Tag Archives: Prayer

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Eyes Off Myself


[A morning journal from a beautiful, sunny August morning...unlike the rainy one I awoke to this morning]

Good morning, Lord. I realize as I begin my journal today that I often begin with me—my shortcomings, my frustration, my depression, my anxiety, my concerns, my needs—me, me, me. Even if I had the most unfaithful yesterday in human history, it would be better to start this day (and every one) focusing on You. Even if I had the most amazing yesterday ever, I am not the focus of my life!

Thank You, Father, that You are good. I am not good in myself, but You are always good. You are consistent, reliable goodness. You don’t go bad like the strawberries on our kitchen counter this morning. You are always fresh and true. Your care for me doesn’t wear thin or grow old. You don’t get tired of who I am. (You may lose patience and grow angry with the ways that I walk away from You rather than towards You, but You do not grow weary of me).

You are always right, but not in a small, “I-told-you-so” sort of way. You are pure. There is no not-God in You. You are who You are. There is no comparing You with someone or something else.

You are beautiful. A simple flower or graceful hummingbird is grey and dreary next to the vibrancy of Your presence. Or, maybe it’s better to say that every beauty I see is a faint reflection of Your bracing beauty.

I admire You. This sounds different than praising You. Praising is a good word, but, in my heart and mind, it has become synonymous with “singing songs I often don’t like in a gathering of Christians.” Heartfelt praise is more like the excitement I feel watching a world-class athlete perform at her peak, more like the amazement I feel looking at the clean beauty of a breaking wave, more like the wonder of watching hummingbird after hummingbird come to visit my feeder this morning.

Father, I have felt far from You because I gazed at the ugliness of my own line-crossings and shortcomings, instead of contemplating Your beauty. And when I stare at my bentness instead of gazing at Your goodness, I am lost. Really lost! I see the need to die to the false image I project of being well-adjusted and pretty good. Apart from You, Lord, I have no more life than a plucked flower. I wither and decay without You. I dry up. I lose all vitality. If prayer is an answer to my predicament, then it isn’t prayer as a Christian duty to be performed, but prayer as a living, vital encounter and union with You.

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Praying Like Jesus


An ancient stone path in the historic city of Bethsaida in Israel

An ancient stone path in the historic city of Bethsaida in Israel

How do we learn to pray? The first disciples learned by what they witnessed in Jesus’s life. They asked him to teach them. Listen to this take on that theme:

“Any honest consideration of the life of Jesus Christ is both shaking and humbling. Whence came such power? The chief way in which we can find a reasonable answer to this question is by a continued study of His prayers. His prayers are not the whole of His revelation, but they are elements apart from which the other elements cannot be understood. The few prayers do not constitute the sufficient condition for understanding Christ, but they do constitute a necessary condition. What was His secret? George Buttrick has put it with convincing brevity: ‘The open secret is: His days were steeped in prayer. The missing word is God, and only by prayer can we find it.’” (Trueblood, Elton. The Lord’s Prayers. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1965, p. 125.)

Jesus’ days were steeped in prayer. He lived in continual communion with His Father. He often withdrew, even in the midst of his busiest seasons, to be in prayer. But not prayer as something to do as much as Someone to be with. Am I learning to follow Jesus’s way here? Are my days steeped in prayer—in conversational relationship with my Father in heaven?  What do I not have in my soul or heart because I have not asked the Father for this that I need? Do I need more self-control? Am I asking the Father to provide me all that I need in that way? Am I expressing my practical dependence on Him alone in this way?

When I think of my continuing wrestling with the practice of prayer, I continue to also believe that my image of Jesus and of the Father are not nearly as welcoming, loving, gracious, or merciful as the True God is. Father, empower me with the Spirit of Jesus to live in communion with You like Jesus did. Amen.

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A Chosen Desert


I’ve learned a lot from the early Christian desert tradition from whom the monastic movement emerged. Here’s an insight about practicing solitude and silence from a more contemporary desert dweller, Carlo Caretto (1910-1988):

“…if you cannot go into the desert, you must nonetheless ‘make some desert’ in your life. Every now and then leaving [others] and looking for solitude to restore, in prolonged silence and prayer, the stuff of your soul. This is the meaning of ‘desert’ in your spiritual life.

