On Prayer

On Friday night, Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship had, in my opinion, one of its most powerful annual events. As a fellowship, we fasted from our sleep and prayed through the night in a prayer vigil of sorts. We spent time in personal reflection and contemplation, time in praise and worship to God, and time praying for our nation and world.

The experience was a fulfilling one for me in ways that it hasn’t been in the past. Usually, I find that this event has the potential to disturb the emotions and have me crying and sentimental, unfortunately mostly for sentiment’s sake rather than for deep passion or desired change that will last and sustain me through time. However, during this time of prayer, I had a different strategy. I came late to the event so that I prayed for others rather than for myself because I’d missed the part of the evening that was structured for individual prayer. I reasoned that I pray enough desperate prayers for myself throughout the day, anything from “God, I love you” to “God, I really don’t know what to say in this Tuesday Night Discussion Group Blog, and it’s making me nervous.” Throughout the night, I was mindful of the needs of others and was edified and encouraged by praying with the group of my friends and fellow believers. At one point, though, I felt compelled to leave the corporate experience and then spent time alone in communication with God about events in my life and other concerns that wouldn’t be taken up in a larger group. I set some goals during that time that will shape the course of my semester and my life, and I’m convinced that those goals are of divine origin in some sense of the word divine and of the word origin.

But contemplating Friday night’s events leads me to many questions: What caused that compulsion to separate myself? What motivates me to pray in the first place? How can I hear from God? And how do I know that what I do hear is accurately heard?

Unpacking this event in my mind makes me think that I know very little of what actually went on Friday night, and I understand very little about the nature of prayer, though I try my best to make it a regular practice in my life.
What is prayer?

When I think about it, I understand that if you weren’t raised with prayer it must be a rather odd concept. Individual prayer wherein one claims to speak to God, perhaps even out loud, while on his or her knees or pacing, sitting or standing, with arms flailed towards the sky, entire body prostrate to the floor, can be daunting, seem like behavior acquired in mental or physical illness. I can only imagine the discomfort of seeing this undertaken in a large group. If you don’t understand what’s going on, it must be difficult to interpret the experience.

However, I wonder how many of those of us who pray understand what is going on when we pray or how we would describe the experience and give it a linguistic analytic presence in conversation. I have a hunch that prayer isn’t something you create easy paradigms for, that it isn’t something one can understand easily by a definition. Rather, one needs to practice prayer to understand prayer, and to continue in prayer to progress to understanding new dimensions of prayer over time.

The discourse that surrounds the practice of prayer is also interesting in terms of understanding the nature of the act. Here are some definitions of prayer gleaned from the internet:

“What is prayer? Prayer is our direct line with heaven. Prayer is a communication process that allows us to talk to God! He wants us to communicate with Him, like a person-to-person phone call. Cell phones and other devices have become a necessity to some people in today’s society. We have blue tubes, blackberries, and talking computers! These are means of communication that allow two or more people to interact, discuss, and respond to one another.”

“Prayer is the practice of the presence of God. It is the place where pride is abandoned, hope is lifted, and supplication is made.”

“Prayer is conversation with God; the intercourse of the soul with God, not in contemplation or meditation, but in direct address to him.”

“Prayer is doxology, praise, thanksgiving, confession, supplication and intercession to God. "When I prayed I was new," wrote a great theologian of Christian antiquity, "but when I stopped praying I became old." Prayer is the way to renewal and spiritual life. Prayer is aliveness to God. Prayer is strength, refreshment, and joy. Through the grace of God and our disciplined efforts prayer lifts us up from our isolation to a conscious, loving communion with God in which everything is experienced in a new light. Prayer becomes a personal dialogue with God, a spiritual breathing of the soul, a foretaste of the bliss of God's kingdom.” (Greek Orthodox archdiocese of America)

"Prayer is spiritual communication between man and God, a two-way relationship in which man should not only talk to God but also listen to Him. Prayer to God is like a child's conversation with his father. It is natural for a child to ask his father for the things he needs." (Billy Graham)

Prayer is an effort to communicate with God, or to some deity or deities, or another form of spiritual entity, or otherwise, either to offer praise, to make a request, or simply to express one's thoughts and emotions. (Wikipedia)

Now, I’m not entirely sure what a blue tube is, but I know that these definitions seem to center around one dominant metaphor for prayer -- prayer as a conversation or communication with God. This metaphor is popular and for good reason. When I use my language to reach out to another entity, I attempt communication with it, create dialogue or discourse. But even though this metaphor is popular, I can’t claim to understand it fully. Does God always speak back to me? Why is it always so seldom with words that He speaks? Good communication certainly isn’t just one-sided.

