Week 1 - How Prayer Works
Prayer is collaboration between God and you – alignment of your will and desires with what God knows and is doing in the world.
This Week - Why we pray
Week 3) What To Pray For
Week 4) What To Say To God
**********
* To get what we want? To get God’s help? To get God to fix my problems?
* To get God to heal a sickness, to be with me, to keep me safe, to bless our food?
OR...
* To focus on God
* To learn what we need
* To be with our Father in heaven
* To join God in his work to set the world right
* To remember our reliance upon God for everything we need to live and love
* To express gratitude
* To express concern, worry, fears, anxieties, terrors, tensions, problems, etc.
* To get help accepting forgiveness and giving it to others
* To get intervention from God in deflecting self-harm and the sin of others
* To remember and reflect on God’s greatness and goodness.
* To join God in doing what is best for the world
Our tendency is to pray for stuff. When we are in need, we ask God to intervene. But outside of our own personal suffering or concern for the welfare of others, we don't usually pray. Maybe an occasional attitude of gratitude towards God, and some complaining about how unfair life is. Too often that is the extent of our praying, and it leaves us frustrated and empty.
If we pray to pretty much only get stuff from God, we'll give up after awhile, since it seems that God rarely answers our prayers.
The solution, then, isn't to figure out how to pray so that we can get God to give us what we want. It's not as if God is folding his arms, resisting our requests because we didn't ask the proper way.
The remedy for unanswered prayers is to reflect on the purpose of prayer, to better understand why we pray.
And Jesus ought to be the first place to go on knowing why we pray.
The list above is my reflection upon the Lord's Prayer on why we pray. Below is the teaching that Jesus gives us on why we pray. Read it and then write down in your own words what Jesus teaches you about why to pray. It will help us imagine fresh and renewing ways of praying that add to our life with God and others.
Lord, Teach Us To Pray:
Here is what Jesus had to say on why we pray -
"Here's what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won't be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.
"The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They're full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don't fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need. With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply.
Like this:
Our Father in heaven,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right;
Do what's best— as above, so below.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.
You're in charge! You can do anything you want!
You're ablaze in beauty! Yes. Yes. Yes.
"In prayer there is a connection between what God does and what you do. You can't get forgiveness from God, for instance, without also forgiving others. If you refuse to do your part, you cut yourself off from God's part.
Based on this teaching of Jesus on why to pray, what conclusions could you draw?
*
*
*
*
*
What else do you want to know about how to pray?
No comments:
Post a Comment