praise flows out

Prayer is hard.

Or is prayer easy?

I think it's both.  It's as simple as having a conversation with God, and yet it is complicated enough for there to be scores of books on the subject.

If you've been around the church for any length of time, I'm sure you've heard prayer reduced to simple formulas that direct us "how-to" pray and get it right.  Acronyms like A.C.T.S. (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication) and P.R.A.Y. (praise, repent, ask, yield) were tossed about frequently in my youth.  As I got older, I became interested in exploring more of my prayer-options, and have experimented with a variety of methods - body posture prayers, classical/historical prayers, liturgy, prayer walks and labyrinths, mandalas, and even coloring.  But no matter what form of prayer I tried, I always felt pressure to get it "right."

The problem was that when I sat down to pray, there was always a long laundry list of things that I was asking God to do for me, or areas I was asking him to work in, or people I was asking him to reveal himself to... I was always asking for something!  And I asked, because we all ask, for God to work in our lives because he does work in them.  But I had the feeling that I was supposed to balance out all my requests with praise and adoration, so that I wasn't just constantly asking him for things.  And I did try to make it more balanced.  I'm part of a Bible study group in which the leadership team prays corporately each week, and I've learned some great things from their model.  We begin with adoration, which simply means stating things about God that we know to be true!  God, you are holy, you are Provider, you are the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, you are Alpha and Omega, you are truth and light.  Sometimes I try to pray this way in my personal prayers.  But the problem is that all my concerns come rushing in, tripping over one another in their eagerness to be heard by God.

Today as I was driving to work, I had a prayer experience that changed my thoughts about some of those things.  (To first clarify, all those things that I sometimes struggle with in prayer are based in right thinking:  I don't want to only pray when I need something from God, it is good to have structure when it's needed, and we should worship and praise our Father in private prayer!)  Instead of trying to balance all the things I was asking for with the right amount of praise and adoration, I just prayed for what was weighing on my heart.  I asked God for his peace in the day, for his joy and energy and strength, and for other people and situations that I want to see him move in.  And as I came to the end of my requests, I felt the praise and adoration begin to flow freely in response to everything I had just asked him for.  My praise was natural, and not forced, because I knew I was praising a God who had just heard all that I asked for, and who wanted to answer me!  It flowed out of an safe place in my heart, and my trust that I had been heard and was loved.

Groans too deep for words

Most of my prayers recently - at least the ones with words - have been something along the lines of "What is going ON?!" and "What are you doing?!" Most of the time, though, my soul is crying out with groans too deep for words. Life is hard. Thank God we don't have to do it alone.

Descend upon my heart

The music we sing at my church is hip and cool.  It's at the forefront of the worship music scene.  It's loud, and different, and people respond to it.  I love it!  

I also attend a weekly Bible study (BSF) where we do things a little more traditionally.  Every week we bust out those old red hymnals and sing along with words written hundreds of years ago.  

I love the contrast of the two groups for more than just the differences in music.  Maybe I'll tell you about that sometime.

Tonight at BSF, we sang a song called Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart.  It was written by George Croley in 1867.  Here is the fourth verse of that hymn:

Teach me to feel that Thou art always nigh

Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear

To check the rising doubt, the restless sigh

Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer

Seriously... Who asks for God to teach them patience through unanswered prayer?  That is crazy talk! But that verse jumped out and smacked me in the face because I've been spending a lot of my time in prayer lately asking God "what the HECK are you doing?!?"  I've been dealing with some hard things lately, and I don't anticipate them going away any time soon.  How might those trials be lifted if I were to learn to bear the struggles of the soul?  And how does one learn to do that?? What does that even mean???  The answer is there in the title / first verse of the song.  Spirit of God, descend upon my heart.  The rational part of my brain can identify when I'm acting like a crazy person.  I know when I'm without the Spirit, and acting on my own self centered fears.  And I've experienced moments - brief though they may be - when I rely on the Spirit and can respond out of that reality instead of my broken self. 

I guess all I can do is keep going, and thank God for those moments when his Spirit is in me, and pray that he continues to descend upon my heart.

