Finding a Parking Spot

Dependence on God is hard in our American "yes you can," "pull yourself up by you bootstraps" culture.  We are all about independence, which is why stories that display true dependence on God can really help open our eyes to what true dependence looks like.  Here is one of those stories, as told by Paul Miller in "A Praying Life":

After raising 5 children on a meager pastor's salary, Rosa "went with her husband the share the gospel in the slums of Uganda and the streets of Dublin."  She is now 82 years old and a full time missionary in London.  Her son read a book on prayer that said that we shouldn't pray for things such as parking places because those requests are selfish.  After hearing this, Rosa "looked a little incredulous, coked her head, started laughing, and said 'how else would you find a parking place?' "    

The experiences this woman has had through raising 5 kids on a pastor's salary and doing missionary work in Uganda, Dublin, and London have made her completely reliant on God for everything, and she has stories to tell about God answering those prayers.

We don't pray for things that are normal to everyday life, such as finding a parking place.  Maybe becasue we lack dependence or maybe because we are cynical and assume we will get a spot anyway, so why pray.  But if we completely changed our view of the world we would realize, like Rosa has, that everything is dependent on God...otherwise...how else would we find a parking spot?

Where your Confidence Lies

"If you are not praying, then you are quietly confident that time, money, and talent are all you need in life.  You'll always be a little too tired, a little too busy.  But if, like Jesus, you realize you can't do life on your own, then no matter how busy, no matter how tired you are, you will find the time to pray." -Paul Miller 


It is true.  We are far too confident in ourselves.  We don't realize how dependent we really are.  But in reality, there is not a muscle I can move or a thought I can think without God granting it to be so, for all things are held together by Christ (Col 1:17).  Our lack of praying reveals more than we want it to.  Our lack of praying says we don't need God, but God says we do.  


Martin Luther truly understood his dependence in God, as seen in quotes such as this: "Tomorrow I plan to work, work, from early until late. In fact I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer."  May our hearts attitude towards prayer be like his!  That the more we have to do the more we depend on God and seek Him in prayer!  

Snippets of Prayer

"While being constant in prayer is an important way of praying, this is no substitute for focused times of prayer.  For example, a husband and wife who only talk in snippets to one another throughout the day would have a shallow relationship.  You'd be business partners, not lovers.  You can't build a relationship on sound bites." -Paul Miller

Life is busy and often times the only time we make for prayers are snippets throughout the day.  Thanking God for a safe trip to work, praying for you spouse when you think about them, praying a meeting goes well, etc.  While this is good to do, when do we spend time in concentrated prayer?  When was the last time you sat in prayer for an hour?  That sounds like a long time, but only because we put everything else ahead of our relationship with God.  We can spend hours watching the Rangers game, hours on a date, hours with our kids...but an hour in prayer is difficult!

I invite you to join me in this challenge: Purposefully plan out an hour this week that you will spend in prayer and follow through with it.  Set an alarm so you don't keep looking at your watch.  Pray, listen, and just enjoy your time with God.  It might be awkward, but that is okay...most first dates are awkward, but it will get better.  After your hour, look at your daily schedule and plan a time each day where you can spend time in concentrated prayer.  It doesn't have to be an hour...just needs to be concentrated time, like 15-20 minutes.

Happy Praying!            

The Criteria is Weariness

"When we slow down to pray, we are immediately confronted with how unspiritual we are, with how difficult it is to concentrate on God...Nothing exposes our selfishness and spiritual powerlessness like prayer."*  But this is okay.  We are called to come to God like little children, and little children never hesitate or try to hide their selfishness.  They come as they are.*

When I was learning to walk, my older brother would quickly notice I was getting the attention so found thought it would be a pertinent time to pracitce his football skills and throw me to the floor.  My parents didn't just roll their eyes because I couldn't handle his blow...no...they cheered when stood without the help of the table and would help remove the obstacle of my brother (after capturing it on film of course).  They were excited to see me take a step and fall, because that was who I was and that is what I could do.

God is the same way.  He gets exited when we come to him.  We may get thrown to the ground on the way or fall down after a few steps...but unsteady prayers is often what we have to offer, and that is okay.  Jesus doesn't say to come to him when we have prayer life figured out, he says "come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest" (Mt 11:28).  "The Criteria for coming to Jesus is weariness.  Come overwhelmed with life.  Come with your wondering mind.  Come messy."*  But please...COME!  

