“THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND PRAYER”

          Luke 18:1

“At all times men ought to pray and not to lose heart.”

 

            To live physical life at its best, human beings need these basics, these minimal things:  proper food, proper air, proper rest, and proper exercise.  In the spiritual realm, there is a corresponding reality to each of these needs.  The “spiritual man” (I Corinthians 2:14) needs a daily balanced diet of the Word of God, daily and continuous communion with God in prayer, the steady spiritual rest of abiding in Christ and being carried by Him from within, and the consistent outward exercises of true Christian action. 

 

            These necessities must be kept in reasonable balance in the growing Christian’s life.  For example, a believer who is strong in the Word of God but weak in prayer is like a skeleton with no flesh on it.  But the believer who is heavy in prayer but weak in the Word of God is like a jellyfish—all meat and no skeleton.  Balance is essential in all of the disciplines mentioned above.

 

            In this study, we will explore in a very simple manner the theme of “Prayer and the Christian Life.”  In doing so, I will use the cue that is found in a couplet in Rudyard Kipling’s book, Just So Stories.

 

                                    “I keep six serving men, They taught me all I knew;

                                      Their names are What, Where, When, How, Why and Who.”

 

            In the world of journalism, these questions are often referred to as “the editorial questions,” or “the six editorial friends.”  I will let these questions provide the structure for this study.

 

I.  WHAT IS PRAYER?

 

            The first question we will ask and seek to answer about prayer is, “What is it?”  Very simply, prayer has been defined as “the talking side of your relationship with God.”  Or, to be a bit more accurate and adequate, it is the communicating side of your relationship with God. In a powerful and helpful passage, Paul indicates the distinction between mere audible “talking” and true prayer when he indicated that sometimes prayer cannot be articulated; it rather takes the form of “groanings which cannot be articulated” (Romans 8:26).  But prayer still may be defined as talking with God.

 

            As to the forms of prayer, we want to mention at least these categories:  Adoration (expressions of awareness and appreciation for Who God is); Confession (awareness and admission of our depravity and our dependence upon God); Thanksgiving (expressions of gratitude for all that God has done in us, for us, and among us); and Intercession (taking a position of identification with other people and their needs, and acting as their representative, taking their needs and interest before God).

 

            It is vital to realize this principle:  Prayer does not need explanation as much as it needs expression; prayer does not need argument as much as it needs demonstration; prayer doesn’t need proof as much as it needs practice.  Both theology and “knee-ology” are needed in understanding and implementing prayer in your life. 

 

            Prayer is a time exposure to God.  Prayer is more basking in God than it is asking of God.  One wise saint said, “Prayer is Son-bathing, and it certainly makes you look different, both in inner satisfaction and in outward action.”  Note her word, “look”, in that sentence.  This is true subjectively for the praying Christian; that is, prayer conditions the things you look at and your reasons for looking, and it is also true objectively; that is, prayer determines the result of your looking.  My lifetime motto verse expresses these truths:  “But we all, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord Jesus, are being transformed into the same image as the One we are beholding, and this transformation progresses from one stage of glory to the next higher stage of glory, and this is the work of the Spirit of the Lord.” 

 

            Prayer is seed sown on the heart of God.  Again, “he who sows sparingly shall reap also sparingly, but he who sows bountifully shall reap also bountifully” (II Corinthians 9:6).  You see, when prayers are sown as seeds on God’s heart, the praying believer will discover that the harvest is as big and boundless as the promises and purposes of God.  Thus, every believer should begin each morning making a prayer appeal based on the opening words of Jesus in the great parable of the sower: “Behold, a sower went forth to sow.”  See your prayers as spiritual seeds falling into the compassionate heart of your loving Father, and watch for the harvest!

 

II.  WHO MAY PRAY?

 

            The second question in our study is, “Who may pray?”  Nowhere in the Bible is prayer offered indiscriminately as an exercise that may be productively indulged by all men.  Biblically, prayer is the privilege of the people of God, of the child of God.  By that I mean that it belongs by right of having been “born from above,” “born again,” born spiritually with a real a revolutionary birth that has placed the once-sinner, now-saint, into the Forever Family of God.

 

            Jesus said to His followers, “When you pray, say, ‘Our Father’.”  The word “our” means that we are to pray as members of a vast fellowship of believers, and the word “Father” means that we are to pray as members of a vast family.  So every prayer should be marked by the awareness of all other members of the fellowship and all other members of the Family.  This proves to be a mighty blow against our sinful isolationism and individualism, and a powerful aid in building a fellowship-consciousness and a Family-consciousness in all believers.  When this occurs, there will be no superiority or inferiority among the people of God, and there will be no competition among Christians (read and study II Corinthians 10:12 carefully).  I would prefer to remain completely positive in this discussion of prayer, and not to wander off into assessments of the problems that are often engineered by careless thoughts, words and actions in the Body of Christ with regard to its “fellowship”.

