Recently I was pulled aside by a man who wanted to talk. We sat down together. He hemmed and hawed a bit and, finally, he made this admission to me: "I don't know how to pray." He cited his Roman Catholic background where most of his prayers had been rote and mechanical. He had been reading about prayer recently as part of a group study and realized there was something about prayer he did not have. This man was 91-years-old.
That was part of his embarrassment. He had walked with the Lord for many years and realized how immature his prayer life was. I assured him his request was not unusual and reminded him of Jesus' disciples' request to Him. They had no doubt prayed for years, but upon seeing Jesus' prayer, realized their own was lacking. Hence their request: "Lord, teach us to pray."
Jesus did not chide them. Instead, He gave them a framework for prayer that lifted their eyes beyond their own parochial concerns and threadbare prayer to point them to a tapestry of prayer dense with the thread count of a rich and variegated fellowship with God--prayer filled with praise and thanks and lament and confession and reflection and struggle and intercession and thirst and pain and hope and faith and urgency and weakness and frustration and all those other things that make up real life under the weight of fallen world but with the reality of new life in Christ. Part of my counsel to this dear saint was to show him some examples of prayer given us by God in His Word.
My guess is that God has plans for him to lead him into a life of prayer and deepened fellowship with Him. Why is that my guess?--because of the evidence of humility and Spirit-induced desire that prompted him to shake off the bonds of embarrassment and search for fuller communion with the God who had taken him as His child. Of course, the baby step in that direction is itself the plea, "Lord, teach me to pray."
2 comments:
Prayer, especially the sort done in the private closet, is a neglected discipline in the modern Church by and large. I thank God that He moves people, like the gentleman in your post, to a realization that there is more to prayer than what they've been experiencing.
If anyone didn't need prayer it would have been Jesus Christ, yet He prayed more fervently than any other.
Christ, the Savior of the world, prayed to the point of sweating blood...yet we, but worms in comparison, are unwilling to scuff our knees in prayer.
Like the gospel, so simple yet so involved, prayer carries with it the dimension of depth that reaches to the unsearchable mind of God Himself. We will never plumb the full extent of its wisdom or exhaust the vast array of its delights.
Post a Comment