Prayer--For What

As a child I prayed for everything I wanted but without discernment as to what might be good for me or not. When I did pray for others, I prayed for their safety and well being, and I believed God would intervene for good. I often didn't bother to notice whether God answered my prayers. Years passed, and by the time I was a teenager I could only remember the prayers God didn't answer, so I stopped praying. (Perhaps if I'd been raised in a household where my parents had faith and prayed this would have been different, but my church didn't teach anything much about persoal  prayer and my parents only sent me and my siblings to church to have a Sunday morning free for themselves.)

When Jesus became real to me in my late twenties, I became more serious about prayer, especially prayer for others. I took workshops on the subject, started a prayer journal in which I noted requests and answers, read books about prayer, and was particularly inspired by the autobiography of George Muller. I collected the promises of God about prayer and studied the prayers of biblical characters. I learned about having a prayer language from my charismatic friends, and mental prayer from my Carmelite friends. I started having a regular time for prayer as well as "sending up" quick little prayers throughout the day. I joined prayer groups and started some myself. All of this was helpful, and I began to grow in faith that prayer makes a difference.

Over more than forty years of praying and seeing many answers to prayer, including answered prayer in my own life as people prayed for me, I've realized that my initial enthusaism for learning about prayer was good, but was based on seeking technique. Knowing what I know know, I would focus on developing my relationship with God. I would seek out an advanced believer to help me discern when the Holy Spirit is prompting me. These prayers lead to good. So often, when not listening to the Holy Spirit, but wanting to "fix things or people," I prayed prayers that most often went unanswered.

Years ago I learned a simple way to get to know God, to begin a dialogue with God: In a daily journal, I began by choosing a feeling or thought that I had. Wrote it down, "God I feel (describe feeling), and I think I feel this way because." (Substitute thought for feel if you prefer.) Then I waited silently to see if I sensed God's presence or response. I made a note of what I experienced. I kept going for days, months, years. I combined this with a daily reading of the scriptures and noted what scripture intrigued me--caught my attention. I dared to believe God was talking to me, and took the scripture personally. I studied what Jesus did and said, and my faith helped me see God mirrored in Jesus. Later on I found a spiritual director to help me understand what invitations God was sending my way, invitations for growth and wholeness.

Gradually I began to know experientially that Jesus' prayer had been answered in my life: "Jesus replied, '... I will only reveal myself to those who love me and obey me. The Father will love them too, and we will come to them and live with them." (John 14:23 LB); "I am not praying for these alone but also for the future believers who will come to me.... My prayer for all of them is that they will be of one heart and mind, just as you and I are, Father--that just as you are in me and I am in you, so they will be in us,and the world will believe you sent me." (John 17:20-21) Gradually I began to realize that the most important thing to know when wondering what to ask God for, is to know God loves you. And, "Help," is always a good prayer.

Prayer--To Whom

Back in the 1970's an easy-to-read New Testament came out--The Living New Testament. It was a paraphrase in modern language. I was taking my first class in the bible, the gospels, and I couldn't get enough of this book. I'd never read the bible as an adult, and I was fascinated with Jesus. I complained to my pastor that a lot of "this stuff" is pretty hard to swallow. He said, Just keep talking to God about it. So I did. Prayers like, "God if you're there, help me make sense of this."

It wasn't long before two scripture verses gripped me and wouldn't let me go: "Jesus replied, '... I will only reveal myself to those who love me and obey me. The Father will love them too, and we will come to them and live with them." (John 14:23 LB); "I am not praying for these alone but also for the future believers who will come to me.... My prayer for all of them is that they will be of one heart and mind, just as you and I are, Father--that just as you are in me and I am in you, so they will be in us,and the world will believe you sent me." (John 17:20-21)

I thought, Here are promises that God will meet me, will be revealed to me, will be in me. There will be an intimate communion with this One who loves me. The God I've been talking to loves me.

As I continued to talk to God, simply verbalizing my thoughts and questions, feelings and fears, hopes and dreams, joys and miseries, I began to get a sense of who this God was for me. I talked to God out loud when I was alone, wrote conversations to God in my journals, offered my thoughts in silence to this God I was getting to know. God began answering by making a scripture important to me, bringing spiritual teachers into my life, comforting me through a song on the radio at just the right moment, providing shoes for our daughter when there was no money to buy them, and even gave me a dream that healed me after more than nine years of severe, chronic illness.

Over the many years I've continued talking to this God who loves, I've come to know the intimate communion that was promised. I have confidence that God will bring blessing when I pray, not because I'm perfect, but because it delights this One who lives in me to help me pray so that good is released in our world.

Prayer--Something of a Mystery

From the time I was old enough to know about prayer, I felt urged by something within me to help others by praying for them. I remember praying for the recovery of a little girl who had fallen down an abandoned well, praying for a train of travelers through the Sierras when their train was stalled by snow, and as a pre-teen, pouring out my heart to God because my boyfriend was spending a lot of time with another girl. Prayer just seemed to come naturally. I simply expressed what I felt and what I wanted God to do.

But by the time I was a teen ager, I knew God seemed to answer some prayers and not others. Prayer didn't seem to be dependable, and I stopped praying, stopped attending church, and it would be a long time before that pattern was  reversed. Perhaps you have felt this way as well.

So can we learn to make contact with God in such a way that we know God hears our prayers, that our prayers make a difference, and that our prayers bring forth Good on the earth?

The next several blog posts will share what I have learned over the last forty-five years of walking with God, what makes prayer as much a part of my life as breathing. I hope you will also comment on your own experience or pose questions that we might explore together.