The Prayer Practice - Talking with God
Readings for this week July 17 - 20
Click here for a pdf of this week’s readings
Day 1 – Talking With God
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Luke 11:5-6
We began our series by looking at the idea of talking to God, the way Jesus began by teaching the disciples to talk to God through what has come to be known as the Lord’s prayer. He offered them the model of a premade prayer, a way in which they could enter God's presence and talk to him and begin the journey of prayer. But that is not all there is to prayer. Talking to God will (hopefully) soon lead to talking with God, when we are able to come to God with all our desires and hopes and needs and express them clearly to him, an opening up of our entire life to him.
To switch to a metaphor, this move into talking with God is a lot like learning to play music. You need to begin with the basics, learn scales and chords and some music theory and so on. Everyone needs to do that – these are the building blocks of all music. And you often begin by learning to play other people’s songs first. (And playing other people’s songs is still always a great thing to do because there are some truly wonderful, inspiring songs out there – don’t get stuck on thinking that each prayer stage, once mastered, is passed through and left behind. Prayer (quick metaphor pause) is about relationship, and how a deepened relationship allows more scope for intimacy of expression.) But eventually, as confidence grows you begin being able to compose your own melodies and songs, allowing for greater expression, a wider understanding of the world of music and easier facilitation of the ability to just pick up your instrument and start jamming.
Questions to Consider
How easy is it for you to talk with God? How is it different than talking to others?
Prayer
Heavenly Father, teach me to share more of myself with you. You made me and know me more than I know myself – why would I not want to share in your deeper knowledge of who I am and who you are? Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 2 – “How Much More…?”
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Luke 11:7-8
God is not the grumpy neighbour. Let’s get that sorted straight away; that’s not where God is in Jesus’ example here. God is actually standing outside this illustration, waiting to step forward and show “how much more” he is than what the story situation illustrates. This “how much more” structure was a rabbinic teaching style (known as “light and heavy”) in use around the time of Jesus (although it does turn up in a few places in the Hebrew bible too). The idea was to start with the lesser example of something (if a grumpy, sleep-deprived neighbour will answer your late-night request...) before moving to the greater situation (...how much more will the all-loving, all-powerful God do?). Jesus used this technique often; we also find Paul using it on occasion too (for example, Romans 11:24).
Again, as mentioned yesterday, prayer is founded in a relationship. God is not a grumpy neighbour who requires us to pound on his door long and loud in order to get his attention so he will grudgingly respond to our request. This is to bring God down to our human level of emotion and motivation in a way that diminishes him and us: clouding our view of who he is and his generous desire to shower his love on us; and making us feel that either we must approach him carefully and cautiously or that we cannot approach him at all. This is not the case. God is the one who moved towards us, first through the act of creation and then through the act of redemption. He wants us close. He longs to hear from us.
Questions to Consider
What makes us think that God does not want to hear from us? How have you experienced the goodness of God through answered prayer?
Prayer
Gracious Lord, you are a good good Father and you long to shower your love on us. Help me see more of your generosity in my life and in the world so that I truly know how loving you are. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 3 – Displaying our Gratitude
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
So what do we talk with God about? Well, let’s look at three broad categories of conversation. The first is gratitude: talking with God about what is good in our lives, being thankful (and saying so!) for what we have and what we have experienced, for the benefits we have received. And these benefits begin with the very fact of our existence, our lives. God has made us for himself, he takes pleasure in us and he has ultimately shaped us to be found in him. Gratitude is the very foundation of our relationship with God because generosity – overflowing, other-focused, joyful self-giving – is the heart of the Trinitarian God who loves us and gave himself for us and dwells in us.
Generosity is at the centre of the gospel: God’s generosity to us and his call for us to be generous to each other. So gratitude should be at the centre of our relationship with God. Paul writes in Colossians that we are to be overflowing with thankfulness (2:7). We can talk with God about the blessings he has given us, the good things we have experienced, the goodness of life and relationships. We can talk with him about the gratitude we feel when we recognise his loving gifts to us and his open, welcoming, loving presence lavished upon us. Are we living lives of open, unforced, thankfulness to God – and are we telling him about it and thanking and praising him for it? Gratitude is at the heart of this relationship. As this relationship grows and deepens the natural content of our prayer life will reflect this.
Questions to Consider
What are you grateful for? How do you remind yourself to be grateful? How do you show God your gratitude?
Prayer
Lord God, make me truly thankful. Grow in me a spirit of gratitude at all times, so that I may remember who you are and all you’ve done. Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 4 – When All is Not Well
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Psalm 38
Not everything in life and the world is good and pleasing and beautiful. There is so much that is evil, ugly, unpleasant and destructive. We may not like pain and suffering but it is a part of life, and bringing our pain and suffering – the less pleasant aspects of life – to God is a key part of talking with him. We need to share honestly rather than perform perfunctorily. For many people prayer feels like a performance where we say and share what we think God would like to hear or what we think we should be sharing. We edit ourselves in order to present to God the person that we think will be more appealing to him; we portray the type of person we think he wants to meet with. We hide our pain and grief and anger instead of laying it before God as the reality of who we are.
But we need to bring all we really are to God. He already knows all about us; Psalm 139:1-4 includes the lines, “You have searched me, LORD, and you know me… you perceive my thoughts from afar… Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely.” We can’t hide from him what he already knows. We need to share our pain with God. This is known as lament and it has a rich history and tradition behind it; after all, nearly two thirds of all the biblical psalms are laments. Lament is an emotionally healthy way of honestly registering a theological protest with God. Who better to complain to, ache with, cry with, than the God who made us, knows us and loves us?
Questions to Consider
What role does lament play in your life? How does lament bring you closer to the wider world and help you pray more deeply for it?
Prayer
Sovereign Lord, may you be the first I turn to when the pain of this world overwhelms me. May I find in you the love to heal my wounds and to help me heal the wounds of the world and its people. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 5 – Petition and Intercession
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Luke 11:9-13
If we can be totally honest with God and share with him all of our pain and anger and grief, then it is natural that such unfettered expression will lead into petitionary prayer and prayers of intercession for the world and its people – that is, asking God to do something for us and asking him to something for others. When it comes to prayer, the most repeated instruction in the bible, whether on the lips of God himself, whether uttered by Jesus, or exhorted by Paul and others, is to ask. When talking with the creator of all that is, why would we not want to ask things of our loving maker, of the one who, more than anyone else, is capable of acting (and who has acted through Jesus) to heal the world’s brokenness and pain?
There is not a point at which we become such spiritually immense experts on prayer that we move beyond asking for things, as if prayer that asks God for something is somehow a sign of immaturity and undeveloped faith. Only asking for things might be, but asking itself is not. What happens over time as we talk to God is that we become more aware of his perspective, his views, his desires – in other words, we encounter more of his heart for his world and start to develop our own heart and desires in line with his. We find the scope of what we ask for and the range of people on whose behalf we pray growing. When we give God space to act, to do what only he can do, he often does so in and through us – if we let him.
Questions to Consider
What has helped grow your perspective on prayer and what prayer is capable of? How has your picture of God and his will grown through prayer?
Prayer
Loving Father, thank you for the gift of prayer and the gift of yourself as the one who hears, listens and answers. I am grateful that you always long to hear from us and will not turn us away. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)