"Pray without ceasing" (1 Thess 5:17) 
 

"Do not worry about anything, but in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace which passes all understanding will guard your hears and minds in Christ Jesus." (Phil 4:6-7)
 

"Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in the supplication for the saints."  ( Ephesians 6:18) 

What are your biggest prayer issues? Problems? Questions? Conceptions of Prayer?

(encourage response and list them on newsprint)
 

So what is prayer?  Talking to God? Asking? Listening?  Doing?  What? The Bible study we handed out suggests that one way to look at aspects of prayer is ACTS (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication) and I would agree, but that is not only what prayer is. It is so much more!  Much more! 

The simplest definition I know is "Prayer is encounter with God."

When we encounter another person, for example we are usually doing one of at least two several things: We are being passive (being) which in part involves listening.  We are being active (doing) which in part involves Speaking.

 

I like to look at prayer form those two aspects:  passive-being-listening & active-doing-speaking-living.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Before we get to that I want to say some basic things about prayer that are convictions of mine. 

 

What can I say about prayer?   What I have to say to you today is from my own experience of prayer.

First thing I want to say is that prayer is something that mystifies most of us, I believe.  We know and sense that prayer is important, but we don=t exactly know what it is; or what it can be; or how it works; or what' it's really about. 

 

We sense that prayer is critical to the Christian Life.  We sense it in various ways.  Perhaps we know people who we might call "people of prayer" and we see that it makes a difference in their lives and we want that for our own lives.    

 

We perhaps feel an inner restlessness; we search for a place that our soul might find comfort and assurance, yet never seem to find it and we might wonder if prayer might provide that place of solace. 

 

O perhaps we sense that God is absent and far away and wonder if prayer is the place of connection that we will know the experience of God's presence. 

 

For me, in recent years there is perhaps no greater authority to go to than the early church mothers and fathers, the monastics and our contemplative ancestors and contemporaries, for that matter - to find some answers to the meaning and method of prayer B to find some direction.  Their wisdom can guide us in our exploration of prayer. 

Our monastic ancestors all seem to agree on at least four main points about prayer.  I call these four points THE FOUNDATION OF PRAYER.

 

THE FOUNDATION OF PRAYER

1)  God's Love for Us -   The first and most fundamental truth that our Christian ancestors knew about prayer was just this:  God's love is the starting point and ending point of all prayer.  The Bible tells us that we are made in God=s image, and I presume a part of what that means is that we are made for relationship with God, a relationship of love.  The Christian faith declares that we are beloved by God who loves us unwaveringly and as responsively as a mother loves her baby.   A fifth century Syrian writer describes the emotional tone of God's love for us in this way:

 

"A baby, even though it is powerless to accomplish anything or with its own feet to go to its mother, the baby still rolls and makes noises and cries as it seeks its mother; and she picks it up ad fondles it and feeds it with great love. This is also what God, the lover of humankind does to the person that comes to God and ardently desires God."

 

That is an incredible image!   This image helps us and makes it clear that God's love is not the love of a dispassionate and just king for his distant subjects.  God's love is intimate and tender, a natural response based on the closest ties of kinship, and it's a love that takes delight in the object of its love.  It's an image that suggests the extravagant nature of God's love for us; a love characterized by God's persistence throughout human history in trying to rescue us from our brokenness; a love that does not depend upon our having looked for God first; an initiating love.   Isaiah 49:15 reflects this idea,

 

"Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb?  Even these may forget you, yet I will not forget you."  Isaiah 49:15

 

As Lutherans intimacy with God begins with baptism, because baptism in the Lutheran context is a celebration of God's cherishing and initiating love.   One of the hardest things for us to believe in a culture obsessed with doing and productivity and the self worth status we attach to it.  Human Beings or Human Doings?

 

One theologian says there is a "God-sized vacuum inside of each of us and only God can satisfy it."  We try to stuff and lot of other things into that vacuum or space to no avail in terms of fulfillment.  In prayer the vacuum begins to fill in and it begins to fill with God's cherishing love.  God is as approachable as a mother to her baby; a nursing mother to her baby. 

 

2) The Uniqueness of Prayer: God's love is the starting point, but prayer is an expression of each person's unique relationship with God.  This is exactly why I react against any simple formulas for prayer; or "the" correct way to pray.  We can listen to the great fathers and mothers of the faith and receive direction; we can share experiences with one another, which is part of what I am doing here today, but I do not believe there is a right way to pray.