*From "A Praying Life" by Paul E. Miller 

Don't Seek the Experience

"Deep in our psyches we want an experience with God or an experience in prayer.  Once we make that our quest, we lose God.  You don't experience God; you get to know him.  You submit to him.  You enjoy him.  He is, after all, a person" -Paul Miller 

We all have those times in our life where God felt so close...so real.  We can't help but think about those times and want to experience them again.  But what happens when we pursue this experience?  It becomes about an emotional feeling, and not about God.  And just like a roller-coaster, the thrill is amazing while it lasts, but once it is over you must ride another roller-coaster to feel that way again.  This leads us into a cycle of experience instead of a deeper relationship with God. 

Laura and I have some great memories together.  We have flown over the longest water fall in the world, snorkeled at the 2nd largest barrier reef while touching sting rays, toured London in 10 hours during a layover...but the moments that are the sweetest and most meaningful are the ones where we have been lost in conversation.  It didn't matter where we were or what we were doing...it was those times that matter.  Yes, the experiences we have had are amazing, but it was the deepening of our relationship that has mattered most.  Through my pursuit of Laura there will be many great memories and experiences, but those are just a result of my pursuing her, not the purpose.  This is the same with God.  We should seek not the thrill of the ride but rather the beauty of the deepening relationship.  

  

I am not saying those experiences are wrong, just that pursuing them is, because it makes it the goal to use spiritual things and God to make me feel a certain way.  This makes me central, and not God.  I am the created one, therefore my life needs to be about Him: loving Him, obeying Him, and pursuing Him.  

Pray for the purpose of knowing God, not to just experience what He gives.   

A Conversation with God

"When your mind starts wandering in prayer, be like a little child.  Don't worry about being organized or staying on task.  Remember you are in a conversation with a person.  Instead of beating yourself up, learn to play again. Pray about what your mind is wandering to.  Maybe it is something that is important to you.  Maybe the Spirit is nudging you to think about something else."  -Paul Miller

This is a common problem for me. I sit down and my mind wanders.  For some reason though, I have it in my head that I need to get back to my intended list of what I was going to pray for.  I came to prayer time with an agenda, and I need to get through it.

Prayer is not a staff meeting, it is a conversation.  Knowing this is so freeing, and it makes so much sense.  Laura and I have conversations all the time that begin on one subject and we end up somewhere completely different.  Do I pound a gavel on the table and say "Lets get back on the topic of such-and-such, because that is what is on the agenda at dinner tonight."  No!  We let conversation go where it goes.  Why?  Because that what a conversation does in a relationship, it develops.

This should be the same in our prayer life.  Prayer is a conversation, not a monologue that just needs to be said.  We need to be okay with the conversation developing, be okay with topic changes, and be okay when it doesn't go as planned.  The purpose isn't to get through a prayer list, it is to know God.  And besides, God already knows what is on your list, you don't need to recite it in formal ways each day.  He just wants to talk with you...like what you do at the dinner table with you family.

So start the conversation, and see where it takes you.

Prayer: the medium and the object

"Many people (oddly enough) struggle to learn how to pray because they are focusing on praying, not on God." -Paul Miller

I have always been a doer, which makes doing nothing difficult.  Deep down I know praying isn't nothing, but often at the end of it I have nothing to "show."  When I read a chapter in a book, write a song, or do a Bible study I feel as if I have just done something.  But with prayer, it is a struggle.  Am I doing it right?  Did I pray long enough?  Was I focused or did my mind wander?  Was that time at all fruitful or was it a waste?

Prayer can be  hard and often frustrating.  This frustration led me to reading a book called "A Praying Life" by Paul E. Miller (We will be talking about some of the main points of the book in the coming blog posts).  When I read this quote it hit me.  There are a lot of good tips on prayer out there, but the first thing I must to do have a praying life is to focus on God, not on prayer.  This sounds so simple, but to me it was profoundly insightful.  It is so easy when we are struggling in a particular area of our Christian walk to run to methods on how that area can improve, instead of running to God and allowing him to penetrate our hearts and change us.

So I don't want to be a better prayer...I want to be a better lover.  I want to love Jesus more deeply, and this will be accomplished through prayer and a relationship.  So as we speak on prayer, let us not focus on the medium (prayer) but the object (God).    

Humble and Broken

"It is not long discourses nor eloquent tongues, that are the things which are pleasing in the ears of the Lord, but a humble, broken, and contrite heart (Ps 51:17, Is 57:15)" -John Bunyan on Prayer

 

Humble: humble prayer is prayer that brought with submission to the Father, knowing that we are far inferior and in desperate need of Him. 

Broken: A broken heart in prayer is a heart that realizes how incomplete it is.  A heart that knows it can only be fixed by the Lord.  All of us are broken, but a broken heart in prayer is one that realizes its state. 

