March 12, 2006
Phoning Home: Prayer
Matthew 6: 5-6; 14:23

Communication is a vital component in any relationship. Among the many topics that I explore with couples during pre-marital counseling sessions, for example, none is more important than developing healthy communication skills. So we discuss the two key elements of good communication: assertiveness and active listening. Assertiveness, according to the PREPARE/ENRICH materials that I use in such sessions, “is the ability to ask for what you want and need.” Active listening, the related skill, “involves listening attentively without interruption and then restating what was heard.” We even role play to make sure that each person gets the idea. After all, “It takes two to speak the truth,” as Henry David Thoreau once said, “…one to speak and another to listen.”

What, however, is the intended outcome of developing good communication skills in a marriage or any other meaningful relationship? Why bother working so hard at this? Do we simply hope to avoid conflict? Are we merely seeking to gain whatever we want from the other person? Or is the bottom line this: good communication enables us to know and experience each other more deeply?

In Matthew 14:23, Jesus separates himself from his ongoing responsibilities and prays. He does this, as I mentioned last week, on a consistent basis. Jesus prays when facing major decisions, confronted by threatening situations, and when grateful for ongoing blessings. Jesus prays for others all around him, his disciples and for himself. Jesus models a life of prayer. And he is certainly not alone in the Bible, not to mention the entire history of the Church, in demonstrating a commitment to prayer. We read, for example, some 350 texts in Scripture in which people pray. But the question remains, what lies at the heart of prayer, and why are we encouraged to pray?

Prayer, as the Bible envisions it, is not a religious obligation or duty to perform. Instead, prayer is fundamentally relational—it serves as the primary channel through which we cultivate our relationship with God. Prayer enables us to remain connected to the vine, as Jesus instructs us to do in John 15. Because of this, prayer at the center involves the same two components that are vital in developing good communication in any relationship—assertiveness and active listening.

Prayer, first of all, involves assertiveness on our part. When we pray, we speak. “You have not because you ask not.” “Keep pounding on the door—don’t give up so quickly.” “Cast your cares upon the Lord.” “Be certain to join those who returned to Jesus to offer thanks for what he has done.” Again and again, the Bible encourages us speak to God—God is a God who hears, listens and responds.

When we speak during our prayers, we cover a wide range of issues, needs, and emotions. In the same way that we speak to a spouse or a friend about a wide variety of matters, so, too, we talk with God. We offer prayers of thanksgiving to God to let him know how grateful we are for who he is and all that he has done. We share prayers of confession to acknowledge our sin and shortcomings and to ask him for his forgiveness. And we bring to God our petitions—our deepest needs and concerns. When we talk with God, we also practice intercessory prayer, serving as mediators between other people in the world and God. As intercessors, we pray for the sick, the confused, and the lost. We pray for people inside of the church and those outside. We pray for missionaries, teachers, friends and enemies. We pray for government officials and our supervisors at work. And all the while that we are praying, we are encouraged in Scripture that our prayers, whether we can explain it theologically or not, actually do make a difference in our lives and the lives of others. Even though God has the full panorama of history under his control, he allows genuine and meaningful space for our prayers to move him and affect the course of events. When we pray, we speak to God, and the Bible assures us that he hears the prayers of the righteous.

But there is more to speaking in prayer than simply varying our words and altering the subject matter. Assertiveness involves boldness and honesty. In fact, I sometimes sit and wonder when I read the prayers—acceptable prayers—of various characters in the Bible. Moses, when God is about to wipe the Israelites off of the face of the earth, questions God’s wisdom and asks, “Do you really want to do this? If you destroy your people, the nations of the world will hear about it and conclude that you were incapable of bringing them into the land that you promised (Numb. 14:13-20).” And the Lord responded to Moses, “Oh, perhaps you are right. I’ll forgive them.” Job, after losing his possessions, family and health, cried out to God, “You are the one who fired this arrow through my heart, even though I’ve served you faithfully over the years.” And we are told later that Job spoke rightly. Habakkuk, distraught over the evil that he saw all around him, complained to God concerning his apparent lack of involvement. “The world is in ruins and going down the tubes,” Habakkuk cried, “and yet you seem to do nothing.” “Alright,” God responded, “sit back and watch.” And remember Jesus, kneeling in Gethsemane just prior to his arrest, crying out to God: “If there is any other way, please take this cup away from me.” But, as you know, there wasn’t any other way.

Moses, Job, Habakkuk, Jesus, and many, many others. They prayed honestly. They didn’t “stuff” their feelings like we so often do. They didn’t cover their prayers with a fancy veneer, as though God was somehow unaware of what was really going on deep inside of them. They understood that God was big enough to handle their pain and frustration, and so they talked with him, questioned him, and at times even yelled at him. While God has little appreciation for mere fussing and complaining, he does, as odd as it might seem, long for our honesty—our probing questions and genuine frustrations. Don’t suppress them when you pray—speak to God and know that he listens.