 

III.  WHERE SHOULD WE PRAY?

 

            In our study of prayer, the third question is, “Where should we pray?”  The answer is that there is, in fact, no place where prayer may not be made.  From

                                                           

                                                Jonah in the whale (Jonah 2),

To Paul and Silas in the jail (Acts 16),

 

human beings may “get the King’s ear.”  Paul wrote to Timothy, “I will that men pray everywhere.” (I Timothy 2:8)  Of course, this may only mean that Paul is appealing to men everywhere to pray, but it may also mean that men may and should pray anywhere they are.  Again, the principle of “the dedicated place” doesn’t intend to teach that only that place, only those places, belong to God, but rather that the one place devoted to Him sanctifies all places to His Person and His purpose. 

 

            In Matthew 6:6, Jesus guarded His followers against a public prayer parade for publicity’s sake when He said,  “But you (unlike the hypocrites), when you pray (again, assuming that it is supernaturally natural for a born-again person to pray), enter into your closet, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret shall reward you.”  Every Christian should cultivate the habit as often as possible of corporate prayer, a kind of prayer that has incredible advantages, incredible power, and is attended by many problems, but he should guard against the dangers of public, corporate prayer by spending much time and attention on private prayer in his “prayer closet.”

 

            My own personal “prayer closet” is a small blue room in our home, very pleasantly decorated and very conducive to meeting with God and shutting out all else.  I keep an assortment of prayer aids in this room, including at least two translations of the Word of God, great daily devotional literature, a hymnbook, a prayer list (often comprised of pictures of the people I pray for), and several larger books for devotional reading.  Each morning, I choose between maybe twelve items, isolating maybe four of them for use in my “time in the Captain’s briefing room.”  More about the use of these things in a later paragraph under another point.   

           

            Any place is a good place to pray. 

 

IV.  WHEN SHOULD WE PRAY?

 

            The fourth question is, “When may we pray?”  Really, the question should rather be asked, “When should we not pray?”  There is no time that is a prohibited time as far as prayer is concerned.  “There is a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.”  But any and all times may be times for praying. Indeed, all of the “times” mentioned in that passage might be/could be/should be saturated with prayer.  Paul said it inclusively and commandingly when he wrote, “Pray without ceasing” (I Thessalonians 5:17).  In the text printed at the head of this study, Jesus said, “Men ought always to pray and not to give up praying.”

 

            Remember that four of the necessities of physical life are  food, air, rest, and exercise.  You don’t expect normally to live one day with food, and you shouldn’t allow yourself to live one day without feeding in the Word of God.  You go only short intervals without breathing (the air in the statement above), and wouldn’t it be wonderful if you should pray as consistently as you breathe?  

 

            Though we may and should pray at all times, life will be a lot more than prayer, and the tendency is to crowd out prayer or drift outside the practice of prayer.  Thus, the Bible prescribes recommended times for prayer which will set the tone for a spirit of prayer to prevail in the believer all of the time.  Psalm 5:3 says, “O Lord, in the morning will I direct my prayer unto You, and will look up.”  It was recorded of Jesus in Mark 1:35, “And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, He went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there He prayed.”  Apparently, following the principle of “first fruits”, that the devotion of “first things” sanctifies all the rest (example, the tithe, 10 % of one’s income, devoted to God, sanctifies the 90 % and indicates that it all belongs to Him and will be used for His purposes)The early practice of prayer each day points the entire day toward God.  In Psalm 55:17, the Psalmist said, “Evening, and morning, and at noon will I pray, and cry aloud.”  This order of the day, which is peculiar to us, honors the Jewish reckoning which declares that a day begins the evening before at sundown.  So even this order shows that, by that reckoning, prayers were offered at the beginning of each day.  When Jesus said in Matthew 6:5, “When (or ‘whenever’, showing that the door of prayer is always open) you pray, you are not to be as the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners, in order to be seen of men,” he was not condemning synagogue praying, nor street-corner praying, but merely asking that the motive of our prayers be sifted of man-consciousness so our attention can be turned totally to God.  Whenever I pray, I am to give the Sovereign of the universe my undivided attention and affection.  In the practice of prayer, consecration is determined by concentration.