Contrite: A contrite heart feels the weight and agony of its sins.  It is heart that sees sin and God rightly, desiring to be cleansed of all iniquity.  A contrite heart is a desperate heart.  A heart that is in need of a savior and calls out to God in agony to forgive.

 

Is this how you come to the Lord?       

Prayer and Labour

"Right prayer is accompanied with a continual labour after that which is prayed for" -John Bunyan on Prayer

 

Are you just praying or are you laboring after what you are praying for.  This is a question we must ask and dwell on. 

When God doesn't Answer

"When I have been in my fits of agonies of spirit, I have been strongly persuaded to leave off, and to seek the Lord no longer; but being made to understand what great sinners the Lord has had mercy upon, and how large his promises were still to sinners; and that it was not the whole, but the sick, not the righteous, but the sinner, not the full, but the empty, that he extended his grace and mercy unto--this made me, through the assistance of his Holy Spirit, to cleave to him, to hang upon him, and yet to cry, though for the present he made no answer." - John Bunyan on Prayer

 

Labor in prayer!  Do not stop praying when it is diffictult and hard.  We don't pray becasue we want the genie to answer, we pray because we have a deep longing for God and His will.  Remember this as you pray.  And remember that our ultimate hope in prayer is to get more of God, not more of his gifts.  Let Him be central, not what we want answered.  He is a jealous God who wants all of us, and may choose to be silent or not answer to reveal that we want certain prayer answered more than we want God himself.    

 

Trust Him, rest in Him, and do not stop pursing Him in prayer. 

Which are you?

From John Bunyan on Prayer:

 

"Suppose there should come two men begging to your door; the one is a poor, lame, wounded, and almost starved creature, the other is a healthy strong person; these two use the same words in their begging; the one says he is almost starved, so does the other: but the man that is indeed the poor, lame, or maimed person, he speaks with more sense, feeling, and understanding of the misery that is mentioned in their begging, than the other can do; and it is discovered more by his manner of speaking, his bemoaning himself.  his pain and poverty makes him speak more in a spirit of lamentation than the other, and he is pitied sooner than the other, by all those that have the least dram of natural affection or pity.  Just thus it is with God: there are some who out of custom and formality go and pray; there are others who go in bitterness of their spirits: the one prays out of bare notion and naked knowledge; the other has his words forced from him by the anguish of his soul.  Surely that is the man that God will look at, 'even to him that is poor, and of contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word' (Is. 66.2)."

 

So the question I ask: Is our praying merely a formality?  Or is it out of a deep longing of the soul?  Which man are you? 

Romans 8:26-27

"None knows how many by-ways the heart has, and back-lanes, to slip away from the presence of God.  How much pride also, if enabled with expressions!  How much hypocrisy, if before others!  And how little conscience is there made of prayer between God and the soul in secret, unless the Spirit of supplication be there to help!  When the Spirit gets into the heart, then there is prayer indeed, and not till then." -John Bunyan

 

It is so easy for our prayers to be prideful, hypocritical. or even meaningless words we say but don't feel.  Prayer does not happen apart from the Spirit interceding.  You might think you are praying or look like you are praying, but apart from the Spirit, there is no prayer.  Read Romans 8:26-27 when you get a chance today.  Think of what it will take for you to be and stay Spirit led in prayer.  We need to take this scripture seriously, and truly depend on the Sprit as we commune with the Lord. 

 

Emptiness under Heaven

"The soul that thus prays indeed, sees an emptiness in all things under heaven; that in God alone there is rest and satisfaction for the soul." -John Bunyan

 

This makes me realize that much of the problem in my payer life is an attachment to the things of this world.  The more "of this world" I am, the more I become self dependent instead of dependent on God.  True prayer is completely dependent on God and hopeful for heaven, and not putting hope in the world we live in now.  It is in God alone where our souls will be satisfied.  Sounds impossible to do, but with prayer it can happen.   

Prayer

Our desires for this church are completely dependent on God being gracious and merciful on us and on those he calls.  Nothing we desire can be done by merely human effort.  Because of this, we MUST be a people who seek the Lord in prayer.    

 

John Bunyan, who wrote Pilgrim's Progress, wrote some classic books on prayer, which I will now start reading through.  Prayer is difficult, and maybe learning from this great man of God will stir my heart to pray as I ought.  With that, I am going to be inviting you into what I am reading through this blog.  My hope is that we can all take these coming weeks to be challenged in our prayer life, and motivated to grow in this area.  My prayer now for all of us is that we take seriously prayer, and take seriously wanting to grow in it.       

 

If any of you are interested in the book I will be reading and quoting from, it is called "Prayer" and is from the Puritan Paperback series.  This book contains 2 books by Bunyan, "Praying in the Spirit," and "The Throne of Grace."