Prayer and the Voice of God by Phillip D. Jensen and Tony Payne Part 3

A Whole World At Work...

My husband and I recently began running together. In the dark in the city this morning we completed our 27th run! We’re not going to break any records, but stepping out into that soft darkness, the air faintly purple when we began our running adventure in summer, now the moon and the stars are still out, it’s something else. The birds just waking up, the traffic just the odd rattle instead of the rumble it will be in an hour or so - I notice all these things that I never would have seen before. The girls lifting skinny white canoes out of the boatshed, their oars plunging into the black water. They sail silently underneath me as I run across a bridge. The bootcampers lined up in tunnels punching bags in the dark. The cyclists and runners navigating the narrow path. All the while the sky is gently lightening. There is a whole ‘early morning world’ at work and it’s exciting to behold. It’s for this as much as the extra energy in the day that I’m running for. It’s hard to get up at that hour but it’s worth it to see the world as I never saw it before.

Prayer is like that too. God is always at work. With or without you. He controls the rising and the setting of the sun. He knows what’s on the menu for you today. But it is an absolute privilege to step into the throne room of God and behold him as he works, to have the ear of the maker of the universe. So why do so many christians struggle to have healthy prayer lives? Just like regularly attending church or bible study, regularly praying doesn’t just happen. We have to make it a priority. How can we do that?

Set The Alarm

“Good”, you may be thinking. “At last we’re getting down to the nitty-gritty. Enough of the theory and the motivation. Give me some practical advice. Tell me how to do it!” (p.71) Towards the end of the book Jensen and Payne helpfully include practical ideas for building a prayerful habit into our lives. Here are some of them:

Begin Again

Perhaps this comment strikes a chord with you: “My prayer life feels virtually non-existent. I don’t even feel like a Christian anymore. What can I do?” (p. 167) The authors identify that we’re in a fight between spirit and flesh and sometimes the flesh wins this side of heaven. Rather than pat the reader on the back and tell us not to feel too badly about it, they encourage the reader to do something with those feelings of guilt:

Persistent, unrepentant ungodliness will exclude us from the kingdom of God. We cannot and must not presume upon God, thinking that our sin doesn’t matter. We will find out one day, to our cost, that it matters a great deal. We must repent of our prayerlessness and start again. Christianity is a start-again life. (1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.)  (p. 169)

If your prayer life is non-existent, repent and begin again, he is faithful.

Get Support

“Ask a friend to pray for you as you commit yourself to regular personal prayer.” (p.171)

Choose someone you trust (preferably who has been a Christian a little longer than you) who you can be accountable to. Maybe this is someone who you could catch up with once a week and ask each other this question, “How has God shown up for you this week?” (I heard a minister on the NSW south coast ask his congregation this as a regular sharing part of the service and thought it was brilliant.) When you’re in a habit of praying, you’ll begin to notice God at work all the more, and this will encourage you to keep at it. As Oswald Chambers writes, ‘However much we may know God, the great lesson to learn is that at any minute, He may break in.’ (My Utmost For His Highest January 25)

Set Aside A Dedicated Time to Pray On Your Own

Every growing christian can testify to the difference having a dedicated ‘quiet time’ makes in keeping a close walk with God. I remember being a young adult on Beach Mission and hearing another guy say that even though he attended every christian evening group going, church and bible courses, he found it wasn’t until he started having a personal time alone with his bible and in prayer that he began to move forward and grow in confidence and faith in the Lord Jesus. That struck a chord with me. Quiet times matter.

Decide on a regular, achievable pattern and stick to it. The authors recommend doing this for 4-6 weeks and that seems a good amount of time for a new habit to start to stick. I think ‘achievable’ is an important word. Better to be praying for fifteen minutes regularly than have a plan to do it for an hour that never quite happens.

