Prayer

This evening, we’re going to carry on with our intro to all the spiritual and the discipleship related. Tonight’s prayer. It’s quite difficult to talk about prayer because it’s so broad and vast. But just try and capture something on prayer.

I have made some definitions around prayer. It’s really hard to define prayer, none of the authors tends to define what prayer is. They just talk about it with the assumption that we already know what it is. So, we’re going to explore that a bit tonight. Thinking about what scripture says about prayer, what society might say about prayer. And so, we’ve already covered this a little bit in the first section about what some of the contemporary practices might be, currently in prayer. Did Paul touch on practices in the incarnational, social justice traditions?

And then how we might lead ourselves and others in prayer. So, they’re two completely different things. It’s important to recognise that when we’re leading ourselves in prayer is one thing. But when we’re taking others into prayer, it’s quite a different discipline. Is that okay?

Great. So, let’s have a think about what prayer is. Let’s start with a broad kind of perspective, rather than just going to a Christian perspective initially. Philip Yancey in his book 'Prayer, does it make any difference?'. Every faith has some form of prayer. It’s not unique to the Christian faith. Remote tribes present offerings and then pray for everyday things such as health, food, rain, children, victory in battles. Five times a day modern Muslims stop what they are doing when the time comes to pray. Even atheists find ways to pray. You may or may not agree with that statement. Praying is not unique to the Christian faith. So, have a little chat about amongst yourselves. Let’s do a think-write-share. And then we’ll look at what Christian prayer is in a moment, but broadly, how might you define prayer?

Yancey said we want to thank someone or something for life. And because we feel small and afraid. The aetheists prayer is in those pivotal moments like the A&E room, wanting to believe in something more than self. There’s a reason names of God have been taken in vain. They start as literally crying out to God and then become abused. There is an innate sense in us that needs to cry out. Those that have been on a twelve steps programme recognise that there is a higher power to whom they may choose to pray. So we don’t have a monopoly on prayer as Chrstians and it’s important to remember that.

Bishop Anthony Bloom says the act of praying is an act of rebellion against slavery. Prayer is not escape from reality, as some may believe, but the pursuit of the real.

As Christians we recognise an escape from slavery of sin or perhaps the slavery of our human form. Not rejecting our human form but recognising something beyond it.

Foster on prayer:

Prayer is the central avenue that transforms us. The closer we come to the heartbeat of God the more we recognise our need to be changed.

Difference with other faiths: recognise Jesus interceding or the Spirit interceding with groans (Romans 8). Metaphor of child comforted by resting on adult’s chest is like us resting on chest of God.

Mother Teresa said, I used to believe prayer changes things but now believe prayer changes us and we change things. Often our hearts that are changed and we then act accordingly.

Martin Luther: to be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing. A conversation, a relationship, so natural. Or it can be.

Should be so natural a conversation that might not even be aware. Not sure if its realistic.

The T&T Clark handbook of Christian prayer. Energetically doctrinal, historically rooted and relevant to the whole host of critical questions Christians face in the world today. It is heavy going but it’s an interesting book. And it goes all through the creation story. It talks about the Lord’s prayer. It’s the theological response to prayer if you like.

And then this one’s quite good as well. 'What are we doing when we pray?' That’s by Vincent B-R-U-M-M-E-R. In the library.

What do you think about the Pete Greig ones? Yeah, they’re very good.

So let’s move on then from the historical kind of perspective and scriptural perspective. To look at forms of prayer today. We covered some of this, but we’re going to put some of it into our house tonight. So we talked about the contemplative stream of Christianity. There is silent prayer of course. It’s not very comfortable to those of us that might prefer. There is the option of no words. But it’s also the posture of surrender. So there is different quality to it other than it’s the letting go surrender and emptying. Rather than expecting to hear anything. Rather than it being that kind of dialogue. There’s more of the peace.

There’s extemporaneous prayer. Free flowing conversation. There’s no kind of shape or structure apart from the beginning of the end. There’s some stuff in the middle. That can go on!

Before we talked about formulaic of prayer. So we’ve done that the same thing in evening prayer. Daily of prayer, morning prayer. And when you follow particular formula.

There’s a meditative prayer where you have the repetition. A bit like the Centering prayer. You might repeat the phrase of scripture over to yourself. You might say:

There’s also prayer ministry as well. We haven’t really touched on that tonight apart from the beginning of the story. How we pray for and with others is a whole evening on its own.

There’s also praying with our physical beings. Some people will take themselves off to pray. So using a whole being to pray. So swimming, walking, hiking . And prostrations.

So in the Western world we tend to devote ourselves to verbal prayer. But in other cultures it’s much more common to pray when on your knees. All Muslims will pray like this. But some Christians will as well. But often on pilgrimage you see people literally crawling on their hands and knees. In an act of reverence before God. There’s an act of prayer. And then literally prostrating ourselves in this form of a crucifix.

