Rebooting Your Prayer Life

Posted by Joe Thorn - 29/07/08

A while back I confessing to Steve McCoy that I often feel like I’m a better Deist than Christian. He knew exactly what I meant. I was having prayer issues.

A Deist doesn’t believe God is actively involved in the world, but that he created the cosmos to run on its own and walked away. In other words, God doesn’t get involved in our world or our lives. He is essentially absent. In such a world prayer would be meaningless because God doesn’t poke his head in, much less intervene on our behalf. Of course in contrast the Christian believes that the Lord is a God of providence; that he actively governs all the affairs of the world and is intimately involved in even the details of our lives. The growing grass, the dying birds, one man’s prosperity, and another’s poverty, when and where we live and the day of our death are all things God is carefully overseeing. Because God is connected to our world and life, it only makes sense that we would want to appeal to him in prayer to act.

In fact God invites us to commune with him; talk with him about our desires and experiences - our needing and bleeding. He calls us to call on him and he responds. God acts. And yet prayer is too often an amazing gift that I take for granted. So, when I say I feel like more of a Deist than Christian I am confessing that my prayer life is often too small, and does not always reflect a belief in the God who is there, who cares and is involved. So as I spent a lot of time working through my practice of prayer I came to a few conclusions.

I was praying too little.

I was praying with too little passion.

I was praying with too little optimism (this is a nicer way to say I was praying with little faith).

So, as I have been thinking through the implications of my theology on prayer, and catching a vision for what a healthy prayer life would look like, I also began pulling together a plan to reboot the whole thing. The goal, to state it simply, is to develop a more constant attitude and spirit of prayer throughout each day. Here’s how I have been rebooting my prayer life. It may be helpful to a few others out there.

1. Properly define prayer.
Yes, prayer can be simply understood as conversing with God. But what most need is a robustly theological perspective on prayer. One of my favorite treatments of the subject is John Bunyan’s famous treatise. His definition of prayer is clarifying and helpful.

Prayer is a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart or soul to God, through Christ, in the strength and assistance of the Holy Spirit, for such things as God hath promised, or according to the Word, for the good of the church, with submission, in faith, to the will of God.

This biblical definition of prayer merits some considerable meditation. Better yet - read Bunyan on the subject. Why is this important? The better you understand what prayer is, the better your prayer life will become. For example, for prayer to be legit Bunyan says it must be affectionate. Does that characterize your conversation with God, or is it more of a recitation; an unaffected reading of a grocery list of needs? I will not exegete his definition at the moment, but spend time working through the implications. Do you pray for things God has promised, according to the word? Do you pray submitting yourself to God’s wisdom and ways? Do you pray in faith - believing? Clearly defining what prayer is helps to both guide and evaluate our praying.

2. Schedule time for extended prayer.
Casual, spontaneous prayer is a good thing, but so is more formal, scheduled prayer. Set aside time each day to get alone with God. Early morning, late evening, lunch break - whatever. Make the time to get quiet and enter into a time of real communion with God. I know that some claim scheduling prayer feels a bit artificial, but such thinking would also dismiss a scheduled date with your spouse. Would scheduling a date with your wife mean a lack of intimacy? I hope not. The point is, without a schedule you are simply much less likely to have extended times of prayer.

3. Learn a method of prayer.
Extended time alone with God is hard for most, and without a method to work through it, such times of prayer are often hijacked by pressing issues that are waiting to take over our attention. Even getting back on track can be tough. I blogged on the old ACTS model a while back, and I continue to use it as a method of prayer, though these days I call it the PACTS model because I kick it off with a Psalm.

  • Psalm (a different Psalm each time I pray)
    This is helpful as it draws my focus to God’s character and work, sets my mind and heart in a direction where I can work through the rest of this method.
  • Adoration
    Praising God for who he is, what he has done. It is a focus on his glory. The Psalms are particularly helpful here, and this aspect of prayer is very dependent on having a well developed theology.
  • Confession
    Spend time considering, confessing and crucifying sin.
  • Thanksgiving
    Thank God for his provision, care, promises etc.
  • Supplication
    Our pleading with God for our and others specific needs.

4. Create cues to prompt you throughout the day.
Cues are triggers or prompts that remind us to pray throughout the day. This is not just adding another ritual to a moment, but a calling of yourself back to a frame of mind where you recognize God is present with you, and you are always dependent on him. Get creative and use technology as cues. Tape reminders on your bathroom mirror, stick post-it notes in your planner, leave yourself voice mail at work, send yourself an email in the future, have friends promise to randomly call and remind you to pray, etc.

