Prayer Rhythms
teach us to pray
This isn’t an essay on prayer written by someone who is particularly devout or good at prayer. I, like most Christians, acknowledge that prayer is important. I tell people that I “will pray on it” but to be honest I forget a lot of the time and I would much rather do something. I would much rather serve or study scripture, than be still. However, I want to have conversations with God. I want to sit across from Him like I would sit across from one of you. I want to listen to Him, laugh with Him, cry, or talk with Him like I would with anyone else. I’ve been really into the idea of ancient rhythms for some time; ways of doing things that the church, the Bride, has been doing since Jesus showed them how. One of these rhythms relates to praying.
I think people have always had trouble with prayer. I think even the disciples did. I think this because they asked to be taught how to do it (Luke 11:1). Jesus responds with this:
“Our Father in heaven
Hallowed by your name
Your Kingdom come
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day our daily bread
Forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those who trespass against us
And lead us not into temptation
But deliver us from evil”
It begins with a recognition of who God is and how we are in relation to Him. He is our dad and we are His kids. If we cannot understand just how much we are like His own children then we cannot fully understand when Jesus says things like “if you then know how to give good gifts to your children then how much more will your heavenly father give good gifts to those who ask him?”
This then gives us the courage to ask for His will because we know that His will for us is good and life giving. Jesus tells us to ask God for His Kingdom to crash into earth and for love to be the ruling authority in the systems of the world. God’s will is so much better than our own that we can confidently ask for “daily bread.” Again, if we are dad’s kids then when we “ask for bread” he will not “give us a stone” and when we “ask for fish” he will not “give us a snake.” His Kingdom crashing will not hurt us. It may break us, refine us, or do the bittersweet work of replacing our stony hearts and stiff necks with hearts of flesh and desires to be God’s own, but it will not hurt us beyond repair.
I wanted to try and turn my heart in prayer towards others, towards the church and towards the suffering. It is important to always have community on the forefront of our minds and hearts. So an idea might be to focus really hard on the us in this prayer. The prayer Jesus taught is not for you, it is not for me. It is for us. One thought is that when you say us in the “give us this daily our daily bread” let yourself think about the faces of our kids in Africa, throw in some names out loud if you remember. I’ve thrown in the faces of people I have met at the homeless shelters or the names of people I know who are struggling financially or out of work. The important thing is the us and the recognition that our abundance is to be gratefully and joyfully enjoyed and maybe even given out. The “bread” after all, in the Bible, usually looks like manna from heaven. When God gave manna to the Israelites, the scripture says, “Those who gathered a lot had nothing left over and those who gathered only a little had enough.” God will give us our daily bread.
We then confess our trespasses as a community and as God’s church. A common liturgy used in the time of communal confessions reads:
Forgive us when we have:
- Invoked your name for selfish reasons
- Made our faith convenient and not committed
- Not practiced obedience for the sake of our own comfort
- Offered a half-hearted approach to your love and sacrifice
You can lift up whatever trespass you can think of. When we pray that we have forgiven those who have trespassed against us again let yourself think of faces and names to let go.
Finally, the prayer Jesus taught us to pray implores us to seek God’s help in becoming holy. It begs us to ask God to lead us into a life worthy of being called His own Bride. I’ve decided to try and say this prayer three times daily, but I’ve already forgotten to say it either in my mornings, or over lunch when my focus quickly shifts to the sandwich I am eating. If you commit to saying it three times daily then you might also want to commit yourself to allowing grace when you forget to do it, or begrudgingly do it, or do it without really meaning it. I know there is this attitude of heart out there that is generally stand offish toward any sort of ritual, and I understand the reasons why, but Jesus did not admonish the Pharisees for praying at the times they prayed. He did not tell them to stop praying at their prayer times. He just said “When you pray” don’t talk at God. Open the door to the God who stands knocking and who gives us assurance that if we would just open the door then He will come in.
Ask God to give you the ears to hear the knocking. Try to say the prayer Jesus taught three times a day and wait in hopeful expectation that your relationship grows out of that. Our conversations with God, I believe, will slowly grow from the few faces we can think that need His provision daily to include parts of the world we never even considered. It will slowly grow from the few trespasses we always seem to struggle with to a true commitment to walk towards holiness. It will slowly grow from forgiveness of the enemies that we are quick to remember.
Join me as I learn how to pray to the God who stands knocking, and as I learn to grow in a greater love.