PRAYER

By The Very Rev. D. T. Owen, D.D., Dean of Niagara.

I would ask you to think with me as simply and directly as possible about one of the greatest things in the world. It is something that we can all do, for it requires no special learning; it is something which we can all do at once, for it requires, from one point of view, no special training; and it is something, which if we will do, will bring guidance, peace and power, into our own lives and into the lives of others. What is this thing which is so great, and yet so close to hand, which is so worth while doing, and which we can all do, and do at once? It is prayer. It is just saying our prayers. "Oh! how humdrum and commonplace!" we say, or "How difficult and discouraging I have found it; I know I should pray, and I make resolutions sometimes to that end, but somehow it gets either formal, or crowded out, or forgotten". Yes, while we all know about these difficulties and appreciate their strength, let us think this subject out again.

WHAT IS PRAYER.

In the first place let us set before us quite clearly this great fact. God, as He has been revealed to us by His Son, wishes us to pray to Him. Prayer—the privilege, the duty and the value of prayer—is part of the revelation of God. It goes with His nature, as that nature has been revealed to us. He is the God Who wishes us to speak to Him, and to take Him into our confidence,—in a word He is the God Who wishes us to treat Him as Father. What is prayer? There is God ready to hear us, ready to heal and guide, to give rest and peace, to give light and strength, to help carry our cares, to direct our feet into straight paths. And here are we with our great needs, our cares and perplexities. Prayer is the point of contact between ourselves and that great God. Indeed, we can say more than that, for when we pray we become our true selves. We are spirits of Eternity. For a time we live upon this earth having many duties to perform, and many important offices to fulfil,—but when we pray, when we praise God, we are performing our essential work as spirits. We have dropped for the moment the outer covering of our lives, and stand forth as being what we really are,—spirits who came from God, who are doing a certain work for God here, and are to return to God. The moment of prayer is a great moment, for then it is that "deep calleth to deep", and spirit calleth to the Father and Source of all spirits. And so it comes to pass that in the moment of prayer it is not merely that this man or woman, called by this name or that here on earth,—a workman, a business man, a housekeeper,—but an eternal spirit of God is calling upon the Author of all Spirits. Such is prayer. "Prayer is that act by which man, conscious alike of his weakness and his immortality, puts himself into real and effective communication with the Eternal, the Self-Existent and the Uplifted God."[[1]]

WHY SHOULD WE PRAY.

In trying to answer the question, "What is prayer?" we have, in part, answered this question also, but it is so important that it must have a section to itself.

In the first place, we should pray in order to make acknowledgment of the glory and the power of God. It is because of what God is Himself that we have need to fall down before Him in adoration and praise. We are inclined to think too much of our own needs in relation to prayer. Indeed when we mention the word prayer, we begin at once to think of our needs, of what we want, and of what other people want. These are important, but these are not first; and until we understand that they take the second place in prayer, and do not constitute its chief argument, we cannot realize the real reason for Christian Prayer. The real, the first reason for prayer from the Christian point of view is to glorify God,—to praise Him for what He is, and to fall down before the greatness of His power. We have a model prayer which teaches us about this. Among many other things it teaches us the chief reasons for prayer. It comes to us full of answers to our question, Why should we pray? "When ye pray, say, Our Father, Which art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven." This surely means that God must be first in our prayers.[[2]] We are half way through the Lord's Prayer, we are more than half way through, before we begin to talk about our needs. Our Lord Jesus Christ has taught us that in prayer we are to think first of such things as the Father, Heaven, His Name, His Kingdom and His Will, before we say anything of the bread and our other needs. Yes, surely the great reason for praying is to honour God, to unite ourselves with His great purposes in heaven and earth.