There are those, of course, who believe prayer to be a wish-fulfillment within our souls, and thus the conversation is really an inner dialogue with intentions we’ve always had and thoughts we just needed to be able to create perceived distance from in order to access. It’s tempting to believe this, when God can’t be seen, and when He has no physical voice that we can hear.

Here’s what I know from my experience: In prayer, I speak with either silent or spoken words. But I don’t know that I would have to. The Bible says that “the Spirit intercedes for us with groans no words can express.” I get a response from God that I can interpret sometimes, other times I get a response from God that I can’t understand or discern. Responses come from friends or family members, or they come from within my being (though they are certainly not my thoughts), or experiences tell me that my prayer was heard and answered. I hear taught in churches that God gives three answers to prayer: “Yes, no, and wait.” However, this seems too reductive to me, so I would reject it as a good description of the process of receiving an answer to prayer.

A summary of what the Bible has to say on prayer is this: Prayer is a privilege and an obligation of the Christian where we communicate with God. It is how we convey our confession (1 John 1:9), requests (1 Tim. 2:1-3), intercessions (James 5:15), thanksgiving (Phil. 4:6), etc., to our holy God. We are commanded to pray (1 Thess. 5:17). Some personal requirements of prayer are a pure heart (Psalm 66:18), belief in Christ (John 14:13), and that the prayer be according to God's will (1 John 5:13).

Part of beginning to understand prayer is to understand why we pray and what compels us to pray.

Why do we pray?

Do we pray to benefit ourselves? To benefit others? Do we pray because sacred texts command it? Do we pray to get our own way in the world, to attempt to manipulate the our own condition and the condition of those we love? Do we pray because we feel a spiritual compulsion to reach beyond ourselves and communicate with the divine?

How do we pray?

I used to pray a lot of “canned prayers” -- prayers that were written down and recited at certain specific times of the day or year. I know prayers that have been written down and then I speak them at certain traditional times. For example, here’s a prayer that my family said every night before dinner; perhaps yours did too.

God is great, God is good
Let us thank Him for our food
By His hands we must be fed
Give us, Lord, our daily bread.

Liturgical prayers play a large role in the establishment of many denominations of Christian faith, and even those groups which don’t write out the entire text of a prayer for its congregants teaches models of prayer.

I’ve also learned some prayer models over time which I’ve been taught are the correct way to pray. The most basic model of teaching prayer is the Lord’s prayer, the prayer that Jesus himself prayed in the Bible. Some humanly constructed models exist as well.

Here’s an example:

Prayer following the ACTS model looks like this:
First you pray through A: Adoration of God
Then C: Confession of Sin
Next T: Thanksgiving to God
Finally S: Supplication or asking God for needs.

While this is just a tool for prayer, some Christians pray through it faithfully. What are the advantages and disadvantages to models of prayer? Is prayer something that can be taught? Or should an individual experiment for himself or herself to find out what is an effective personal method for her to connect to God?

None of these models account for physical positions in prayer. In the church that I attend, when we wish to symbolize surrender in our prayers, we place our hands facedown, and then turn them upward again in order to receive from God. Can a physical position actually change the way in which our prayers are received? If not, then why adjust physical position to pray? If so, then how do we know what position to assume, and how can we make the positions consistent across culture?

Are there limits to what we should pray for?

To me, prayer seems a lot like that Rolling Stones song in that “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.” I’ve heard people pray for more wealth, for more health, and even for a space to open up in the church parking lot so that they can park close to the door. I often wonder what God thinks of those sorts of prayers, if there’s anything we can’t ask Him. If we say that there are limits to what we can ask for, we say that there are things that God cannot do, or will not. Yet, if we say we can ask for anything, we allow for prayer to be potentially trivialized. Perhaps it is safe to say we can ask for anything, but we might not get what we ask for. But then what do we make of the Biblical mandate “Ask and you shall receive”?

There are many questions to process in terms of prayer, and many experiences to contemplate. Perhaps the experience of prayer, however, still remains the best means through which to understand prayer.

Questions to consider:

1. Is prayer the same from religion to religion?
2. Should we view prayer as a social function in addition to a spiritual function? If so, can prayer ever be pure and disinterested in all but seeking connection to God?
3. Should we presume to be able to ask anything we want in prayer?
4. Do we even need to pray? Shouldn’t an all knowing God already understand our needs? And if prayer is all about aligning ourselves in God’s will, in demonstrating submission, then is prayer all about us and not about God?