When we pray, we speak assertively. Prayer, however, involves far more than talking. Don’t you get tired sometimes when you are with people who talk too much? You can’t get a word in edgewise. It’s as though you are bombarded by an avalanche of words, and they become increasingly difficult to deal with. “Please be quiet for at least a moment,” you want to say. Is it possible that God feels that way at times, too? Prayer involves more than talking. Prayer involves active, careful, persistent listening. I think, frankly, that this is one of the crucial ideas that finally helped me a few years ago to experience prayer in a revitalized way. When you assume that prayer is primarily talking, you inevitably fall into one of two—or perhaps both!—traps. First, you assume that it is your responsibility to set the tone or determine the agenda for the conversation. Can you remember a time when you met with someone you didn’t know too well, perhaps for an hour over breakfast or lunch, and five minutes into the hour you realized that the other person was not going to say more than a word or two? He wasn’t going to ask you anything about you—where you lived, what you did for a living, or about your family? And the pressure mounted, and you hoped the hour would somehow pass by more quickly than normal. Pressure to talk and to set the agenda can literally kill a conversation.

And second, when you assume that prayer is primarily talking, you feel obligated to cover a certain amount of material as quickly as you can so that you can get everything in in the allotted time. I used to pray that way, and I hated it. I felt as though it was my responsibility to pray for everyone in the whole world every time I prayed, and so I’d drag out my lists and go over each request, one by one. In the process, prayer became more and more a duty and less and less a joy.

When we pray, we listen. We aren’t expected to do all of the talking. It isn’t our responsibility to determine the agenda. God, we are told over and over again, leads us and speaks to us. But we must learn to sit still, close our mouths, turn off the noise, and listen.

On my recent trip to Wernersville for a prayer retreat, I decided to take the “scenic” route and took 422 the entire way. 422, as you perhaps know, meanders through the town of Lebanon. At one intersection, I felt compelled to stop at a pastry shop situated on the corner. I tried to ignore the urge, knowing that I had no need for pastries at that time! When the urge refused to fade, I reluctantly pulled my car into the parking lot. After taking just a few steps, a man a few cars away opened his door and asked me if I would help him with his wheelchair. He informed me that he had been waiting there twenty minutes for someone to help him inside! I removed his wheel chair from the back seat of his car, helped him out of his car, and pushed him into the pastry shop. As he and I talked briefly, I realized that the urge to stop was in fact God speaking to me. God, I’m certain, speaks to us.

Prayer involves assertiveness—speaking to God boldly and honestly. But prayer also, and no less importantly, involves active listening. Paying attention to what God wants to say to us.

Why, then, do we pray? What is the primary purpose of prayer, the ultimate end? Is it physical or emotional healing? Guidance in the face of decisions? Protection when confronted by danger? Money in a time of need? Surely all of us have prayed for such things over the years, but do they lie at the heart of prayer? “Prayer,” Joseph Whelan wrote in his short book entitled Benjamin: Essays in Prayer,
is not aimed at anything at all….
Now of course, where this (prayer) is well done,
there should be, once again, explosive results.
The by-products of all Christian prayer,
whether private or liturgical prayer,
should be at once self-fulfillment
of the individual person, the creation
as well as the expression of community,
and vigorous social action…..
But where they are aimed at,
that is, where prayer is pragmatized,
then they destroy prayer,
and, of course, as genuine prayer’s by-products,
they destroy themselves,…
Or in the words of Romano Guardini,
It (prayer) expresses itself by the absence of aim. The liturgy (prayer) does not wish to achieve anything, but merely wants to dwell in the presence of God, to breathe and unfold, to love and praise him.

The goal of prayer is not physical or emotional healing, although we ask for that and hopefully experience it from time to time. The goal of prayer is not the salvation of family and friends, although we ask for that and long—with God—to see it happen. The goal of prayer is not guidance when making decisions, nor additional resources in the time of need. We ask for these things, and God in his mercy takes care of us. But these are not the central purpose of prayer. The goal of prayer is this: God. Knowing him. Experiencing him. Enjoying him. Hanging out with him. “Prayers,” as Eugene Peterson phrases it, “are not tools for doing and getting, but for being and becoming.”

In spite of the fact that we have been married for 28 years, my wife and I continue working hard at developing our communication skills. We push each other to be genuinely honest in sharing our thoughts and needs, and we listen until we get it right. And frankly, I know my wife far more intimately than I did the day I married her—there is no comparison. So too in our relationship with God. We talk honestly. We listen carefully. We keep at it. We pray. Prayer is the channel through which our hearts and God’s heart meet.