Again, I would ask you to think of this from another point of view. One of the great objects of life is to know God. To know God! This sometimes seems a very mystical, far away subject, does it not? It belongs, surely, to those who have been specially endowed, or to those who have the mystical temperament! I do not think this is true. I think we grow to know God as we grow to know our friends. And how do we grow to know our friends? We speak to them, we take them into our confidence, we tell them of the things that make up our lives, and by so doing we grow into friendship. If we neglect this for long our friendship begins to wane. Now I think it is very much the same with our relations to our great Friend. We grow in our knowledge of Him and His ways, and in our understanding of His mind, just in proportion as it is our habit to go into His Presence and to take Him into our confidence about our lives. And this is what prayer is. By prayer we grow to know God. The highest prayer is "Thy Will be done", and we can only come to those heights of prayer by praying,—for it is by talking to God, looking at Him, taking Him into our confidence that we come to understand some of His ways and purposes, enter into the secret places of His dwelling, and thus learn to say, "Thy will be done!" Only they who have learnt in the School of Prayer to say, "Father ... Hallowed be Thy name" can go on to truly say, "Thy will be done". The object of prayer is not to bend His Will to ours but to so learn of him, and to so enter into His Friendship day by day that we can say, "Thy will be done".

But, of course, in prayer we are meant to ask for things for ourselves and for others. What has been said above by no means indicates the complete reason for praying. No, the Christian prays for things for himself and others. It cannot be too strongly stated "that prayer gets things done". "Ye have not," says St. James, "because ye ask not". It is the Will of the Father to give us things in response to prayer. Our Lord in the model prayer taught us to pray definitely for certain things in human life. His Father, so He teaches us, is interested in the whole of human life, all its needs, its cares, its joys, its perplexities, its strain,—all these can be made the subject of intercourse between the Father and the child. The Father cares about them so much that they must find their place in our prayers. Indeed, they are so important that they must have their own place. And their own place is second. So in all our praying let us remember it is God first, ourselves second. But we go further than that. It would seem as if we were not in a position to know our real needs sufficiently well to pray about them with intelligence, unless first of all we have allowed the light that comes from thinking about God, adoring His Name, and falling down before the majesty of His purpose and His will, to shine upon our life's needs. Yes, we are indeed to pray for our varied needs and those of others, but we cannot know our real needs unless God is first in our prayer, and we have prayed, "Our Father, Hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done".[[3]]

HOW SHOULD WE PRAY?

It would seem to be perfectly clear from the teaching of the Bible and the Church, and from the experience of those who really pray, that men and women can live lives of power, peace, and usefulness, whatever their lot may be, if they would but pray. There it is before us. It is the challenge of prayer. If you pray, you can do great things for God and man.

There the challenge stands. "But", someone says, "I personally have found it very difficult to pray, possibly my gifts lie in other directions." This is often said as if the speaker thought he were unique. He is quite right about one thing,—it is difficult to pray,—but he is wrong in thinking he is unique. Prayer is one of the hardest things to do. This is one of the reasons we shirk it. Do not be surprised if you find it hard. "It is hard," someone has said, "because it is high". Most things that are very well worth doing are things we find hard, especially at first, to learn to do.

Now let these facts stand very clear before us. God asks us to pray to Him. Of all the things we do, there is nothing that can be more worth while doing. If we will do it, we most certainly will grow into better and nobler and more useful men and women. But we shall find it hard to do. Now let us be quite clear about the problem of the hardness of prayer; there is only one thing to do about this subject of prayer, and that is to pray. The only way to solve the problem of praying is by praying. Nothing will do instead. In spite of the difficulties, in spite of distractions, of weariness, of failure, of moods, of coldness,—we pray. Nothing will do instead. Nothing else will solve the problem. Reading books and listening to sermons on prayer will not do instead. The only way to learn to pray is to pray. The people who get things done are the people who, not having the time or the inclination often, in spite of these things,—pray.

In a word, we have to treat prayer as work, as part of our definite work as Christians. We know how it is with our work. We do it every day. We do it whether we feel like doing it or not. We keep on doing it day after day, month after month, year after year. Prayer is work. We must treat it with the respect we give to our work. Again, what a mistake it is to wait on the mood. What a mistake to say, "I do not feel like praying to-day—perhaps to-morrow!" Our moods come and go. They are very fragile things, rooted sometimes in trifling causes. One of the greatest mistakes in this connection is to think that the effectiveness of our prayers depends upon the particular state of our feelings at the time. It often happens to people who pray that they have found the greatest blessings they have won for themselves or for others have been in times when "the heavens were brass", and they had little or no sense of reality or warmth in prayer. It is said that the difference between the professional and the amateur is that the amateur depends on the mood, but the professional goes on with his work day after day, paying no attention to a mood here and there. We must be, in this sense, professionals. Prayer is part of our work as Christians. Let moods come or go, the work must go on,—the great work of Praise, Petition, Intercession, Thanksgiving.

