The Fad that Is No Fad

Most people have prayed at one time or another. In the course of marriage preparation, I sometimes ask couples, “Do you pray?” I remember only one person who said candidly, “I don’t pray.” They usually say they do. Sometimes that prayer is little more than a hope; sometimes it goes as far as a promise; often, it’s a hurried plea in the midst of a crisis, for oneself or for another. By offering those occasional appeals for help, many people have made a start at praying.

That’s a beginning that Christ calls the Christian believer to pursue, until those random S.O.S. calls develop into a life of trust and ease with God, until every day is marked by conversation with him, a converse far richer than those emergency calls to heaven.

By “getting started in prayer,” then, I mean entering into this development. As you do, you will grow in understanding of what prayer is and in comfort with God, no matter what life brings.

The way in is through a pattern of praying. This pattern should have two elements: One has to do with time and place and the other with prayer’s content.

The way in is through finding a regular time and place for prayer, and by organizing the first moments of that time.

1. Time and Place

   You need a specific place and time for prayer. Jesus himself shows us this. Once after a heavy day, he got up the next morning before daylight and went out to a “desolate place” to pray (Mark 2:35; another example, Matthew 14:23). Luke tells us this was a pattern with Jesus (Luke 5:16).

   And he calls us to do something similar. “When you pray,” he says, “go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret” (Matthew 6:6). That is, you deliberately choose to pray—to pray and not to do anything else. Find a time and place—a “secret” place, to use Jesus’ word—where you can be undisturbed and can pray without external distractions. If, day by day, it can be the same time and place, so much the better. Because you live a busy life, you will probably have to niggle both your schedule and your living space to do this; think of it as making room for God.

2. Getting Started

   “Getting started in prayer” also refers to the earliest moments of the prayer time, when we enter into God’s presence with our words.

   That’s because, even with a regular time and place, it’s necessary to turn the mind and heart purposely to God. Distractions of mind often accompany us into the secret place, and we need to find ways to keep our thoughts moving towards God.

   Here, first of all, we need words of focus.

   As long as I have been praying, I still have to cope with wandering thoughts. It just happens. I’m in the secret place, it’s too early in the day for the phone to ring, and no one is asking for my help. But the minutes pass, I hear a distant clock strike, and I discover that I have not yet started my praying.

   And so, there is always a discipline of attentiveness needed in prayer. The distractions most likely to keep me from prayer are within my own mind, and I can overcome them only by a deliberate act of attention. Therefore, at the beginning of the prayer time, turn your attention to God and to the life of faith and service he is calling you to enjoy with him. Do this by saying words of focus.

   Many words of the psalms will serve your needs here, and so will many prayers that other people have written. For example, here are a couple of lines, suggested by Psalm 4:5, that have often helped me:

   O Lord, in the morning, you hear my voice.
   In the morning, I direct my heart to you and wait.

   Say them aloud, even softly or under your breath. “Take with you words,” the prophet Hosea said (14:2); spoken words are more effective than inward wishes. Say them slowly, thinking about each one, making the force of that word plain to yourself and expressing that meaning directly to God. You will find that they can warm a cold heart, call back a ranging attention, gladden a dull spirit. It is not just the words themselves, although they certainly express what you are about in prayer. The slow and reflective saying of them also awakens the mental processes and nourishes the mind by opening up their rich meaning.

   From your Bible reading, make note of words that touch your mind and warm your heart, and begin to use some of them in your own prayer. Many passages in the Psalms are suitable; for example,

   When I thought, “My foot slips,”
   your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up.
   When the cares of my heart are many,
   your consolations cheer my soul (94:18–19).

   Psalm 103 is rich in such thoughts.

   This act of focusing attention is also necessary at the later stages of prayer. It not only overcomes wandering thoughts, it also keeps words of prayer that are familiar and often-repeated from becoming meaningless even as you say them. Just as an animated conversation with another person arrests your attention and takes hold of your mind, just as words spoken to you from someone’s heart have a particular power, so effective converse with God ought to be marked by mental alertness. Because God is not physically present to us in prayer, we can fall into careless ways of speaking. The Lord’s Prayer, for example, is so familiar that most of us say it without thinking. Yet, you can also pray it with the same thoughtful and reflective attention that I describe above for the “words of focus,” and it becomes full of power to awaken our hearts and bear our longings to God. Here what I’m describing as a way into prayer begins to pass over into meditation.

   Now that you’ve settled into the secret place and have directed your heart to God, it’s time to bring him your requests, right?

   Not quite yet. Here we need to learn that praying is not primarily asking for things.

   Of course, there is large place for such requests. It is right to pray for good things: The Lord’s Prayer asks for daily bread along with forgiveness and shelter from evil; Paul says, “In everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God” (Phil 4:6). Since it’s the only form of praying many people do, “asking God for good things” is the most obvious definition of prayer. Nevertheless, we must unlearn it as any kind of basic definition, for if our praying is going to lead us to a life of trust and ease with God, it can hardly be based on a consumerist definition!