 

V.  HOW SHOULD WE PRAY?

 

            Question number five is, “How should we pray?”  Anything I might say here is only suggestive, and certainly not exhaustive.  I would hope that this point might raise your “creativity bar” so that your tomorrows will be loaded with far more innovative, inventive and creative practices than you have ever dreamed of before now. 

 

            Prayer may be said to be comprised of listening for God and to God, meditating on what has been heard, talking to God, and listening some more . . . .  It may be regarded as spiritual reading, sensitive relating, and steady repeating and reliving of the lessons learned.  Remember that repetition is the art of life and learning.  You know your name simply because someone repeated it to you enough times that you began to repeat it after them.  Then it became truly yours.  The same is true of your telephone number, your street address, etc., etc.  All of those “facts” were learned by repetition.  A person’s claim of “poor memory” is usually an admission of little concentration, little effort, and little intent.  Remember, too, our earlier rule that consecration is determined by concentration.  Many people hurriedly abandon any probing thoughts of God—often because of guilt, or embarrassment, or failure, etc., etc.  And that person often begins to protest about God to others, again merely an admission of personal deficiency. 

 

            How should we pray?  Let’s begin with concentration.  Martin Luther, in his quaint and often blunt way, said wistfully, “If only I could pray the way my dog looks at the morsel of food on my plate!  All of his thoughts and actions are concentrated on it.  At that moment, he is a mix of reverence and desire.  Through his reverence for me and fear of me, he won’t jump on the table, but because of his desire for the food, he never gives up his longing to possess it.”  Here is the Christian’s balance in prayer, a balance of hunger and humility, a hunger that keeps him in pursuit of God, but a humility that keeps him from presumption about God. 

 

            How should we pray?  Let’s chart a possible course.  I have learned to make it a habit of praying HIM (read the appeal line of the Model Prayer, and then the first three petions), then praying THEM (both the smaller circle of my own acquaintances, fellow believers, and disciples and disciplers), then praying BOOKS (praying topically over what I am reading), then praying special ASSIGNMENTS, EVENTS and MEETINGS WITH PEOPLE.  All of this, and more, is done in my “prayer closet.”  I say as a caution that we must not forget that the purpose of prayer is not to follow a plan, but to genuinely commune with a Person.  With regard to the place and the plan, there is not a part of our home which has not been used again and again by my wife and me for special prayer times, or regular prayer times.  Sometimes we mute the television to pray over needs, events and people who have been profiled in newscasts, etc.  At other times, we pray after hanging up the telephone (and sometimes when still on  the phone) when we have been made aware of concerns that call for prayer.  Often, we pray what I call “sky telegram prayers,” brief but at-the-moment and on-the-spot.   

 

            I have found that one of the best ways to pray is to hold an open Bible before me, and pray over it, paraphrasing Scripture back to God—with thanksgiving and wonder, application and request, etc.  That is, I let the open Bible determine my prayer and supplication, and my worship and celebration.  Remember that God has “elevated His Word even above all His Name” (Psalm 138:2).  Jesus said, “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you shall ask whatever you wish and it shall be done for you” (John 15:7).  So I must agree with God about His Word, and what it means to Him and thus what it should mean to me. 

 

            At any time, if I hold Scripture memory cards in my hand, I turn each verse into a memory request (asking God to help me memorize it), a mastery request (asking God to let this truth master me, and make me a “master of life” through His grace and power) and a manifestation request (asking Him to manifest the Truth of this verse to me, then through me and into my world of relationships and circumstances, today).   Actually, these exercises may be used while on trips, while driving across town (using the memory of prayer requests, Scripture verses, relational awareness, etc., etc.), while idling in an easy chair, while flying on an airplane, and even while waiting for a disciple in a restaurant.

           

            How should we pray?  Pray with this concept fastened in your heart:  It is not the arithmetic of our prayers, that is, how many prayers we pray; it is not the rhetoric of our prayers, that is, how eloquent they are; it is not the geometry of our prayers, that is, how long they are; it is not the music of our prayers, that is, how sweet they are; it is not the method of our prayers, that is, how orderly.  It is the God-moved, Scripturally-conditioned, heart in and behind the prayer that determines its authority and power.  “Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16).  It is a “throne”, thus, a place of majesty, but it is a throne “of grace”, thus, a place of mercy.  “Let us draw near”!

 

            My all-time favorite poem is a long running narrative poem from the Elizabethan age, written by the poet-preacher of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Dr. John Dunne.  Try to work your way through the intricate language of this stanza, and let God stretch your heart.

           

            “Batter my heart, three Person’d God! For You

              As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

              That I may rise, and stand, and o’erthrow me, and bend

              Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new. . .

               I am betroth’d unto Your enemy,

               Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again.

