Now I'm a naturally skeptical person, and her comment produced such an uneasy skepticism in my gut that you would have thought she was inviting me to a seance, instead of a prayer meeting. Maybe this sounded just a little too mystical for my upbringing, but I decided to give it a try anyway.
We met on the floor around a coffee table, some of us were stretched out, some leaning over the table, some with our heads leaning back on the couch. We were silent and we waited.
I don't think I had ever been to a prayer meeting that didn't spend the majority of the time sharing requests. To be honest, I think that was the part I preferred, because I always seemed eager for the prayer time to end. As I sat there, I could see that I was clearly in the habit of waiting, but not on the Spirit. I was used to waiting for who would pray next, used to waiting for my turn to pray. (Remember how you could pass prayer around the room like a game of electricity, tapping the person next to you if you didn't want to pray) I was especially used to waiting for the clock, waiting for the typically 10 minutes of scheduled prayer to be done.
After waiting out all those things I was used to waiting out, I found myself relaxing into an easy place of waiting. What I experienced was a prayer time like I had never known before. My heart and mind had never felt so quiet, never felt more free of my flesh.
Ephesians 6:18 tells us to "pray at all times in the Spirit". Do you think by that we can infer it is possible to pray in the flesh?
Jesus warned against praying like the Pharisees or Gentiles.
"And when you pray, you are not to be as the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners, in order to be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will repay you. And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition, as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. Therefore do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need, before you ask Him." Matthew 6:5-8
When I pray I do a lot of thinking. I think about what I'm going to say, about what others will think of my prayer; I think about how long that person is praying, about how I wish I sounded as worshipful as she does. I can be thinking about what I'm going to do after this prayer time is over, about what I want to say to the person next to me, about my next task.
If I'm really being fleshly, I'll be critiquing what others are saying, thinking about the prayer requests and how trivial it seems, thinking about the mess other people make of their lives, judging them for their failures. I'll be waiting for my requests to be prayed for, comparing whether equal time was given for my concerns, for my needs, wondering why people don't care about me, or think about me as much as the other person.
That's what I mean by being burdened by my flesh when I pray. Frustrating indeed!
On this unprecedented occasion, the patient waiting succeeded in letting all that thinking in the flesh to slip away and in it's place I found myself listening. Now I'm not the best of listeners. I talk to think, which results in a lot of talking. When I'm talking, I'm mostly not listening, and when I'm not talking, I'm mostly thinking about what I want to say next. So whether I'm talking or thinking, I don't do much listening, ok, I don't do any listening.
You know how it is when someone is talking at you, not with you? Prayer is a two way communication that often looks just like that, just like us talking at God. How much do we listen to God? Do we expect Him to have anything to say back to us?
Usually I hesitate to welcome other people's ideas because I'm pretty satisfied with my own; I think they are good, maybe even the best. Why would I want to consider another idea when I'm not interested in changing mine? Do I come to God that way when I pray? How interested am I in what God thinks, in what's on His mind? Maybe I don't want to know; maybe I don't want to change my plans.
In the book "Experiencing God", Henry Blackaby suggests that "what God says in prayer is far more important than what you say." I hate to admit this, but Blackaby jabbed me just where I needed it. I had always felt that what I had to say was very important, so it had never occurred to me to consider God's part of the conversation as more important than mine. What was I doing in prayer, trying to communicate to God what was on my mind or trying to listen in order to learn what was on His? Which is more important, that He know my will, or that I know His? Doesn't He in fact already know what I am thinking, know even the motives of my heart far better than I know them?
Our prayer life and our thought life are intertwined. This chapter is not on prayer, but on how the Spirit is absolutely indispensable in both prayer and our minds. Has God made it possible for us to know His will, to know His mind, and how important is that in our prayer life?
"Just as it is written, 'things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him', for to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words." 1corinthians2:9-13
"And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should,
but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God." romans8:26-27
It would seem to me that I'm not going to know one tiny smidgen of God's will without the Spirit, whether it be through His inspired written Word or through prayer, so it begs the question about my prayer life.
Whose mind or thoughts am I expressing when I pray?
Do I start praying by admitting my incapacity to know how or what to pray?
I love this story Blackaby tells of when his son was six years old, and he bought him a blue Schwinn bike, only his son didn't know he wanted a blue Schwinn bike. He kept asking for smaller, more inferior toys, but Henry kept working to get his son to want a blue Schwinn bike. By the day of his birthday, his son had asked for a blue Schwinn bike. Blackaby says, "The bike was already in the garage, I just had to convince him to ask for it."
The Holy Spirit knows the mind of God, essentially saying, the Holy Spirit knows what God already has planned for us "in the garage". When we learn to wait on Him in prayer, to want God's will first, the Holy Spirit will convince us of what we should ask for, and we can be certain that the Spirit of truth will not lead in opposition to the Word of truth. The only way to truly pray according to the will of God is to pray in the Spirit.
"Prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." 2peter1:21
It strikes me how the same might be said about prayer, that no request has its origin in my will, but has come from God through the Holy Spirit.
Maybe we need to reverse the customary order and pray first, share requests later.
No comments:
Post a Comment