One hour a day, one day a month, eight days a year, for longer if necessary, you must leave everything and everybody and retire, alone with God. If you don’t look for this solitude, if you don’t love it, you won’t achieve real contemplative prayer. If you are able to do so but nevertheless do not withdraw in order to enjoy intimacy with God, the fundamental element of the relationship with the All‑Powerful is lacking: love. And without love no revelation is possible.” (Carretto, Carlo. Letters from the Desert. Trans. Rose Mary Hancock. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1972, p. 73-74.)

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Praying My Anxieties


Site of what may be the earliest house church site unearthed (in Bethsaida)

Philippians 4:6-7 has been a frequent place of help for me in my rather consistent struggle with anxiety. I’ve stepped into a number of new places over the last year, which always raises my anxiety level. Here’s my paraphrase:

Whenever I feel anxiety of any kind about anything, I can, in that situation, come prayerfully and thankfully to God with whatever requests I might have for Him. This will lead to the real experience of His peace, which cannot be fully comprehended even when it is experienced, protecting my thoughts and feelings from the corrosive effects of anxiety and keeping me in communion with Jesus Christ.  

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Focusing Desire in God


A trader, Abu Ali, I met in Jordan

“Whether you happen to be aware of being in God’s presence and love during the whole time that you are praying doesn’t matter as much as wanting to be in his presence and love. Desire is always the important qualification. ‘God does not ask for a perfect work’–the best thing St Catherine of Siena ever said, this–’but for infinite desire’. So whatever encourages the desire is the means to use. For a time it may be one book, for a time it may be another. For a time it may be nature, for a time it may be art. But these things are only means. The desire must be deliberately trained towards God and not towards the means. Your desire draws you to where your treasure is. The only treasure is God.” (van Zeller, Hubert. Letters to a Soul. Springfield: Templegate Publishers, 1976, p. 119.)

My goal cannot be a satisfying awareness of God’s presence and love with me. I haven’t got control of that. God does. My aim is to continually direct my desire towards Him and let it linger in Him. I want to restrain myself from dissipating desire in empty and escapist activities. “My only treasure is God.” What else do I have in heaven or on earth of greater worth that God alone?

As for means, van Zeller mentions a book here or there that might help. Lately, I’ve been very grateful for the gift of E. Herman’s Creative Prayer. I’m realizing that by “creative,” she doesn’t mean innovative—like arts, crafts and music. She means, I think, reproductive—like a birth. Prayer introduces something new into our lives and our circumstances. God creates out of nothing. Do I believe this? Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t really.

But, again, the matter of means is important. The focus is never on a resource, or my practices, or another person. The focus of my desire is in God alone. I am not seeking things about God, or doing work for God, but longing in God.

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Practical Counsel for Quiet Prayer


Two synagogue foundations in ancient Capernaum

“You tell me that the attraction is there for the silent prayer of waiting upon God, but that when you try it either nothing happens or you are invaded by distractions. Well, what would you expect? So long as the attraction isn’t invaded by doubts and a desire to go back to a more talkative prayer the thing to do is to follow it and not be discouraged by the fact that nothing seems to happen or that distractions seem to spoil the whole thing. The reason why nothing seems to happen is that God has taken over the control of your prayer and is not letting you see what he is doing. If you were to see his work you would want to interfere with it. You would think you knew better. So of course he has to work secretly. Look at it from his point of view. His object is twofold: first to keep you there, trying to pray in spite of what is apparently a waste of time, particularly when you are leaving yourself apparently wide open to distractions; secondly to transfer the whole undertaking from the natural to the supernatural. This second purpose could not be achieved if you were able to follow the process. So what God does is to freeze your mind and operate at a level which you cannot appreciate. At the surface level he allows distractions to bother you but in fact they are only ‘bothering’ you and are doing you no harm. Distractions are harmful only when they are deliberately followed up.” (van Zeller, Hubert. Letters to a Soul. Springfield: Templegate Publishers, 1976, p. 114.)

This is such practical counsel, and very descriptive of my own experience of trying to practice quiet waiting upon God. What do I learn here?

  • Feeling distracted in the prayer of quiet is normal.
  • Distractions only bother us, but do us no harm unless we let them capture our will and take our attention away from God.
  • The feeling of “wasted time” when practicing silence in God’s presence is also normal.
  • The reality of the prayer of quiet is that I am allowing God to do something in (and through?) me that I cannot do for myself. But I am unaware of this reality.
  • My ‘ego’ resists quiet prayer because there is nothing to manage or control in it. My ego gets nothing out of silence.