   In praying to God, we address the One who is the Maker of all things and people, the One to whom we owe our existence, the Creator. Therefore, we begin our daily praying by praising him for all that the divine reality—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is. We address God directly with words of adoration. We don’t ask for things from him until we have reverently acknowledged who he is.

   Here is a simple prayer of adoration, made up mostly from biblical expressions.

   Glory to you, O God:
   With wisdom, you made the world,
   that we might live in peace and praise.

   Glory to you, O Jesus Christ:
   You became flesh and dwelt among us,
   that we might have new life.

   Glory to you, O Holy Spirit:
   You gather and form the church,
   that we might be your people.

   With the whole church,
   in heaven and on earth,
   we worship and adore you,
   Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
   one God forever.
   Amen.

   This prayer has only 78 words and takes only about a minute to offer thoughtfully. But see what you have said!

   This is the God of the Bible. You acknowledge each of the three Persons of the Trinity, taking note of divine work done by each. You address God as Creator (see Psalm 104:24) and speak of us as made by him. You address Christ in his incarnation (John 1:14) and speak of the abundant life he brings us (John 10:10). You address the Holy Spirit as poured out on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:16-18) and speak of us as the people raised up around the risen Christ by that power (Acts 2:42-48). This is our God as revealed to us in Scripture and in the living experience of God’s people.

   This is the God of the classical Christian faith. You worship the three Persons as equally divine but as one God from and to all eternity. His name is “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” for the church embraces the three-in-one paradox, “not confusing the Persons and not dividing the essence.” This is our God as confessed by the church from the earliest generations and by her most definitive councils.

   This is the God of the redeemed. In this prayer, we speak as one among many (“we,” not “I”), as one worshipper together with the multitudes who cannot be numbered (Revelation 7:9). You are praying alone, of course, in your secret place, but you join yourself with all others of the church that Christ loved and gave himself up to sanctify and cleanse (Ephesians 5:25). This is our God as worshipped by the church.

   Now, you might say that this prayer is offered from a distance. In it, we acknowledge God’s greatness and place ourselves before him in humble adoration. He is the Maker, and we are the made, and we accept that dependence. This is the nature of adoration: reverent, respectful, and objective.

   But there can be more to our approach to God than this; before you come to direct request, think of prayer that expresses gratitude and intimate love to God. This is the prayer of devotion.

   Here is such a prayer, again, largely in words of Scripture:

   O God,
   you have rescued my soul from death,
   my eyes from tears,
   and my feet from stumbling.
   I love you.

   O Jesus Christ,
   you take me for your own;
   you are my Lord and Savior;
   you are my life.
   I love you.

   O Holy Spirit,
   you are my advocate;
   you are my guide;
   you pour God’s love into my heart.
   I love you.

   Holy and blessed Trinity,
   one God forever,
   I rejoice in you.
   You are my God.
   I love you.
   Amen.

   Where the prayer of adoration is collective, this one is individual. Where the prayer of adoration concludes with worship, this prayer pledges love and fealty. In adoration, the one praying recognizes and confesses God’s greatness; here, the one praying acknowledges the gifts of redemption. In these ways, the prayer of devotion complements the prayer of adoration by expressing intimacy and feeling to the Triune God.

   There is much more to prayer, including, of course, your requests. We have only considered three words that will help you get started—started each day in a time of prayer and into a life with God marked by trust and ease. These words point us to prayers of focus, adoration, and devotion.

The regular practice of prayer is part of the Christian life; you will not develop in spiritual fruitfulness and maturity without it, nor will our congregation reach the strength and power God has for it without our seeking to live the life of prayer. To pray in this way is to enter into the discipline of Christian living and service and to invite God into our lives in ways that will amaze us.

A Postscript on the Prayer of Devotion

Here is the prayer printed again, together with references to the biblical passages that have supplied most of the wording.

O God,
you have rescued my soul from death,
my eyes from tears,
and my feet from stumbling (Psalm 116:8).
I love you (Psalm 18:1).

O Jesus Christ,
you take me for your own (Phil 3:12);
you are my life (Col 3:4);
you are my Lord and Savior (John 20:28, 1 Cor 12:3).
I love you (John 21:15-17).

O Holy Spirit,
you are my advocate (John 14:16, 16:7);
you are my guide (John 14:26, 15:26);
you pour God’s love into my heart (Romans 5:5).
I love you.

Holy and blessed Trinity,
one God forever,
I rejoice in you.
You are my God.
I love you.
Amen.

I’ve not found explicit biblical references to people expressing love for the Holy Spirit. However, in the Old Testament, “wisdom” plays the same guiding and teaching role that the Holy Spirit does in the New Testament. There are numerous references to love and devotion to wisdom: Proverbs 4:6, 7:4, 8, and 34. In addition, the opposite of wisdom is the “forbidden woman” (Prov 2:16), from which we are to turn to wisdom. This introduces the idea of romantic attachment. If wisdom is the true alternative, the idea of attachment belongs to her as well. Thus, there is biblical precedent for devotion to the Holy Spirit.