Prayer
The prayer request I didn't get to share this morning at prayer meeting
was, I want to ask the Lord to help us pray. I'm not sure what it
is, but we need help praying. I've been thinking about a few of
the reasons why it seems so hard for us to pray.
One thing, I think, is that we've trivialized prayer. Let me
explain. We ususally are brought to prayer in times of great
trial or distress, but, at least for me, we live in a time and place
where there are no such times. But we "should" pray, so we pray
about trivial things. Eventually, this habit associates prayer
with these trivial things. We no longer see it as something we
need to do to survive, but something that we "should" do.
Another thing is that we're afraid to pray the big prayers. We
don't challenge our faith in asking for the big things because we're
afraid the answer will be no, or that we will perceive the "no" answer
to be "no answer."
Maybe we also don't know what to pray for. I don't know when this
started to happen, but it seems like at any prayer meeting when prayer
requests
are asked for, the room falls deathly silent. It wasn't always
like that, but lately is has been moreso than in the past. For
me, this occurs
because I'm not praying personally, and thus have no prayer request to
share with the group (otherwise, I would just share what I'm praying
about). But is it possible that the whole is not praying?
When we pray corporately and someone is giving topics, it's so much
easier to pray, but when we have to share prayer requests, we don't
know what to pray about. I once heard someone say, "The Bible
tells us how to pray. The news tells us what to pray
about." Maybe that's a good start.
Finally, I think the thing we lack most in in prayer is just adoration,
praise, and thankfulness. In the "A.C.T.S." style of prayer,
Adoration and Thanksgiving take up 50% of the acronym, but in our
prayer lives, it probably takes up 10%. I'd say the biggie in our
prayer lives is Supplication. God knows what we want (of course,
he still likes to hear us ask), but I think he delights in our
praise/worship/adoration/thanksgiving.
Lord, help us to pray.
Comments (5)
i was reading yesterday and came across an illustration that i was going to share this morning, but didn't feel i could adequately share it "briefly".
it stems from a quote by st. bernard of clairvaux.
we should seek to become reservoirs rather than canals. for a canal just allows the water to flow through it, but a reservoir waits until it is filled before overflowing, then it can communicate without loss to itself. in the church today, we have many canals but few reservoirs.
pastor dave touched on it briefly and i expressed this to him when i met with him two weeks ago. my feeling is that many of us are not being personally filled, so that our service becomes much in terms of administration and duty. but yes, let us pray. (was just playing that song on guitar last night too).