Personality Type has taught me to respect that people are unique and we especially conceptualize and experience reality (including God)  in very different ways.  What works for one person and what is meaningful to one person may very well not be to the next.  We need to listen and learn from one another.  However,  each person's prayer is unique.  That does not mean that we can be whimsical about it, without discipline and commitment.   I believe there needs to be patterns, regularity and discipline.  If prayer is encounter with God we only get to know each other and appreciate each other and feed each other as we spend time together.

This may be the hardest part for many of us.  A brother told his Abba that he had gotten away from his monastic disciplines and his prayer life, and he felt too discouraged to begin again for the umpteenth time.  The Abba answered him in this way, with a story.

 

"A man had a plot of land.  Through his carelessness brambles sprang up and it became a wilderness of thistles and thorns.  Then he decided to cultivate it.  So he said to his son, 'Go and clear that ground.'   So the son went to clear it, and he saw that the thistles and thorns had multiplied.   He said, 'How much time shall I need to clear and weed all of this?'  And he lay down on the ground and went to sleep.  He did this day after day.  Later his father came to see what he had done, and found him doing nothing.  When his father asked him about it, the son replied that the job looked so overwhelming he could not make himself begin.   His father replied: 'Son, if you had cleared a little each day, only  the area the size upon which you lay and sleep, only that much, your worked would have advanced slowly and you would not have lost heart.'  So he did what his father said, and in a short time the plot was cultivated."

 

Prayer does take discipline and regularity to be meaningful and effective. 

3)  Grace and Work: Many of us are accustomed to going through our days continually reproaching ourselves for what we perceive to be our failures in all areas of life.  We tend to dwell and be controlled by the things we fail at, or at least fail to live up to our expectations.  I believe this attitude will truly hinder our prayer life. We need to find a way to discard that right at the first.   We too often take on the role of God against ourselves; not treating ourselves as God, in fact, treats us.  We are exercising violence against ourselves in regard to not living up to our expectations.  If we want to learn how to pray, then we must give up this self-reproach and self-condemnation; discard it; throw it way right now.. 

Self reproach about prayer results from some certain convictions and expectations about prayer.  Many of us believe that if we are real Christians, love and prayer should flow freely out of us effortlessly, sincerely and spontaneously.  We also seem to believe that if we are not sure how to pray, and if love does not gush out of us then we are not Christians or some such crazy thing!   Another thing some believe is if they use the prayers of others instead of our own words flowing from their hearts then their prayer is not sincere. 

Convictions and expectations like these make us feel frustrated and embarrassed and we live with a sense of low self Christian esteem and we can even feel like we are Christian frauds.  And, we are afraid we will be found out.  Some probably didn't come here today because they feel like failures and frauds in their prayer life.  They don't want to be found out!  So we sort of put up a front and never get ourselves into a vulnerable position where we might have to confess to our perceived limitations. 

However, our monastic ancestors would be baffled by such an attitude- that we could be so unrealistic about ourselves, our love and our prayer.  They knew that love and prayer must be learned; yes learned over a long period of time.

The hardest thing in the world for me is to sustain a prayer life!  I will admit and confess that to you right now, just in saves you may be feeling that way also; but I'm sure none of you are!

 

Analogy - Use analogy of a married couple so in fatuously in love, but then comes the first big disagreement or crises and they come running to me and think its all over.  No, you've just learned that love is less a feeling and more a matter of learning and commitment; it's hard work coupled with God's continual flow of grace.  Even working at it for a long time may not make love come easy or enable us to love everyone the same way.  Bend analogy

 

One of the church fathers named Evagrius Ponticus had a very firm notion about what human beings are capable of, and he described for the members of his monastic community what was realistically possible for them.  He said,

 

"It is not possible to love all the brethren to the same degree.  But it is possible to associate with all in a manner that is free of resentment and hatred."

 

I believe that prayer and love are very closely connected.  Prayer, like love, is also something that people learn to do over a lifetime.  Another way to say it is that prayer is intentional, deliberate, learned!

 

The Paradox of Prayer

Our monastic ancestors spoke of  prayer paradoxically; spoke of it as a paradox. 

What's a paradox? (get feedback) 

 

 They spoke of prayer as hard work one minute; and the next minute they spoke of prayer as a "gift of grace."