A prayer for a new semester

A month ago, I got a surprise package in the mail - a thoughtful gift from a good friend. It was a Celtic Daily Prayer book from a religious community in Scotland. They say it takes a month to form a habit, so I've been taking advantage of the extra time I have from only working part-time and trying to set a habit to use it every day. Yesterday morning I didn't know what day it was, and accidentally read too far. So this morning, instead of reading the same thing two days in a row, I skimmed through the book at some of the other sections not used in the daily prayer.

I stumbled on this one, and wanted to share. I thought it was appropriate since a new semester at the college started yesterday. (It's meant to be used in a group, with the sections in bold spoken in unison.)

Prayers for committing our work to God

This day is Your gift to me;

I take it, Lord, from Your hand

and thank You for the wonder of it.

God be with me

in this Your day,

every day

and every way,

with me and for me

in this Your day;

and the love

and affection

of heaven

be toward me.

All that I am, Lord,

I place into your hands.

All that I do, Lord,

I place into your hands.

Everything I work for

I place into your hands.

Everything I hope for

I place into your hands.

The troubles that weary me

I place into your hands.

The thoughts that disturb me

I place into your hands.

Each that I pray for

I place into your hands.

Each that I care for

I place into your hands.

I place into Your hands, Lord,

the choices that I face.

Guard me from choosing

the way perilous

of which the end is heart-pain

and the secret tear.

Rich in counsel,

show us the way

that is plain and safe.

May I feel Your presence

at the heart of my desire,

and so know it for Your desire for me.

Thus shall I prosper,

thus see that my purpose is from You,

thus have the power to do the good which endures.

Show me what blessing it is

that I have work to do.

And sometimes,

and most of all

when the day is overcast

and my courage faints,

let me hear Your voice, saying,

'You are my beloved one

in whom I am well pleased.'

Stand at the crossroads and look,

ask for the ancient paths,

ask where the good way is,

and walk in it,

and you will find rest for your souls.

In the name of Christ we stand,

and in His name

move out across the land

in fearfulness and blessing.

To gather the Kingdom to the King

and claim this land for God:

a task indeed.

Give us to see Your will,

and power to walk in its path;

and lo! the night is routed and gone.

Lord, hasten the day

when those who fear You in every nation

will come from the east and west,

from north and south,

and sit at table in Your Kingdom.

And, Lord,

let Your glory be seen in our land.

He has shown you, O man, what is right;

and what does the Lord require of you,

but to do justly, and to love mercy

and to walk humbly with your God?

Keep me close to You, Lord.

Keep me close to You.

I lift my hands to You, Lord.

I lift them up to You.

Hands, Lord, Your gift to us,

we stretch them up to You.

Always You hold them.

Help me to find my happiness

in my acceptance

of what is Your purpose for me:

in friendly eyes, in work well done,

in quietness born of trust,

and, most of all,

in the awareness of Your presence

in my spirit.

Thoughts on Prayer

I've been reading a book by Phillip Yancey called Prayer: Does it Make Any Difference? It's a really great exploration of why we pray, and some of the difficulties of prayer, etc. I've begun to realize, though, that reading about prayer only increases my intellectual knowledge about the subject. Improving my prayer life and activity requires something more than research.
I want to become a better pray-er. I read accounts of the great prayer warriors from Christian history, and hear my co-workers talk about prayer groups and meetings, but it just leaves me feeling inadequate and wanting more. I live a good life, serving my God, but that is no substitute for a relationship with Him.
I think my struggles with praying stem from the overarching problem of discipline that lately has kept surfacing in my life. Basically - I don't have discipline, and I need it. To be a better friend, to be a better campus minister, to e a better Christian, to be a better support-raiser, to be a better child of God.
The thing I read most recently in the book that has stuck with me is that when we pray, our minds wander and we get distracted because we aren't really praying for what we want. When we really want something, it's easier to focus our prayer on it than when we are praying for peace in Darfur. But then again, the more we pray, the more our wants and desires will reflect what God is desiring for His people.
I've been giving a lot of advice to people recently to be praying for their struggles, mostly because I don't know what else to say to them. But if I'm not following my own advice, what kind of advice is it?
And with that, I think I'll close this out... and go pray.