Some Approaches to Prayer

I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.’

The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him.

Lamentations 3: 24-25 NIV®

In going through this fraught and bewildering period of our lives, even among Christians we might be wondering whether we are praying right. In fact, from time to we might waiver in our trust, faith and hope in God. People who are not Christians may well ask questions such as: Is there any purpose in prayer? What will prayer achieve? Here are some approaches to prayer by writers from The SPCK Book Of Christian Prayer. Richard Foster comments, ‘When beginning to pray-we all come to prayer with a tangled mass of motives: altruistic and selfish, merciful and hateful, loving and bitter. But what I have come to see is that God is big enough to receive us with all our mixture. We do not have to be bright, or pure, or filled with faith, or anything. This is what grace means, and not only are we saved by grace, we live by it as well. And we pray by it. – We will never have pure enough motives, or be good enough, or know enough in order to pray rightly. We simply must set all these things aside and begin praying.’ Foster speaks of prayer as the intimate, ongoing interaction with God.

In the section on ‘Being Yourself’ in prayer Paul Wallis says, ‘The crucial and liberating truth to grasp is that it is actually me, as I am, that God is wanting to meet when I pray. The incredible fact is GOD WANTS TO MEET ME! What a wonderful truth! — It is because of this that we may have the freedom in prayer to be just who we are, and how we are, with no super-spiritual act, no pretence. It is because God has reconciled us to himself that we are able to meet him in prayer – not because of how we are or the way we feel. This means, then, that I don’t have to wait until I am feeling “good enough” or “spiritual enough” to pray.’ In ‘Loving Humanity’, Kenneth Leech remarks, ‘The God of Christian prayer is an involved God, a social God. Involvement and society are among the essential marks of Christian prayer because this prayer is actually a participation in God. God is involved in humanity, and so prayer is an involvement in humanity. God is social and not isolated, and so prayer is a social, not an isolated, activity—.’

Let us have a brief look at Psalm 27, in which David was crying out to God because he was surrounded by trouble. In this psalm we do not know whether he was fleeing from King Saul, who was chasing David to kill him, or whether he was being chased by his rebellious son Absalom. However, David knew that God was his only real source of safety. He expresses his faith out loud:

The Lord is my light and my salvation –
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life–
of whom shall I be afraid?

In several of the verses David gives a personal declaration of his faith. He shows full confidence in God to hide, and keep him safe; and although David is in trouble from his enemies, he worships God.

I will sing and make music to the Lord.

  I will see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.

From experience David knew what it meant to wait for the Lord. He had been anointed king at age sixteen, but did not become king until age thirty. Many of us have had the experience of having to wait on God, our timing is not His timing. In the end God sees us through our trials.

Let us pray:
Father God, at this time of immense loss and tragedy in our nation and around the world, it might seem to us that you are not answering our prayers, or you do not understand the urgency of our situation. Help us to remember that you are very much in control, and wanting to refresh and renew us.  Father, please strengthen us, and help us to keep in communion with you so that we discover what you might be trying to teach us. Church family, today, let us humbly submit ourselves to God, and dwell on His goodness and care for us.

Wait on the Lord;
Be of good courage,
And He shall strengthen your heart;
Wait, I say, on the Lord.

Psalm 27: 14 NKJV

The Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer

This is being built to encourage prayer and to preserve the Christian heritage of the nation. The Eternal Wall will be built with one million bricks, each representing prayer which was answered by God. This project will cost £9.3 million and will be built on the outskirts of Birmingham, which is regarded as the centre of England. This monument will dwarf the Angel of the North and will be the same height as Nelson’s Column. The website provides more information.

Glynne Gordon-Carter