Whilst the authors don’t give specific examples, not wanting to be legalistic, I know some christians who set the alarm and have half an hour on their own in the morning to read the bible and pray through a list. For others, going to bed at 9 instead of 10 five nights a week gives time away from tv and phones to read the bible and pray before they sleep.

Pray Throughout The Day

One of the most helpful things I watched whilst writing this post was John Piper’s Pray throughout the day on youtube. (A praying friend recommended it to me!) It’s a 3 minute video with a big impact and it has reminded me to pray before and after everything and fleshes out for me the author’s point that, “The best time for prayer is any time and at all times.” (p.187) Piper likens prayer to a mobile phone call with God and says start the day with prayer and leave the green button on, don’t press the red button, keep praying to God before and after every phone call, every shower, every tv show, every email, every meal, every run. They can just be short one sentence prayers, make them count, make them God-honouring. He wants the members of his church to be a praying people who convey their heart to God over and over. It’s advice we would do well to follow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5QeEEdpGGU

The Noticing Power Of A Journal

I am a lover of journals and I have a pretty incredible collection. But the ones that have gotten the most workout for prayer is a plain exercise book which I use for individual prayer and a yellow hardback one I use for bible study, both of which I purchased from the supermarket. By all means, buy a beautiful moleskine journal or a growing faith reap journal or a matthias media growth groups journal but don’t stop there, use it! Write in it. Write down God’s promises and the people who need your prayers and pray for them. And then, look back at it and reflect.

The author A.S Byatt writes, “It is always surprising how people don’t really look at things.” I think that this has never been truer. Do we really look at a text, at words on a page, at colours, at a situation, at a painting? When was the last time you sat back and reflected on a whole book? As my young son peered over my shoulder while I scrolled furiously through my facebook feed last night, he said, “Slow down, I can’t see anything.” I think looking has been replaced by scanning, we try and do things as quickly as we possibly can and then we crash, exhausted, into the couch and binge-watch the next exciting series on Netflix. Then we check our phone again and fall into bed.

The beauty of keeping a journal for prayer is that it gives you a chance to write out a plan for what you’re going to pray when you have that chunk of time alone with God. God is a planner and so should we be too if we are to do what he commands and be faithful in prayer. As well as being useful in the moment, a prayer journal is a wonderful artefact to look back on. You will be blown away by how God has been at work in your life and the lives of others answering your prayers. This lo-fi tool can be a huge encouragement to your faith when you are feeling low.

Make Your Time With God A Priority

If we want to be like Jesus we need to spend time with him. There’s an internet meme I’ve seen that says, “People with no time really have no priorities.” After googling I found an article where a person stopped saying, “I don’t have time for that,” and replaced it with the more honest phrase, “That’s not a priority for me.” We all have limited time but certainly quite a bit of control over how we use at least some of it. What are your priorities? Do we have room in our life for God? I don’t want to make room for God. God made my life. I want God to be my life. My everything. He inhabits every part of it, but often, I’m not really looking.

Pain and Struggle Now But A Day Of Glory And Perfection Is Coming

“One day, in the eternal kingdom of God, we will always feel like praying. Thanks and trust will flow out from us like fragrance from a flower. But in the meantime, our feelings about prayer will be mixed, because we ourselves are ‘mixed’. We have God’s spirit within us, but we still live in the flesh and we still battle against the desires of the flesh - one of which is to neglect prayer!” (p. 176.)

I pray the exploration of this excellent little book has motivated you to keep battling the flesh and make prayer a priority. If you would like to keep exploring this topic more here are a few books I have found immensely helpful:

• The Psalms, The Holy Bible
• The Songs of Jesus, A Year of Daily Devotions in the Psalms (Also titled My Rock; My Refuge) by Timothy Keller and Kathy Keller
• A Child’s First Book of Prayers by Lois Rock and Alison Jay
• You Can Pray, Tim Chester
• A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers by Don Carson
• John Calvin on Prayer in The Essence of the Reformation by Kirsten Birkett
• Prayer by Tim Keller (Katie Stringer has written four essays on this book which you can find here http://equipbooks.blogspot.com.au/search/label/prayer )

About this month's contributor, Katie Stringer
Katie loves writing and has had snippets published in Womankind Magazine and the Guardian Weekly. She leads a Bible Study at her local Anglican church, All Souls Leichhardt and loves being part of the Leichhardt community. She is married to Andrew and they have two school-age daughters and a young son.