               Take me to You, imprison me, for I

               Except You enthrall me, never shall be free,

               Nor ever chaste, except You ravish me.”

 

            Dear Christian, resolve that poem, fragment by fragment, line by line, idea by idea, and do it unhurriedly, meditating until you discover the meaning of his words and ideas, and you have just completed a main course in God’s School of Prayer!  And if you can’t master it to pray it exactly, you can prayer at least like it.  “Lord, here am I.  I really want to appropriate You to my total life, but I have so little faith.  I can’t always be sure about how to pray.  I am such an ordinary, small-hearted, limited, unspiritual creature.  I have tried to open all the doors into my life to You, but there is so much accumulated dirt and rust on the bolts of the doors.  You must do it for me.  Please break through!  Smash the rusty lock!  Batter Thou my heart, Thou great Three-Personed God!”  May God help us to open all we are and have to His entrance, to His work in us, and to His exit into the world through us!

 

VI.  WHY SHOULD WE PRAY?

 

            Our sixth and final question for this study on prayer is, “Why should we pray?”  Simply, we must face the fact that there is no advance, no growth, no victory, no power, no productivity, no happy outcome, to the Christian life, without prayer.  God cannot work with a prayerless saint!  He may drastically work on him, upsetting his life incredibly, but He cannot work with Him and through him.  Thus, God’s purpose is lost in that Christian’s life.  That Christian has aborted God’s intention and must live with the result forever in a sad loss of reward at the Judgment Seat of Christ and thereafter.  Christian, if these words find you in that state, repent immediately and let Him restore you to full favor, full faith, and full fruitfulness.  He is more eager to restore you than you are to be restored!  You are His child, and though He may discipline you severely, you must remember that “whom He loves, He disciplines.” 

 

            Why should we pray?  We should pray, first, to relate to God.  God has given you permission, access, and aggressive invitation, to come to Him in prayer.  God has suspended great promises and great purposes upon your prayers to Him.  God has offered unbelievable victories in His Name and for your sake and the sake of multitudes of other people—in answer to your prayers. 

 

            We should pray, also, to receive from God.  “In everything by prayer and supplication (the request for supply) with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6).  Jesus said, “Ask (present tense continuous action, ‘keep on asking’), and you shall receive, seek, and you shall find, knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (Matthew 7:7). 

Consult the special study on Luke 11 in which that last verse and its surrounding teaching on prayer are dealt with.  In Jeremiah 33:3, God says, “Call unto Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you don’t know.”  Think carefully about the words “call”, “great” and “mighty”, and “things which you don’t know” (haven’t thought about, cannot imagine).  That is, there are massive blessings, benefits, victories, advances—treasures—in God’s vault in Heaven that you will not discover in this life unless you appeal to Him personally, passionately and purposefully in prayer.  When God’s “goodie closet” door is cracked for you to look in when you get to Heaven, will you be familiar with any of the “goodies,” the riches of His glory and grace, which will be therein—because you prayed during your days on earth, and God flung open the door and said, “Help yourself; these were intended for you, anyway, but they waited on your prayers!!!”  If you are on unfamiliar territory at that moment, saved but “barely saved,” He might say, “This is what you could have had; why didn’t you take the Key that I offered to you and open the lock?”

 

            We should pray, finally, to redirect our lives upward (toward Him) and outward (toward others), the two dimensions of the true Christian life—vertical and horizontal, and to redirect His resources through the vertical channel and the horizontal channel, for the Glory of God and the good of multitudes!

 

            Let me close by echoing the “Archimedes formula”, and applying it to prayer.  “If I could find a fulcrum that is strong enough, and a lever that is long enough, and a position or place to stand that is apart from that which I am trying to move, I could move the world.”  Let me conclude with an explanation of the formula.  For a Christian, and with regard to prayer, the “fulcrum” is the purpose of God (so it is plenty strong enough).  An example of His purpose?  Psalm 2:8 is one:  “Ask of Me, and I will give you the heathen for your inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for your possession.”  If a Christian doesn’t have the answer, he is not asking!  The “lever” is prayer, whose reach is limitless (so it is plenty long enough).  The “position or place to stand” is “in Christ” (!!!!!).  Pull over and park a moment, engines running, at this last sentence.  You see, we Christians do not stand in the world witnessing for Christ; we stand in Christ witnessing to the world!  I am in Christ, and nothing can reach me without His permission, and His permission is only given for HIS PURPOSES!  This position “in Christ” is “apart from the world”, and as long as I maintain the position and utilize its (HIS) authority and power, I CAN MOVE THE WORLD FOR HIS SAKE, and this means that multitudes of people will get swept into His movement!  Remember that the lever is prayer.