How’s your prayer life?
For a very long time, I thought I was a pretty bad pray-er. In the mornings, when I usually read my Bible or a devotion of some kind, I’ve always tried to come up with my own prayer to close. You know the kind. The ones that sound so grand and glorious, that have a lot of pretty language, that follow the ACTS pattern. Have you ever heard of it--the ACTS pattern? It’s a prayer pattern that starts with A (for adoration), continues with C (for confession) and with T (for thanksgiving) and finishing with S (for supplication). That was one pattern I learned and would try to follow, along with a few other prayer patterns.
But the problem I had was that nearly every time I tried to come up with such a pretty-sounding prayer, a prayer with a nice pattern, a prayer that sounded like someone with many years of ministry might pray, well, they always sounded a little stupid. They sounded a little like the one prayed by Ben Stiller who plays Greg in “Meet the Parents.”
Yes, I was a lot like Greg was. I was a pretty bad pray-er.
Then, I took a class on Luther. Specifically, on Luther as a Pastor. This isn’t a role that we often hear very much about for Luther. We think of him much more as a theologian. But, when you read some of his writings, especially those directed to friends and other acquaintances, you really begin to see a pastoral side to him. You see how much of a pastor, a shepherd, he really was for his parishioners.
One of his writings was directed to a friend who was nearing death. In it, Luther shared some of his thoughts on prayer, including one that especially stuck with me. One way to think about prayer that I’d never really thought of before. Luther talked about prayer as communication.
He wrote that one should consider what it is like to be in a relationship with another person. That our relationship with God is no different. He suggests that, just as a relationship with a spouse or significant other, or with a child or a parent requires constant communication, our relationship with God is no different. Yes, God commands us to pray. But, God deeply desires us to pray. Because God deeply desires to be in full relationship with us.
A full, a good relationship, requires communication. Even when we don’t want to. Even when we’re angry at another person. Or even when we’re angry with God. As Luther writes in his preface to the Lord’s Prayer, “[God] wishes rather to draw us to himself so that we may humble ourselves before him, lament our misery and plight, and pray for grace and help.”
This is the rich relationship God desires with us. It is a relationship where we might pour out everything that is on our hearts. It is a relationship where some of the things we say to God might not be pretty. They might not be nice. They might not be “Christian.”
God wants to know us in the deepest part of our hearts. God wants us to know God in the deepest part of God’s heart. It is okay to cry out to God in pain or grief. It is okay to cry out to God in anger or when you feel life has just been so crummy or unfair. It is okay to even express hatred to God--the hatred we might feel for another. God simply wants realness and honesty in our prayer. Realness and honesty in our heart. Realness and honesty in our relationship. However good or bad that realness and honesty may seem to us, God wants it in our prayer.
The movie, “Bruce Almighty,” is about Bruce Nolan, a television field reporter in Buffalo, NY, who is discontented with almost everything in his life despite his popularity and the love of his girlfriend, Grace. At the end of the worst day of his life--a day when he gets passed over for a promotion to the news anchor spot and also loses his job--Bruce angrily ridicules and rages against God. And God responds. God appears in human form and, giving Bruce divine powers, challenges Bruce to take on the big job to see if he can do it any better.
In this scene, which is a monumental moment in the film, Bruce decides to finally surrender to God. The problem is that he performs this action in the middle of an interstate highway with a 40 foot truck bearing down on him. When Bruce opens his eyes, he’s in heaven face to face with the One to whom he has just sworn to trust with his life and his future.
Let’s watch.
God doesn’t want our flowery language. God doesn’t want us to pray in a specific pattern. God just wants us to talk deeply from our hearts. To share how we are feeling. To express our deepest desires. To do this with words or even, as Paul writes in Romans, with “sighs too deep for words.”
God promises to answer our prayers. As Luther wrote, we have a “God who is able to give more than we understand or ask for. Even though we do not know what we should ask for and how, nevertheless the Spirit of God, who dwells in the hearts of the godly, sighs and groans for us within us with inexpressible groanings and also procures inexpressible and incomprehensible things.”
All through prayer.
Thanks be to God!
Amen.
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