Prayer and the Voice of God by Phillip D. Jensen and Tony Payne Part 2

Has Anyone Ever Taught You How to Pray?

You might have seen the 2013 movie, Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock. In it she plays Dr Ryan Stone, an astronaut, cast adrift in deep space after the Hubble Space Telescope she’s been working on is hit by debris. The space shuttle she has disembarked from suffers catastrophic damage. All the crew are dead save for the astronaut, Matt Kowalski (played by George Clooney) who is tethered to Dr Stone outside of the spacecraft.

They make a plan to reach an International Space Station but time is running out. Kowalski makes a heroic decision to cut Stone free, knowing there’s not enough oxygen for both of them to survive. One moment in the film still lingers for me: Stone is floating alone in deep space, with no bearings except for glimpses of Earth. Her situation seems utterly hopeless. Very quietly, through gulps of precious oxygen, she says, “I’d say a prayer for myself but I’ve never prayed in my life - nobody ever taught me how.” Does this resonate with you? Has anybody ever taught you how to pray?

The Lord’s Prayer

One of the best and most powerful parts of Prayer and the Voice of God is in chapter 6 where the authors break down The Lord’s Prayer and show us in greater depth what it is saying and how it teaches us to pray. This is the bit of the New Testament where Jesus literally teaches his disciples to pray.

The authors go through the prayer line by line digging out rich insight into what Jesus actually meant by each sentence. In my small group this became a wonderful opportunity to learn together the riches of a prayer that is so often on our lips in church, and may be one we’ve known since childhood, but not grasped the full meaning of before. There were life-changing moments for all of us. The authors summarise:

The Lord’s Prayer is a marvellous template for our requests to God. It homes in on God’s desires - on what is important to him and therefore what should be important to us. It focuses on his plans - on the coming kingdom of Jesus the Messiah. It teaches us that God desires and plans:

• for his name to be revered and honoured as the mighty Saviour;
• for his kingdom to come in all its fullness;
• for his kingdom to extend here and now throughout the world in the lives of people as they submit to his rule;
• for his people to taste the blessings of that kingdom now;
• to forgive our sins and for us to live by forgiveness;
• to deliver us from the evil one and his testings.

p.118

Though the basic human prayer is “Help!” or even better, “Have mercy on me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13) The Lord's Prayer shows us that God has so much more planned for us to be a part of after rescue from sin and darkness.

The Psalms

Another vitally important place where we learn about prayer is in the Psalms. Eugene H. Peterson writes, “Most Christians for most of the Christian centuries have learned how to pray by praying the Psalms.” (p. 773 The Message Study Bible) Since becoming an avid reader of Christian books I’ve seen this idea written down numerous times but I’ve never actually had it said to me. And I wonder, is that because we’ve stopped praying the Psalms regularly as we ought? They are often referred to as ‘The Prayer Book’ of the Bible and give us some seriously robust language to talk to God with. The authors use the Psalms to show the raw emotion of the speaker and their ultimate dependence on God, nearly always displayed after working through a problem. See Psalm 89 for a good example, beautifully unpacked by the authors on pages 56-58.

No Special Technique Required: Attitude Is Everything

Jensen and Payne write “The Bible is not very big on technique when it comes to prayer because ultimately prayer is based on and expresses arelationship with God as our Father, and relationships don’t tend to work by technique.” (p.89) That should be a relaxing thought. We’re adopted sons and daughters. We’re talking to a perfect parent who loves us and made us and who died for us to open the way for us to talk to him. But therein lies our problem: We’re imperfect children. Our sinfulness is the number one thing that gets in the road of learning how to pray, doing it with regularity and joy and growing closer in our relationship to Christ.

