"Praying the Scriptures"

   

          (Paul tends to write long, involved sentences. Verses 15 through 23 are actually one sentence in the original. So it is hard to pick out a central verse. But we can use verse 16 as a starting point: "I have not stopped praying for you, remembering you in my prayers.")

 

            A few months ago during Sunday worship we asked you to take a survey on your prayer and devotional life. We are now beginning to respond to what you told us. During the season of Lent we will focus on prayer and devotional reading through weekly Scriptures for the congregation, an interactive blog, a series of sermons on prayer, a Sunday school class, and a healing service. After Easter we will evaluate how we are doing and reset some goals and programs to helpfully address what you are telling us.

            The responses to the survey were many and varied. But many made similar comments that could be grouped into a few areas. You said that the major hindrance to your prayer life is the sheer busyness of life and your overburdened, sometimes overwhelming schedules. Some of you said part of that issue had to do with a lack of discipline. Others said there were too many distractions in your life.

            I must confess that I do not have much good advice to give on how to make your lives less busy. But my underlying conviction in all of this is that the answer lies not so much in less busyness, fewer distractions or more discipline. It may well be helpful to give attention to these areas, but fundamentally what I desire is to see a growing love for God nurtured by some satisfying experiences of relationship with God through prayer and reading of the Word. My prayer is that through this focus, whatever we do might lead us to delight in God and love Him more and more.

            I learned to pray through set prayers as a child. We used a standard table grace in our home, and a "Now I lay me down to sleep" bedtime prayer. I learned the Lord's Prayer at church. Beyond that there was simply an encouragement to pray in my own words. I found experiences at camp to be very helpful in learning to pray both alone and in groups.

            Somewhere along the way, I learned to pray what seems to be the primary form of prayer in our churches: "list praying," or problem-centered praying. In this form of prayer, requests are collected by a leader. These requests are problems that people have; they are often medical in nature, and usually concern people who are two times removed from the immediate group. We then take these requests home and write them on a list, which forms the agenda for our quiet time with God.

            There are some dangers to this, when problem centered praying becomes the predominant way of prayer or when it becomes our only way of praying. To be honest I find groups that focus exclusively on problems in prayer to be depressing and often overwhelming. Such praying does not nourish or delight the soul. Over time most people learn to avoid those groups. It is hard to get people to attend a prayer meeting, because there are unending numbers of problems to pray about.

Problem-centered prayers also tend to be solution-oriented: "God, solve this problem for this person. Make them well, make them behave, find them a job, give their doctor wisdom." Prayer can become all about God solving our problems rather than about developing a relationship with the Living God.

            So it is very important to include praise in our praying, usually at the beginning. It is good to have times of silence, times of confession of sin, times of thanksgiving, and then certainly intercession. We do not want to neglect praying for each other, but we need to develop a whole life of prayer.

             Karl Olsson, the president of North Park College in the 1960's, wrote in one of his books that so often when someone tells us of a problem or need in their lives we say, "I'll pray for you." Then we try to remember to add it to our list, or to remember to pray for them. But sometimes we forget. And sometimes our lists get longer than we have time to cover. He suggests that when someone asks for prayer or shares a concern, we stop right there and pray for them. "Let me pray for you right now." You may be on the phone or in a restaurant, or in the shopping mall, or in the narthex. Just stop and pray briefly. Pray aloud, but not for the benefit of the whole restaurant. This brings relationship and love and touch to prayer. It brings it alive in a new way.

            Then, learn to pray for what is immediately in front of you. Once I was at a Walk to Emmaus retreat in Oak Harbor, Washington. We were in a church on a terraced hill. Below the church was the back parking lot of a bar. I drew the 2 a.m. hour of prayer, and I made my way to the prayer room wondering how I was going to pray for a whole hour when I just wanted to sleep. I prayed through the list of participants. Then I prayed through the prayer requests that had been written. Then I had 55 more minutes to go. But just then the bar was closing, and the patrons were coming to their cars in the parking lot just below me. It was a warm summer night and the windows were open, and I could hear their arguing, and the young men stubbornly insisting to their worried girlfriends that they certainly could drive after a few drinks, and all the things that go on at 2 a.m. that are not good. And so I began to pray about what was going on right in front of me. What a good thing it is to begin praying for what is happening right now, right in front of us. When we pray about what we see right in front of us, then God begins to work powerfully in ways we can recognize.

            Then I began to experience times of praying the Scripture. At Midwinter Conferences some years ago, a group would meet after the evening session and pray for a couple of hours. Randy Roth and Ted Nordlund were the leaders. Sometimes we would pray the Lord’s Prayer line by line. "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name." Then we would praise God for 20 minutes or so. "Thy Kingdom come" – What does it mean to pray for God's kingdom? I had to learn how to do that. But when we allow the words of Scripture to form our prayers, something happens. It is not boring. It is not disconnected. We do not wonder where God is. We are not overwhelmed by life. God fills our praying.

            Here is a prayer in Ephesians. How does Paul pray? What does he ask of God? We notice he begins to pray for others by praying about their scriptural identity, not about their problems. "For this reason." What reason? We go back to verse 13, "You were included in Christ." "You believed." "You were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit."

            For this reason he has not stopped praying for them, based on their faith and love, not based on their problems. He prays with thanks for them, remembering them by name. What a great way to pray. Take a church directory and pray through a page or two each day. Pray with thanks for each person. Go to Facebook, if you do that. I am bewildered by it, but I go look at it and here are all these little pictures of people I know. And I can look at each picture and pray with thanks for them. Paul says, "I have not stopped giving thanks for you." He was on Facebook every day praying for them. 

            Then Paul prays for these people. This is his intercession. What does he pray for? He writes a long sentence, but it comes down to this: he prays that they might get to know God better. It is interesting how many of the problems that people have, that we pray for, really end up in their need to get to know God better. What a great way to pray! I asked the Confirmation class if they would like people to pray that way for them. They said "Yes."

            Here is what you said in the survey about some hindrances to prayer: distractions, the ability to focus, viewing prayer as a chore, too tired to pray, fear, stress, I don't feel a connection during prayer, I don't know how to pray, I don't know how to hear God's spirit when I pray, I am feeling disconnected, does prayer really make a difference? We want to try to address those specific issues, but here is how Paul prays for you: "I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better."

            Paul prays that you might know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. The New English Bible has for that last one, "how vast the resources of his power open to us who trust in him." We need to be praying for one another, not just that our problems might be solved, but so we might begin to discover the vast resources of the power of God that are open to us.

            Amen.