Every Sunday morning in church we take prayer requests for the pastoral or congregational prayer, and almost inevitably most requests concern, generally, the same thing: physical well-being. And this is understandable. We have had people in hospital, having surgeries, struggling with various illnesses and health conditions, and so it only makes sense that when we come together to pray that such issues form the bulk of our prayers. Or does it?
It is true that such prayers emerge from the basic sense that God cares for our well-being and that he is intimately involved with the details of our lives. We bring our present life experience--experience often defined by health concerns and other earthly priorities--before God in prayer; and to do this is natural. Our God is Immanuel or God with us. But I do wonder that if in concentrating largely on petitions regarding physical health we are missing much of what God wants us to be praying about. While God is with us, he is so for his own purposes and will and not for ours. While intimately involved in the details of our lives, he is so in order that we might become closer to him, to grow in our knowledge of God. Yet how often do our prayers--personal and corporate--reflect God's concern and God's cause? And are we able to see the details of our lives--at home and at church--in the light of God's plan?
All this has been on my mind because I see a huge contrast between prayer as I experience it personally and corporately and prayer as I see it in Scripture. Looking, for instance, at Paul's prayers, we can observe pretty quickly that much of what occupies our times of prayer doesn't even show up on Paul's radar. All of his letters, except Galatians, mention his prayers for the recipients. For all we know there could be people in those various congregations that have serious health concerns, yet Paul is largely silent on such matters. That's not to say that such concerns were never addressed in prayer--but they were not the first or only prayers on the list.
Theologian and biblical scholar D.A Carson wrote a book a number of years ago called A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers, and in this book he discusses some of these very same issues. He begins by looking at 2 Thessalonians 1:3 -- 12 and the framework of Paul's actual petitions on behalf of the believers in Thessalonica. Two things, Carson argues, shape Paul's prayers: First, a thankfulness for signs of grace among the believers. In other words, Paul expresses thanks that their faith is growing, that their love for one another is increasing, and that they are persevering under trials. So Paul is not thankful for simply anything; he is thankful that they are living the Christian life more obediently and faithfully and with resilience in the face of opposition. And how often are our prayers--mine included!--shaped by such thanksgiving?
Second, Carson says, Paul's prayers are shaped by the anticipation of Christ's return. The tenor of Paul's prayers are guided by his eschatology, the belief in the world to come with the Second Advent of Jesus--and how this will result in vindication for believers and in retribution and judgement for non-believers. Carson goes on at length discussing this point, especially since some would find the notion of God exacting such judgement distasteful. But he is simply talking about what Paul himself says:
"He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed."
And then in the next verse Paul says: "With this in mind, we constantly pray for you . . ." With this in mind . . .
How often do any of us truly pray with such things in mind? If we were to take these foundational elements of prayer--a thankfulness for signs of grace and growth in the Christian life and, as Carson calls it, Paul's "fundamental orientation to the end of the age"--and make them the basis of our prayers, what might our prayers sound like?
I don't think we approach prayer naturally this way. Truth be told, I don't think we approach prayer naturally at all. There is nothing natural about prayer. It is super-natural. It is conversation with God borne of the Spirit of God about the things of God. And we don't know how to do it. This is why the disciples asked Jesus, "Teach us to pray." We need to be taught to pray, as much as we need to be taught to tie our shoes and boil water on the stove. "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans," Paul writes in Romans 8:26. So we learn to pray from Jesus, and indeed all of Scripture, and we rely on the Spirit to make of our prayers what they never could be on their own. We don't know how to pray and we don't know what to pray for. But God does and, thankfully, he's more than willing to teach us.
There's an old Puritan proverb: "Pray until you pray." Certainly this could mean that we ought to be persistent in our prayers. But it means more, I think. It means practicing prayer, keeping at it until it moves beyond formalism, awkwardness, and religious duty, until it becomes an intimate expression of our relationship with God. The more we pray, honestly and biblically, the more we will learn how to pray. Pray until your prayers become honest expressions of faith before God.
I think this proverb can also mean that we ought to ask God to instill within us certain priorities in prayer--pray until you really pray: pray for God's cause, pray with thankfulness at signs of grace among your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, and pray with an eternal perspective, that sense of hopeful anticipation of Christ's return. We don't know how to do this, to pray as we ought--Scripture tells us as much--but we are told where to go and learn. This doesn't mean we stop praying that our loved one's cancer is healed but that we also pray they would learn to trust in God's grace even in trials, despite the persistence of illness, hopeful that Christ will restore them upon his return. It means seeing our earthly concerns from a heavenly perspective and allowing a heavenly perspective to shape how see and pray about our earthly concerns. In other words, "Pray until you pray."
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