Years ago in churches I know most people used to kneel. I think it’s an attitude of the heart.

Remember what we heard in the first week: 'pray as you can, not as you can’t'. It says Don Chapman, but I think they get attributed to different people. But it’s true.

So often we try and sort of take ourselves into a mould that doesn’t make it comfortable.

What are you like?

What about being creative? * Like journaling and doodling in my Bible. * I have a friend with sculpts and she prays best when she sculpts because then she’s focusing so much on what she’s doing. But she finds that hard to do just sitting down because I think she’s got a touch of ADHD. She really finds it hard to sit still. She does that to calm herself.

I mean, anything can be an act of prayer, really. You know, you can be weeding the garden and pray as you remove all the weeds.

I’m blessed with a 40-minute commute to work, which is a walk through words. The only thing is that I find my mind wonders.

I journal my prayers because I am a wanderer. I go off on a tangent. Like this morning I got distracted and I spent 40 minutes looking at swimming pools. I am totally an ENFP, so I’m like that. So, well, I think it’s important to know ourselves and what works best for us.

Well, don’t all people do that, though? Like that discipline about putting on the armor of God…​ You start doing that and then you remember someone to pray for and then you’re praying for Ukraine and then you’re praying. And then I’m like, oh, yeah, I’m supposed to be putting on the armor of God.

You know, you bring the people with you into prayer. So rather than feeling burdened by a whole long list, it’s like Ruth Haley Barton in her book, some of leadership. Who we bring into prayer is who we carry with us in our mind. God is a part of our mind and we pray for what God brings our attention to. So you might not have thought about Bob for like three years and then suddenly they pop into your head and think, oh yeah, Bob, I need to pray for him.

Like we were saying over coffee, this is a more practical module than you would have done previously. So we’re going to talk a bit more about what you’re doing and what you’re doing. And what you’re doing is you’re doing a lot of things. So we’re going to talk a little bit more about what you 're doing.

Where do you pray? When do you pray? Alone or with friends? Are you a little bit scatter gun?

Rick Warren: Diverting daily, withdrawing weekly and abandoning annually.

My pattern is in the morning in the same chair. Try to model being a good example Against evil, putting on the armour.

Something about being in parish ministry: you may think why is everything so hard and then you realise 'Oh yeah, it’s because I’m in a spiritual battle'.

Don’t wait till you feel like praying. It can be a real hard slog. And to last but not least, just pray.

We’re going to spend the last few minutes trying out. There might not be need to be honest, but trying out some of these practices that we spoke about in the first week. And what I’ve done is I’ve selected a piece of music that might help us to kind of embody that particular tradition.

So I’m just going to refresh our memories about the contemplative tradition. It’s just a reminder of what’s central to that tradition. About stealing ourselves, using icons, breathing candles, repetition of prayer. And I’ve picked a Taizé chant, which hopefully is familiar to you all. I just like to encourage you to kind of pop your pens in your hands, you know, somewhere where you’re not tempted to kind of tap away or just to make yourself comfortable. Whatever that looks like for you, you might want to close your eyes. This is hopefully familiar with words. It is quite repetitive, but we use it as an act of prayer before God tonight. And to see where it takes you, it might not be your flavour, your cup of tea. We’re just going to try this and inhabit our space of contemplative prayer.

You might just want to note down anything that struck you as you were hearing the music. Be aware of sensations that created in you. For some people it would be really comfortable and others not so much.

So the next piece of music. It’s quite hard to find things in particular traditions because they overlap as we said before. The holiness tradition, if you remember this is about discipline in one sense. My own rule of life and examen, type of prayer is this one. There’s guides along the way. And this is one where we feel like we’re almost trying to be holy before God, but we are learning from the mistakes that we’ve made and trying again, recognizing that it’s a lifelong process.

I’m going to let this one up because I think this plays quite quietly. I’ve chosen a Thomas Talis piece for this And hopefully this will have a different feel to the last piece of music.

A different feel.

The charismatic tradition, to refresh our memories, believes every Christian has gifts of the Spirit: for leadership, empowerment and community building. A sense of focus on spiritual growth and development and witness and service.

I picked a kind of, it’s a little bit controversial, but it’s not really controversial. Stephanie Braxton-Garr, who is a worship leader in the States, and she’s actually heavily pregnant this point. I think she’s been leading part of the worship and then they come over to her, she’s sat down, and ask her to lead them in a particular song, or perhaps she feels led. There is a sense of spontaneity. It gives a flavour of that charismatic prayer that’s kind of more extemporaneous, that we just suddenly break into song. Whereas some of you have to feel a bit more structured, this is a little bit more fluid. Go with the flow and what happens. We’ll just watch this.

We’ll finish with the examen. There’s a great app called 'reimagining the examen'. Also 'Pray as you go'.

I’ll read it for you in the traditional form and we’ll finish with this tonight. If they’re already familiar, fine, otherwise you might want to go away and explore.