to leave you alone?” “No, doctor,” replied Ruby politely. “I didn’t tell them anything. I didn’t talk to them.” “Well, who were you talking to?” The little girl stared at him. “I was talking to God. I was
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Many Christians have no problem at all recognizing the reality of principalities and powers at work in our world (especially if they come from cultures that bypassed the Enlightenment), but they do not necessarily understand their own personal authority to contend against such forces and win.
It’s ridiculous when you just roll over and submit to the enemy. It’s time to rise up and take authority over your life, because you are “in Christ” and “God [has] placed all things under his feet.”[25]
John Wimber, founder of the Vineyard movement, used to say that “it’s better to plant seeds than pull weeds,” which is such an important principle for spiritual warfare. When I am praying with a person who is under any kind of spiritual attack, I always try to spend more time planting seeds—proactively affirming the good things that I can bless in their life, rather than pulling weeds—reactively naming and binding the work of Satan.
Paul’s emphasis here is clearly on courageous resistance. There is no license for the common kind of macho militancy that continually (and unwisely) picks fights with the devil in prayer.
One of the most reassuring passages in the whole Bible recognizes that we all sometimes find it hard to pray and promises that the Holy Spirit is here to help us. The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.[11]
