I’ve always found prayer to be one of the spiritual disciplines that everyone wants to improve on. We often think of prayer as the times we give God our words and thoughts. Sometimes we mistakenly try to “update” God on the comings and goings within our minds and neglect the truth that his omniscience clarifies this thinking as foolish.
So then, what are we doing when we pray? We are entering before “God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:16) This is done in full participation of the Godhead: the Spirit delivers, the Son presents, the Father hears and blesses. This holy dance happens as we pray and somehow experience the cosmic interplay of power, humility, and glory.
I confess that so often I pray because I want to change God – change his mind or move him to act on my behalf or my loved ones. The reality, of course, is that prayer – true prayer that is aligned with the will of God – will often change me.
What if we began to pray with this assumption and posture? What if we as a church prayed expectantly and with hope that the discipline of prayer is not a checklist or debrief of the day? Instead, I submit, we offer our hearts to God and ask for his Voice to change us. Not only would this change our private prayer life, but doing this in community (small groups) might lead to richer times of prayer together. Try asking questions of God and allowing space or silence to wait. Read the psalms as corporate prayers – as they were intended. Pray the Lord’s Prayer or psalm as a group and in your own words. Have someone keep up with answered and unanswered prayers in a group journal, revisiting past entries for celebration or for persistence.
Prayer – both corporately and privately – can truly transform your life and your understanding of God. Richard Foster once wrote, “In prayer, we begin to think God’s thoughts after him: to desire the things he desires, to love the things he loves, to will the things he wills.” In this way, we pattern our lives after our Lord Jesus and become more like him as well as more intimately know and be known by him.
Not Just a Corner 