5. Master the short prayer.
The short prayer is the sudden, unplanned, informal interaction you have with God in the moment. It may be praise, supplication, or confession. I say the short prayer must be “mastered” because it cannot simply be the lazy man’s prayer habit where God is casually addressed with less interest than we would the lady taking our order at the drive through window. To master the short prayer we must not only keep in mind the proper definition of prayer (it still applies here of course!), but we also have to work on “practicing the presence” of God. Apart from learning to walk through each day with the awareness the God is with us and we are dependant on him we will never master the short prayer.

These are five things I have focused on to help reboot my prayer life. I’d love to hear about any tools, methods, and encouragement you’ve found related to this issue as well.

Fervent Prayer: What do you want?

Posted by Joe Thorn - 17/06/08

Fervourless prayer has no heart in it; it is an empty thing, an unfit vessel. Heart, soul, and life, must find place in all real praying. Heaven must be made to feel the force of this crying unto God.

Paul was a notable example of the man who possessed a fervent spirit of prayer. His petitioning was all-consuming, centered immovably upon the object of his desire, and the God who was able to meet it.

Prayers must be red hot. It is the fervent prayer that is effectual and that availeth. Coldness of spirit hinders praying; prayer cannot live in a wintry atmosphere. Chilly surroundings freeze out petitioning; and dry up the springs of supplication. It takes fire to make prayers go. Warmth of soul creates an atmosphere favourable to prayer, because it is favourable to fervency. By flame, prayer ascends to heaven. Yet fire is not fuss, nor heat, noise. Heat is intensity — something that glows and burns. Heaven is a mighty poor market for ice.

God wants warm-hearted servants. The Holy Spirit comes as a fire, to dwell in us; we are to be baptized, with the Holy Ghost and with fire. Fervency is warmth of soul. A phlegmatic [apathetic, complacent] temperament is abhorrent to vital experience. If our religion does not set us on fire, it is because we have frozen hearts. God dwells in a flame; the Holy Ghost descends in fire. To be absorbed in God’s will, to be so greatly in earnest about doing it that our whole being takes fire, is the qualifying condition of the man who would engage in effectual prayer.

Our Lord warns us against feeble praying. “Men ought always to pray,” He declares, “and not to faint.” That means, that we are to possess sufficient fervency to carry us through the severe and long periods of pleading prayer. Fire makes one alert and vigilant, and brings him off, more than conqueror. The atmosphere about us is too heavily charged with resisting forces for limp or languid prayers to make headway. It takes heat, and fervency and meteoric fire, to push through, to the upper heavens, where God dwells with His saints, in light.

Many of the great Bible characters were notable examples of fervency of spirit when seeking God. The Psalmist declares with great earnestness:

“My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto Thy judgments at all times.”

What strong desires of heart are here! What earnest soul longings for the Word of the living God!

An even greater fervency is expressed by him in another place:

“As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?”

That is the word of a man who lived in a state of grace, which had been deeply and supernaturally wrought in his soul.

Fervency before God counts in the hour of prayer, and finds a speedy and rich reward at His hands. The Psalmist gives us this statement of what God had done for the king, as his heart turned toward his Lord:

“Thou hast given him his heart’s desire, and hast not withholden the request of his lips.”

At another time, he thus expresses himself directly to God in preferring his request:

“Lord, all my desire is before Thee; and my groaning is not hid from Thee.”

What a cheering thought! Our inward groanings, our secret desires, our heart-longings, are not hidden from the eyes of Him with whom we have to deal in prayer.

…

Fervency has its seat in the heart, not in the brain, nor in the intellectual faculties of the mind. Fervency therefore, is not an expression of the intellect. Fervency of spirit is something far transcending poetical fancy or sentimental imagery. It is something else besides mere preference, the contrasting of like with dislike. Fervency is the throb and gesture of the emotional nature.

It is not in our power, perhaps, to create fervency of spirit at will, but we can pray God to implant it. It is ours, then, to nourish and cherish it, to guard it against extinction, to prevent its abatement or decline. The process of personal salvation is not only to pray, to express our desires to God, but to acquire a fervent spirit and seek, by all proper means, to cultivate it. It is never out of place to pray God to beget within us, and to keep alive the spirit of fervent prayer.

Fervency has to do with God, just as prayer has to do with Him. Desire has always an objective. If we desire at all, we desire something. The degree of fervency with which we fashion our spiritual desires, will always serve to determine the earnestness of our praying.

from E. M. Bounds, The Necessity of Prayer

The Secret to a Better Prayer Life

Posted by Joe Thorn - 19/12/07

Are you one of those people who find prayer difficult? I am. It has always been easier for me to spend hours reading, studying and journaling, than to spend less time on my knees. I know some who experience the opposite, but most of my friends share my weakness. And it is a weakness. There is no propping ourselves up with “I can study for hours!” when prayer is such a struggle. Study will always be fruitless if it is not a prayerful study. If communion with God is not an inherent part of our time in a book, or the Book, then we are most likely engaging in an impotent discipline.