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No Substitute for Prayer


A man praying (or sleeping) in Jerusalem

“Neither reading nor study can be a substitute for prayer. Prayer, rightly ordered, is love, and there is no substitute for love. It is a temptation to preachers to dispense themselves from prayer because they have to prepare and deliver sermons. But unless the sermon comes from prayer and love there is no point in preaching it.” (van Zeller, Hubert. Letters to a Soul. Springfield: Templegate Publishers, 1976, p. 117.)

Not only sermons, but any kind of ministry or work, if it does not grow out of the soil of loving communion with God, is empty and fruitless. It may be entertaining (or not). It may be interesting (or not). It may make something exciting happen (or not). But it will not bear fruit in deep, lasting influence of the listening heart.

When I think of the book I’ve written, if it’s just interesting ideas to make will think I’m a smart or spiritual guy, that’ll be empty and bear little fruit. This book is merely another vehicle whereby I might enter more truly and deeply into loving communion with Father, Son and Spirit, and welcome others to join with me in this wonderful place.

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Expanding Care through Prayer


Coffee beans growing in La Cienaga, Domininan Republic

(An edited journal excerpt from March 29, 1990)

Our life of ministry is richer when our circle of prayer is larger than our circle of care. The Spirit of God wants to make our heart more spacious in our caring about others. His love will always be greater than mine, but He is in me and wanting not only to pour His love into my heart, but through it to others. To live the lifestyle of the overflowing cup, I must learn that He is always pouring and that I can welcome His filling at anytime.

The more time we spend thinking of people in the presence of God, and praying for their needs, the more we experience God’s concern for those hurts and needs. This enriches my interactions with them and gives me insight into how I might serve them. It “peoplizes” my life and work. If my heart lacks care for a particular person, God’s Spirit is inviting me to bring them into His presence. Learning to hear His heart of love for them will enkindle the same love in me.

Repost from December 2010

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Soul Prayers and Situation Prayers


Gem and I outside the Peju Winery just north of Napa, CA.

I’ve been thinking about how we ask for prayer and how pray for others. Two categories I’ve been wondering about is what I’m calling “situational prayers” and “soul prayers.” Situational prayers are requests related to requests to change, improve or affect circumstances around us or others. We want healing, better finances, better relationships. There are plenty of situational prayers in the scripture where a king prays for God’s favor in battle against an enemy, or Paul asks others to pray that he will be delivered from the evil one, for example. Soul prayers are requests related to change and growth in our lives. Soul prayers get to the heart, so to speak, of our condition. I think of so many of the prayers of Paul in his letters. For example:

“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God” (Phil 1:9-11 NIV).

Paul prays for mutual love to grow in experience of Jesus and in deepening insight. He asks that this would result in clearer discernment and a well-focused life that is rich in the ways and character of Jesus. In my experience, many of our requests for the prayers of others tend to be more situational than soulish. I don’t mean to create an “either/or” here. I would like to offer both kinds of prayers for others, and receive them for myself.

For Reflection: Which kind of praying would you say dominates your way of praying for others? What kind of prayer do you find yourself asking for from others?

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How to Begin Praying


Hole in a wine barrel.

[Excuse the male-centered language. It is a 50-year-old quotation]

“Let a man begin in prayer where he is, and that means anywhere, with any problem, with any desire. If what he asks for has him in its grip, that means that God can meet him there. If he has a ruling passion to be liked by others, to be selected to an important post, to be able to hold his marriage together, to recover the confidence of a son or daughter, why should this not come squarely into his prayer? We can begin anywhere in petitionary prayer.” (Steere, Douglas V. Dimensions of Prayer. New York: Women’s Division of Christian Service, 1962, p. 67.)

“How do I start praying?,” the question comes. I start praying exactly where I am. But I may have to begin by admitting that I’m not quite sure where I’m at. I may feel I’m standing in a fog as I begin to pray. I may have to acknowledge that I feel anxious, distracted and fearful as I come to an intended moment of prayer. This can be the starting point of my prayer. I get stuck when I try to start my prayer from a place where I am not, when I try to pray prayers I imagine God wants to hear rather than the actual things on my heart.

So here’s the quotation in my own words: “Let’s begin in prayer just where we find ourselves—anywhere, with any problem or any desire. If what we ask for has us in its grip, God can meet us right there. If we are overwhelmed by a craving for the approval of others, for an important position, healing in our marriages or reconciliation with a son or daughter, why wouldn’t we bring that right into our prayer? When it comes to prayer, it’s best to start right where we find ourselves.”

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