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| Sleeping Bears Dunes, Michigan |
For the past four decades Tuesday
has been my extended prayer day. I get to go to a quiet place, apart from
distractions, and converse and confer with God, 1-on-1, for several hours.
As I meet with God here are some
things about prayer that are important to me.
- God exists. God is real. There is a God. I believe in God.
Without this prayer is an illusion. With this I view myself, in the act of
praying, as keeping company with the all-knowing, all-powerful,
all-loving, necessarily existent (everlasting; without beginning or end),
personal agent who created and sustains all things. This is no small
appointment I have!
- God is a personal being. God desires relationship. The
Christian idea of God as a Trinity makes sense of God as essentially
relational. God, in His being, is 3-Relating-Persons-in-One. (I confess
that I do, very much, like The Shack[1] on Trinitarian theism.) God as a 3-Personed Being
makes conceptual sense of the idea that God is love.
Everlastingly the Father has been loving the Son, the Son the Spirit, the
Spirit the Father, and round and round in the Big Dance (perichoresis). To pray
is to accept God's invitation to the Big Dance.
- God made me. For what? For relationship with him. God,
who is a relational being in essence, desires relationship. He made me for
such a thing as this. When I pray I am living in the heart of God's desire
for me.
- God knows me.
- God loves me.
- Put 4 and 5 together and you'll begin singing
"Amazing Grace" accompanied by tears of gratitude and joy.
- God desires me to love and know Him in return.
- This is where prayer comes in. Prayer is talking with
God about what God and I are doing together. To pray is to enter into a
loving-knowing relationship with God.
- When I talk with God in prayer I often begin by asking
God a question – “God, is everything all right between You and me?” This
is the "Search me, O God" moment. Then I listen. If God shows me
something that’s breaking relationship with Him, I confess this to Him. It
then becomes God’s delight to forgive me. God loves doing this because God
is love. God desires to heal
anything that breaks relationship. (Note: God’s grace is amazing but it’s
not cheap. It will cost me something to be in relationship with God. This
should not surprise me, since it will cost me something to be in real
relationship with anyone. Love is sacrifice. There are no exceptions to
this.)
- In prayer I talk to God. I express my love to God, and
my concerns. I don’t hesitate to ask for my own self if my request is
kingdom-advancing. This is called “petitionary prayer.” I meet some people
who feel odd about asking for their own self. That feeling is not from
God. I also pray for others. This is called “intercessory prayer.”
- In prayer I listen to God. When God speaks to me, I
write it down. I keep a spiritual journal, which is a record of the voice
and activity of God to me. I will remember the things God speaks to me.
God's history with me is more precious than things and accomplishments.
- I have found that God has much to say to me – today. I
take "This is the day the Lord has made" seriously. Today is the
day of breakthrough for me.
- God has plans and purposes for me, which have to do
with His Kingdom and His righteousness. I will seek these two things in
the first place. Then God will add all good things unto me. (“Good” = the
kind of things God values, things like love and honor and reconciliation
and joy and peace and compassion and real, authentic relationship.)
There is no formula for this because
prayer is relationship with God. There is more to prayer-as-relationship than
these things. Yet these are essentials that apply to all strong relationships: listening,
understanding and being understood, and of course love.
I will pray, with these things in
mind, today.