When it comes to struggling with prayer I often hear things like:

“I don’t know what to say.”
“I run out of things to pray about.”
“My prayers amount to little more than a laundry list of requests.”
“I feel like my prayers just bounce off the ceiling.”
“My praying feels artificial.”

There are a number of things I recommend to people who are learning, or re-learning, to pray. The simplest is the ACTS acronym. Most of you know what it is, but just in case - it is the model of prayer that encourages us to begin with Adoration (praise), and then continue with Confession of our sin, moving on to Thanksgiving for all God is and has done for us, and concludes with Supplication (specific requests for self and others). I like this model, and it typically structures my prayer time even when I am not thinking about it. There are some great books I encourage people to read and use as well. Reading and praying through the Valley of Vision is a great aid to learning to pray more theologically. The Bible and the Closet by Thomas Watson and Samuel Lee was instrumental in altering my prayer life forever. Herman Witsius’ Sacred Dissertations on The Lord’s Prayer should be read by every pastor. But the best advice I can give someone who wants to deepen their prayer life, is typically the most unexpected. I am convinced that one of the best things to help your prayer life is systematic theology.

I know sys theo fell out of vogue, even in many of our evangelical seminaries, over the past few daceds, but apart from systematic theology your prayer life will be weak, short, and frustrating.

The brief explanation is that unless you know God and his works praise will be limited, confession will be shallow, thanksgiving will be narrow and supplication will be chained to uncertainty. I’ll go into more detail using that old ACTS model of prayer.

Adoration.
Without a robust theology a Christian is crippled in lifting up, blessing and praising the name of God because we do not know what his names mean. To adore God is to marvel at his character and work and express this to him with our own voice. The more we know of God, the better equipped we are to praise him for who he is. For example, good theology teaches us that God is both sovereign and good. This is truly praiseworthy and should elicit singing and blessing. The mystery of his tri-unity, the wonder of his creation, the depths of his mercy, the covenant the Father made with the Son for our salvation, the gift of his perfect and trustworthy Scripture - all of it and more is cause for adoration. How many ways can we adore God? We are only limited to the breadth and depth of our theology. The weaker your theology, the weaker your praise.

Confession.
The more we know of God (theology) the more we may know God personally (theology’s end) and the more clearly we will see ourselves. Good theology gives birth to good conviction and confession because at every point of God’s character we see the antithesis in our own. Even the imago dei condemns us since it too is corrupt, a shell of what it was in the beginning. Though we are made in his image we often reflect the world before we do God. Do you feel like you run out of things to confess? The knowledge of God will remedy that. Are you not sufficiently grieved over your sins? Good theological meditation of both the glory of God and the heinousness of our corruption will be of great assistance in both knowing and mortifying your sins.

Thanksgiving.
Let’s be honest. Your thanksgiving is weak. I am sure you thank God daily for things that we should in fact be thankful for, but I also know that for many of us our thanks is offered with too little conviction and passion. We thank God for things like food or the weather so often because we can think of little else. Our thanksgiving will only be as weak as our theology. God’s work, gifts, promises and presence are all things for which a Christian should be immeasurably thankful. You should run out of time before you run out of reasons to thank God. Systematic theology is a great help here, because through it we can see much more of God’s giving, and our unworthiness.

Supplication.
Supplication is pleading with God for grace concerning specific needs both for ourselves and others. I have heard from a number of Christians (and in the past have felt this myself) that “my prayers feel like a simple list of needs that I recite. It doesn’t seem like prayer.” That’s because often it isn’t. God isn’t a computer who simply needs data in order to perform certain functions. He is the Person who made us for his own glory, who invites us into a relationship with himself despite our sin and corruption. God invites us to dialog! To “reason” with him. Good theology can change our stale list of requests into a more meaningful interaction with God. How? At the very least, good theology teaches us to what we may appeal in God when making our requests. Because God is righteous, we can appeal to him to vindicate the oppressed and persecuted. Because God desires his glory to be known in the world we can plead for his grace to extend to the unconverted. Know who God is and on what grounds he operates gives us confidence in praying to him. We are not praying to a God who different from day to day; inconsistent in his character and attitude. Good theology provides a Christian with a healthy humility and confidence while on our knees before God.

In the end, I believe prayer is impossible without systematic theology. It is the secret of a healthy prayer life. Theology of course is inherent in any prayer, but systematic theology helps us to develop a more holistic, comprehensive and detailed picture of God, self and the world. Therefore, it allows us to connect our needs, thoughts and desires to God with greater precision and hopefully, a more confident and joyous faith. So is you’re new to (or not fond of) sys theo, start small and read it with an aim of learning to know God, not just facts. Read it prayerfully with the understanding that this will equip you to communicate better with the God who has revealed himself to us.

Powered by WordPress with GimpStyle Theme design by Horacio Bella.
Entries and comments feeds. Valid XHTML and CSS.