Teach Us How to Pray
He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray…” Luke 11.1
The question of ‘how to pray’ in terms of ‘what to pray,’ is often treated in a mystifying sense. In some circles you get the sense that we are waiting for the super-prayer God will lead us to pray that will somehow instantaneously and magically be answered, demolishing all opposition to our desires and circumventing any delay. Even without such a mystifying approach to prayer, people often are at a loss concerning what to pray. One of the most basic reasons** why people pray little is because when they pray they expect there to be this spontaneous and unceasing flow of inspiration with a corresponding cascade of eloquent and moving language. Incidentally, the vast majority of Church (and Jewish) history did not have this premise going into prayer. This dilemma only exists largely because in the ‘free church’ tradition there is tremendous aversion to written prayers. The logic seems to be that if the prayer is not extemporaneous, if it is pre-scripted, then it can’t possibly be from the heart and will necessarily denigrate into ritualistic religiosity. It is curious however, why this logic is not applied to the songs of the corporate assembly or personal piety. Not only are all of these pre-scripted, but often the same ones are used frequently without the inherent danger of monotonous mortification.
Because at times of prayer, we don’t know what to say (and because we are inordinately uncomfortable with awkward silence – to be addressed in a subsequent post), prayer happens less and less. We ask God to ‘teach us how to pray,’ but it does not often occur to us that this ‘education’ can very easily take place in and through the tradition of prayer in the church. The Church has been active in prayer since its inception and the community of Jewish people have been active in it for much longer. This long history has left for us an extensive record and repository of its devotional practices. These prayers are a veritable treasure trove for the eager but inarticulate soul. There is such a depth and a richness that comes in adding the prayers of the Church to our personal prayers. Yet there remains such an unspoken undercurrent of resistance to using written prayers in public or private practice. Do we take our personal piety so seriously that we believe learning from the vast experience of history would immediately crush our devotion? Has the remainder of the Church historical been so spiritually out-of-touch, that learning from them would certainly bring my level of spiritual experience down? What is it that we are afraid of? Granted, this is a rather negative evaluation of the aversion to written prayers. In my next post I would like to describe some of the specific benefits of using written prayers in our pursuit of God.
**I should certainly add that lack of language is not the most significant reason why we don’t pray. The most significant reason is our own spiritual barrenness that results from distorted perceptions of what God is like. To put it tersely, you don’t voluntarily spend very much time with people who you don’t enjoy and who you know certainly don’t enjoy you. We don’t eagerly rush to talk to grumpy people and try in all ways to get away from them. Why do we think it would be any different with God? If we think that God is a celestial grump, odds are our communication with Him will be slim.
Comment from Christine
Time: March 31, 2008, 10:52 am
Sold. Oh… and thanks for pointing out some of my absurd little misconceptions and wrong ideas about prayer (and… umm… life). They look rather ridiculous, now that you say something about them.
I think I have embraced a moderate appreciation of scripted prayers while maintaining some degree of prejudice against them. They had their place, but their place was not very generously defined. Although, I think that my prejudice was held against virtually anything that was scripted. I never would have imagined that I would find my heart so alive and thriving in a liturgical service. It seems, now, that the odds of me crying at church on Sunday morning are about as good as the odds of me winning a game of Catan.
(It doesn’t happen every week, but it seems to be happening with greater frequency.)
Another thing: I think I just realized why I don’t write or speak more often. It suddenly struck me that I have come to expect myself to do everything with a “spontaneous and unceasing flow of inspiration with a corresponding cascade of eloquent and moving language.” I certainly do get rather frustrated when that is not the case.