we make between our conversations with God and our conversations with other people, will be no more than skimpy and segmented efforts to teach our hearts the truth. We know these little metaphors miss the supernatural mark, no doubt by several light years. And so, it is important that we square these comparisons with our theology, making sure they don’t mislead us, cause us to invent some different deity. Do I overstate here? I don’t think so. I know that personally I go through life inventing images of God and prayer that bear only slight resemblance to reality. I compare prayer to some ordinary chat, and so reduce it to a miniature approximation of the splendor that it is. And when I do this, I diminish prayer and chip God down to size as well. We must give thought to the comparisons we make. We must be careful what we say, for we are listening.
For example, prayer can surely be companionship, but it is not always like two friends meeting for coffee. More often, it is like one friend giving the other a blood transfusion; one giving the other life, physically and spiritually. I’ve said it before, and we all need to say it again—many times—prayer is a relationship between two beings, where one of the two is God, and one is not. Embedding prayer in Scripture will keep this at the forefront of our minds.
Prayer is so much more than our speaking words to God. It is God’s communicating with us, working on us, transforming us into the image of God, making us more and more like him. Prayer is a workshop where we are handcrafted,completed, caused to be what we were designed and—by God’s grace—created to be. For good or ill, whether we pray or not, we are always being changed; worked on by our surroundings; shaped and molded and defined. We get to choose the influences that will work upon us, but we do not get to choose their effect. In prayer we choose the influence of the Holy Spirit of the living God, never knowing what results might follow, but all the while trusting the One who says, “I know the plans I have in mind for you . . . ; they are plans for peace, . . . to give you a future filled with hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).
The outcome will not be our doing, but we know the One who will cause us to be more than we can ask or imagine. Our thoughts run to new hairstyles; his thoughts run to new heads, new thoughts, new perspectives, and brand-new understanding. Our thoughts run to fit bodies; his thoughts run to fit souls. We envision happy days; he envisions everlasting glory.
The focus of our prayers must be, with concentrated gaze, on God—because this focus is the only way to avoid making our prayers be for our glory. Even in our prayers for good things—for righteousness, for holiness—if we focus on ourselves and not on God, we’ll lose our way for sure. I say that what I want is God, to live for him and in his glory, but sometimes I think what I really want is my self—but my self made perfect, in fact made wonderful, so I can feel really good about me, and who I am, and what I do. That is so very unlike a preference for the Lord himself. It is a subtle temptation; but even mechanical reminders to look at him, to “taste and see how good the Lord is” (Psalm 34:8), can help us redirect our gaze.
When we focus on ourselves, prayer can summon up both anxiety and worry. A time of quietness can set the stage for every shaky feeling there can be. Worry as worship. Make no mistake, we do know how to worship; the question is, What is the object of the honor and attention that we give? When I’m supposed to be adoring God, I catch myself fretting because I took a world-class lasagna to the Alpha class last night at church, and no one said how wonderful I was. I am worshiping. I am adoring the image of myself. I worry about my kids. I worship, I adore, a perfect family. I sit to pray and feel an old familiar twang of pain. I’m worried about my shoulder or my knee. I am worshiping my health.
“But shouldn’t we adore health?” comes the question. Well, Paul prayed for healing, and God offered him grace instead (2 Corinthians 12:8-9). God got it right, or he got it wrong. We must decide. This is the magnitude of the questions we explore every time we pray. I want to say that prayer is not for the fainthearted, but of course prayer is precisely for the very faintest-hearted. We have only to be willing to leave our fright and fearfulness with God when we rise up from our knees. But far too often we pray, “Dear God, I’m worried and afraid. Please take these fears from me. In Jesus’ name, Amen,” and then we snatch them back before we walk away.
We can trade in times of gentle sweet communion, walking with God in the cool of the evening in the garden of Eden, for our frantic, harried pleas that God do what we say. There is a great line in the movie Shadowlands, a line I’m told may have been written specially for the movie. No matter; it rings true. In the film the actor who plays C. S. Lewis says, “I do not pray because it changes God; I pray because it changes me.” That is, we pray in order to be brought into conformity with the Lord’s design. “Thy will be done,” the smartest line in every prayer we pray. We have only to look back across the years and see the things we prayed for that would have been disastrous had our prayers been granted. Only after the passage of time can we see the answers that at the time seemed wrong but that have turned out to be for our solid, certifiable good. “Thy will be done” (Matthew 6:10 KJV). This prayer does not need to be cut to fit us; we need to be changed, transformed through the slow-drip splendor of God’s grace, in order that we fit this prayer. But we start where we are. We walk before we run.
Prayer Is Connection in Community
Despite the fact that our conversation here is focused on private prayer, it is also true that we must always pray with others, and that the people in our lives will pervade our prayer times. Prayer is a way we are related, interconnected, dependent on and involved with others. In the Bible, we read the words of the prophet Samuel: “I would never sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you” (1 Samuel 12:23). No casual calling, this. The Trinity, the Three Persons, is a community, and so is the body of Christ. We are taught that we are members of one another—as deeply connected as that. We are to pray for and with each other always.
I sometimes wonder what somebody means when they say they’ll pray for me, but with certain saints, I know exactly. When I ask my pastor for her prayers, I know she falls down on her knees and seeks God’s mercy in fervent devotion. I also came to know what the man sometimes called “the evangelical pope” meant by praying for another. That man, John Stott, spoke one night at Amherst College. At the end of the evening, a long line formed to speak with him. I joined the line, and when my turn came, I spoke from a deep experience of the phrase “to covet someone’s prayers.” I said, “I’m here with my friend Annie. She does not know the Lord. Tonight when you are traveling over the Atlantic Ocean flying back home, would you please pray for Annie?”
John Stott looked at me with kindest eyes, and he said no.
“I will, however,” he said, “pray for your friend right now,” and as he stood there, surrounded, in a crowded auditorium of people who seemed unwilling to leave, he prayed a prayer that I will always remember. When John Stott prayed that night, I knew that I was praying with a man who walked with God. It was a prayer like few I have experienced in my life.
For saints, prayer comes first. It just does. It is the bedrock foundation of every action of every day. We are helped in prayer just knowing others pray. There is such beauty in awareness that when we pray the hourly prayers of the church, numberless others all across the world join hearts and minds together in that prayer.
Prayer connects us with other people when no other contact is possible. My ninety-seven-year-old aunt—the dictionary definition of a prayer warrior—never leaves her nursing home. But oh, the places she will go; oh, the places she has been. She’s on more speed dials than anyone I know. “Will you pray?” Those three words have echoed down the years, and will be said with no less fervor in a call she might well get this afternoon. Her life is actively involved with people and events across the globe.
Prayer is praying for the people we love. Prayer is a dynamic, powerful, supernatural involvement with other people. Prayer might be asking God to bless a stranger