I’ll never forget one of the first meetings I had with our new pastor who met us in our home and closed by saying: “It’ll take some time for us to get to know each other - we tell ourselves so many lies - it can be hard to break through all that.” Wow, I thought, could he see straight through me? I felt challenged and refreshed by the truth of that sentence. We do tell ourselves a lot of lies. And the only antidote to them is found in the pages of the Bible and in the person of Jesus Christ, who gives us truth that will set us free.

After reading this far you may feel moved to pray:

Dear Lord,

Thank you for making us in your image, a little lower than the angels, made for you! Dear Lord forgive us for not living up to all that you require of us.

Thank you especially for sending Jesus so that I can reach out to you and ask you to help me. Please help me to live with Jesus as my master day by day.

Thank you that we can talk to you and ask you for things and work through all that is troubling us. Please help us to model our prayer life on Jesus and the Psalms.

We are sorry for the times we do not pray. Please forgive us.

Please help us to be a model of prayerfulness for those around us, may we support and uphold those we know who need our prayers.

May we learn to depend on you Lord for every breath.

Please refresh us by your Spirit and through the words of the Bible.

Amen.

Katie loves writing and has had snippets published in Womankind Magazine and the Guardian Weekly. She leads a Bible Study at her local Anglican church, All Souls Leichhardt and loves being part of the Leichhardt community. She is married to Andrew and they have two school-age daughters and a young son.

Prayer and the Voice of God

Introduction to Prayer and the Voice of God by Phillip D. Jensen and Tony Payne

Katie Stringer

Prayer and the Voice of God by Phillip D. Jensen and Tony Payne is a small, ordinary looking book that has had a profound impact on my Women’s Bible Study Group. Can I urge you to consider reading it with some Christian friends this year, you won’t regret it!

As we gave thanks in our small group for 2016 it was one of the things people highlighted as making a big impact. Together we read this book chapter by chapter over ten weeks. We discussed our questions, looked up Bible passages and most importantly - began to pray more! God greatly encouraged us in this endeavor by bringing three new people along to our group during this period. Two of the women have stayed and become cherished members of our group. A third woman came and was with us for a few sessions, but it wasn't for her. However she's come along to church a few times (something she’s never done before) and when I see her has both a Bible (her first one!) and a copy of this book in her bag. I continue to pray that God will draw her into a deep and satisfying relationship with him. And I hope she reads this book!

So what's so special about this little book?