That's the paradox.

 

But love is the same way. 

Love is a gift on the one hand B that I'm loved and that I am capable of loving; gift!

But yet, it is hard work; commitment and intentional on the other hand.

 

Our theological tradition has been so influenced by Luther (and even Calvin) who stressed the insignificance of human work in salvation that Lutherans have been suspicious of anything that smacks of works-righteousness even the idea of learning to love, or learning to pray.  Hence we have been particularly lousy at the Christian disciplines. 

 

We need to talk about salvation for a moment.  The word "salvation" is a paradox itself.  On the one hand, we mean by salvation that God loves us unconditionally and forgives sin through Jesus salvation is a pure, unmerited, unearned gift.  Nothing at all we can do to earn or merit God's love and forgiveness.  It's the very heart of the gospel.  "By grace you have been saved through faith.  This is not your own doing; but the gift of God."  (Ephesians 2:8)

 

But if we also mean by salvation the larger meaning of the word, "to be made whole" then our Christian growth in God is a part of that - and growing and learning to pray is a crucial part.  "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure." (Phil 2:12)

 

Our monastic ancestors insisted that God's initiative of love (which is the beginning of everything) makes possible our response. 

 

"In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins."  1 John 10

 

Another way to say it is that God's love is so dynamic that the new creation that is raised up in us has the ability to respond to God's grace. 

 

"So if anyone is in Christ,, there is anew creation: everything old has passed away, see, everything has become new."  2 Cor 5:17

 

God's grace and our response come together in a paradoxical way  in prayer

 

"I am confident that the one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ." Phil 1:6

 

  "...the only thing that counts is faith active in love."  Gal 5:6.

 

Le'=s say I'm angry with my neighbor, whoever my neighbor may be.  Let's say I bring my anger to God in prayer, and in the course and action of prayer I find that I am empowered to approach my neighbor without "resentment and hatred" as Evagruis says.  That's the gift of grace that fuses together my life and makes it whole:  God's grace; which makes possible my response of prayer Bin the process of which I find myself  empowered to see my neighbor in a new way; which may even result in a new way of relating to my neighbor.

The circle is complete.   God's love; my life and my neighbor's life are put together in one piece. 

Paradox is that prayer is both something we learn to do, but at the same time it is a gift of grace. 

 

4)      PRAYER AND SCRIPTURE

Scripture formed the backbone of early monastic prayer.  They did not use scripture every time, but they used it often.    They considered scripture a gift from God which embodied God's truth, will and love and through the scripture they believed God revealed himself to us.  They believed God could be encountered in the scripture.  The believed that it prevented our confused whims and immature desires from ruling and mistaking them for God's will and truth.

 

They especially used the Psalms and they believed the Psalms were given to us by the Holy Spirit to be spoken as our own words in our own particular situations.  They believed the psalms portrayed a picture of what were are to become in God and Christ. 

 

Athanasius says,

"Very often when we pray we do not recognize what is going on in our deepest selves.  But the words of the Psalms have the power as we pray them to become like a mirror to the person singing them.  By praying a psalm expressing anger, grief, happiness, or guilt, we become able to express our deepest and most heartfelt emotions and gain insight into our state of mind and heart.

Just as Christ provided the model of the earthly ad heavenly person, so also form the psalms he who wants to do so can learn the emotions and dispositions of the soul, finding in them also the therapy and correction suited for each emotion."

 

I believe when we make the psalm and other parts of scripture a part of our daily prayer, we will find that very often they have the unique ability to help us in very specific ways to recognize ourselves and the self inflicted distortions with which we live.  If we will let them, the psalms (and other scripture) can touch us at a very deep level, shaking loose old ways of seeing and relating to God.

 

Praying and meditating on the scripture can have a transforming effect within us as we become capable of hearing, understanding and taking on with the help of God's grace, the meaning of new and life giving images of God, ourselves, and other human beings.  Thus we grow in love.  More on this in two weeks!

 

LAST WORD

The Christian life is incarnational; God comes to us and is imminent among us.  It's not that we are transported to God.  Confession in prayer is not just confessing sin, it is laying bare before God all of who we are.

 

I believe we must bring our whole life experience to our prayer.  In prayer nothing is ever wasted: childhood pain, adult humiliations, experiences of joy and success, confusion, loss, fear, - all of these and more find their place in prayer, linking us more deeply with God and ourselves.