Prayer – What Are We To Do With It?
Our Father, who is in heaven,
Holy is Your name,
Your kingdom come,
Your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread,
And forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil,
For Yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever.
Amen (so be it).
Some visualise Him with them to make Him seem nearer to them. Some consider Him an ethereal Being with no tangible substance or presence. Some think of Him as the source of all things. Some say it is not He has power but that He is power. Any human perception of God via the filter of any individual mind or individual experience is inevitably going to be limited and limiting. It’s not that that’s wrong but that’s just real, isn’t it? It’s more that God is far more than we could possibly contain in our mortal frame (if indeed we believe He exists at all). Right?
Let’s be clear, however many angelic visitations any of us may have had (or not), how many divine revelations about scripture we have had or how many prophetic words we have had spoken over us, our understanding of God is always going be lesser than all there is to be seen or understood in God. You may disagree, which is absolutely your prerogative (of course), but it felt important that I clarify the starting point from where I am writing. I absolutely know I see little, I understand little and I know little beyond the fact that God is and I am.
I was a little girl, aged 12, who had (in her mind), God sitting on the back of her bike (without a crash helmet, because He didn’t need one – He was God) when she rode to school each day. I stopped that visualisation after I had an interaction with a lorry on a junction with the A40 and I felt He would be no longer safe there.
Over many years, I have been taught a variety of things about prayer. There are several schools of thought and teaching around it and within Christian circles, and it sometimes feels like everyone has the answer as to how to pray. My writing about any of these methods or processes around prayer is not intended to elevate or negatively judge any of them. Each of us must decide if we will pray and how we will do that if we make the choice to do so. These examples below are simply my experiences of teaching I have come across so far.
I am (I’ve been told) to be authoritative in prayer and to boldly ask God anything I want to ask Him.
I’ve been taught it is best to bring every little thing and detail to God, which got a little out of hand when my autistic brain (that we know about now, but didn’t then) started having panic attacks about whether I was wearing the right clothes for that day…and if I wasn’t, whether there would some level of negative fallout for me or anyone else. It’s ridiculous to read, I’m sure. It is ridiculous, but I did live that (and this is the first time I’ve admitted it beyond myself. I knew I lived it because I was there).
I’ve been taught it is best to pray by speaking things into being via words as this was a model Jesus used.
I’ve been taught that without faith, my prayers will be ineffective. I have believed it has been fully my responsibility (because of this teaching) that if someone was not healed or a situation did not improve, it was my fault because I didn’t have enough faith. I combined that teaching with the fact that I knew the Bible teaches that faith as small as a mustard seed can move mountains and I recognised how little faith I must have. I then aligned that with the fact that without faith it is impossible to please God (mixing up - without realising I was doing so - the meaning of faith in each of those contexts) and felt like the worst Christian that has ever lived on the planet.
I have been taught it is best to structure prayers in particular ways. I am to elevate God, ask Him for help and then thank Him for who He is and what He has done. Sometimes there have been 3 steps in the ‘best way to pray’ process, sometimes 5, sometimes 7 (why always odd numbers, I wonder?!).
I have been taught it is best to pray using scripture as the basis of the words I use because these are the words inspired by God or said by God and so (I was told) He would take more notice of these.
I have been taught is it best to pray with no words.
I have been taught it is best to pray using liturgy and structures established over the centuries.
As I mentioned, it’s not that any of these tools to aid praying is necessarily wrong, right, effective, or ineffective. There will be other ‘best ways to pray’ out there, I’m sure.
What are we to do with it? Prayer, that is. If God is (and I believe He is) all-knowing, all-seeing, everywhere present and beyond the physical and human experience, would it not be wise to factor that in if we choose to pray?
Do I believe God has plans for the world and plans for Dawn? Yes. Do I know what they are? No. I have some ideas sometimes what these might be, but no, I don’t know for sure. I am not all-knowing or all-seeing and I don’t have a handle on the bigger picture. I would tell you (as a younger Christian) that I was very clear (in my mind) about what I believed His plans for me were. Decades on from there, turns out I didn’t have a clue. Am I pleased about that? Yes. Were the plans I thought He had the plan A? Does it matter? To me, it doesn’t. Not anymore. It did, but now it doesn’t.
Do I believe He plans for our good? I do. Does that mean what we see as 'good' or what we consider to be best for us is what will be? No. We don’t know what is good for us any more than a child in a sweet shop knows what is good for them, I tentatively suggest. We don’t have a clue.
So, what do I bring to God in prayer? A shopping list of all I think needs to happen? Requests on behalf of others that they might appreciate me praying what I’m praying? Maybe some requests for others that they might actively not want happening in their lives? For successes in my pursuits/the pursuits of others? For favour with people so that I/someone else can succeed?
All that feels a bit woolly and ‘hit and miss’, and kind of confused. I don’t have the answers about what to pray or how to pray it and I’m pleased about that. I’ve put down the metaphorical big stick I used to beat myself with when my prayers ‘didn’t work’ (as I saw it) and to be honest, it’s a total relief! I’m internally more and more certain that it really doesn’t matter how or what or when or even whether we pray in ways others think are right or best. He will see beyond the words in our prayers into the true motivation for praying what we have. He will already know what we will ask before we ask.
For 3 years now, I keep coming back to the same starting point and the same ending point about anything to do with God:
God is. I am.
Anything beyond that seems to get fuzzy and muddled somehow. It’s probably a seasonal thing in my walk of faith, but weirdly, it’s a season that seems to be less about pressures from others that I used to expose myself to (how I should be or what I should do etc) and it’s more of 'a wander'.
But then again, what do I know? Remember, I’m the girl who carried God on the back of her bike and nearly killed Him. Yeah, we’d best leave the prayer teaching to the prayer experts.