1. It’s short and it’s easy. Like Guidance and the Voice of God (by the same authors) it distills the Bible's wisdom on one topic, in this case, prayer, in a chatty Australian style. I’m used to reading American and English Christian writers and there’s a certain rhythm to Australian sentences and directness to our speech that is nice to read on the page, and does feel like home. (This may or may not make it easier to share with people in your context. In mine, I think it made it easier.)
2. It works brilliantly in a Bible study or book club setting. I love reading and will pretty much read any type of book. For example, I stood in line at the Post Office this morning and read a book on computer coding for children. It was the first thing at eye level! But I get that reading is not everyone's cup of tea and we are living in an age where many people are unfamiliar with the experience of ‘deep’ reading. This is a book even a ‘doesn't like to read much’ person can get through. When you combine ‘alone time reading’ with weekly catch ups to discuss each chapter you get the chance to dig deeper into things you didn’t understand, want to talk more about, or find difficult to do. In short, you get to plunge together!
3. There’s lots of Bible in it. For such a little book, the authors manage to pack a lot of scripture in. There are discussion questions provided at the back of the book and the Bible passages to look up are often quoted in full in the chapter you’ve just read. We found we had enough to chew on here for a ten week term. As a group we then returned to our usual practice of reading a book of the Bible in depth the following term.
4. You get to open your heart about something that matters deeply. Everybody has opinions and questions about this most fundamental of human spiritual activities. And it's lovely to have a chance to explore your meaty questions: What is Christian prayer as distinct from other types of prayer? Do you do it? Alone? With other people? How often? Does He hear you? What do you pray about? Does it work? Why should I pray? What if God says ‘no’ to my prayer?
5. You’ll have interesting conversations outside of the group. I love talking about the things I’m passionate about. Reading this book led me to have great conversations with people who weren’t reading the book! I longed to talk to friends who I know pray regularly and learn from them. Do your church going friends have an active prayer life? You might be surprised and saddened to discover that many do not. This should motivate you to pray for them and with them! And tell them about this great little book you could read together. I had interesting conversations with people who weren’t reading the book and don’t pray through Jesus to our Heavenly Father (as far as I know) just because it was a Thursday and they were standing next to me in the playground and they looked at my young son in the pram and said, “What’d you guys get up to today?”  And I took a deep breath and said, ‘Well, we’re reading this really interesting book in Bible Study…”
6. You’ll pray. And you’ll pray more often. Using this book helped each of us in the group grow in confidence to head into the throne room of God and ask Him for things. “In the Bible, ‘prayer’ simply means “asking God for things”. (p13.) Of course we combine that with thanking him and praising him for things and confessing our sins too but it was helpful to learn that the prayer bit is in the asking. Rather than beat ourselves up for the times we don’t pray we grew in our understanding of what happens when we do pray and we learnt to confess our prayerlessness and start again. As the weeks rolled on, a friend leant forward after group prayer time and said, “I think our prayers are getting really really good!”
7. Prayer can feel good. That’s not the main reason to pray but it is a reason. I thought recently that I spend a lot of my time thinking about what I need to do or buy, but that the truly satisfying moments in my life are not when I tick something off my list. The deep joy in my life comes from connecting with other people. And a lot of those times are in prayer. The authors spend a whole chapter on the fellowship of prayer and write, “Whenever Christianity has been strong, and the gospel has been growing and bearing fruit, believers have been united in labouring hard at prayer.” (p.157) While that sounds like a lot of work, I’d add God has put more joy and purpose in my heart sitting with my friends in prayer than almost any other way I can think to spend my time. I am immensely grateful to have praying friends and learn so much from their deep dependence on God.
8. Prayer is still good even when it doesn’t feel good. It’s normal to struggle in prayer. The authors write, “If the Bible is any guide, we have to be taught to pray, and then encouraged, exhorted and even commanded to continue doing it.” (p.10) I also appreciate my own pastor’s helpful teaching which is that the devil hates it when the gospel goes forward. C S Lewis’ Screwtape letters come to mind. You can imagine the conversation: “Oh no! She hasn’t started praying regularly has she? Distract her, make her busy, make her too tired, put an amazing new series on Netflix. Remind her what a waste of time it is and then get her to fill up a big list of stuff to do and buy.” Nice one.
9. You’ll grow. That is the single most memorable thing I continually pray for myself and the women in my group, “Dear Lord please help us grow!” I continue to pray that we will grow in number and that we will grow in maturity. That our love for Christ will deepen and that it will be our great joy to serve him and reach out to others with the life-changing news that Jesus is Lord! The authors write:

“God includes and uses our prayers in his purposes, much as a patient mother will let her three-year-old help with the cooking, even though it takes much longer and produces considerably more mess! God gathers our prayers into his purposes for our sake - to help us learn to trust him and depend upon him for all things.” (p.154)

May we never stop depending upon our good God and saviour, listening to what he says in the Bible and asking him for things.

About this month's contributor, Katie Stringer

Katie loves writing and has had snippets published in Womankind Magazine and the Guardian Weekly. She leads a Bible Study at her local Anglican church, All Souls Leichhardt and loves being part of the Leichhardt community. She is married to Andrew and they have two school-age daughters and a young son