Again, if there is one thing more than another that Our Lord was clear about in His teaching concerning prayer, it is that we must be persistent in our prayers. We must pray for an answer. This is not to say that we are to pray until we receive the answer we wish, but until we receive some light and leading in relation to the subject of our prayers. It will not be necessary to do more than remind you of the two parables on this subject in St. Luke's Gospel. There was once a man upon whom there came an unexpected traveller one night, and he had "nothing to set before him". He went to a friend at midnight and said, "Friend, lend me three loaves," and would not go away until he had received the loaves, but kept on asking and seeking and knocking. "I say unto you", said Our Lord, "that though he will not rise because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will arise and give him as many as he needeth. And I say unto you, ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." And again, there was in a certain city a judge, "which feared not God, and regarded not man", and to him came a widow with the persistent plea, "Avenge me of mine adversary." And he would not for a while, but afterward he said within himself, "Though I fear not God, nor regard man; yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me". These two parables, taken with Christ's own example in Gethsemane when He prayed three times concerning "the cup", make it very clear that His followers, when they decide this or that is a matter for definite prayer, must not leave that petition or intercession out of their prayers until they have received some answer, some light or leading from the God Who always hears, and always answers earnest prayer.

And last of all, in answer to our question, How should we pray? we should pray in that name which is above every name—the name of "the one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus." We have this great name to plead. Though in our weakness we feel unworthy to pray, though in our ignorance we know not how to pray, and though with the best of our prayers there is so much that is imperfect, we have in that One Who ever lives to make intercession for us, One Who takes our poor and imperfect acts of devotion and makes them to be heard in the Presence of the Divine Majesty. It is "through Jesus Christ our Lord" we pray. Here is our confidence. In this realization we find fresh strength and hope for the whole work of prayer. His perfect knowledge of our lives and of our temptations, coupled with His place of Honour at the right hand of the Father, gives us great re-assurance that our prayers come before that Throne with power. "Having then a great high priest, Who hath passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but one that hath been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us, therefore, draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and may find grace to help us in time of need."

FINDING TIME FOR PRAYER.

We are anxious that these articles should be very practical, and that our readers may be helped to practise their religion more definitely from reading them. Most of us are very busy people, and often it will seem as if there was no time for prayer. But we always make time to do things we consider absolutely essential. Prayer is one of the absolute essentials of the Christian life. You will notice that it was during times of unusual pressure of duties that we are told that Our Lord found time to pray. It was when the people thronged Him to listen to His words, and to receive healing and comfort for body and soul, that we read, "And it came to pass in those days, that He went out into the mountain to pray; and He continued all night in prayer to God". And again it was while "all the city was gathered at the door" that "in the morning, a great while before day, He rose up and went out, and departed into a desert place, and there prayed". He always found time in the midst of His thronged ministry, when "many were coming and going", and He had "no leisure so much as to eat", to go apart to enter into communion with His Father. We, too, must find time to pray.

The important thing is not how long our prayers are or how short, but that our spirits have come, if only for a moment, into contact with Him, Who is Himself Spirit. This is the vital thing. This is that which brings rest and refreshment to the soul and strengthens it in its life on earth. Let me repeat, the great essential is to get into touch with God, and to get into touch every day. Now it would seem as if the morning, first thing in the morning, is the time especially to do this? Before the distractions of the day have dulled the delicate perceptions of the spirit, before the noonday sun has absorbed the early dew of morning, is the time to open the door of the heart to God, and to lift up the hands to Him. It was in the morning, "rising up a great while before day", that the Son of Man prayed. So it should be the first thing in the day with us. It need not be anything complicated or involved. Indeed, it can be quite simple. Perhaps this simple suggestion may be found helpful. When we get up in the morning, we remember that it is God first. We must let the thought of the glory, the power and the goodness of God take possession of our hearts. We bow before Him, from Whom we came and to Whom we go, and say, "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son; and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen." Then a word of thanksgiving for sleep and rest, one or both of the Collects for Morning Prayer, a little prayer for others, and special needs of the day, and the Lord's Prayer to end with, and to sum up the whole act. Such is the barest outline, but it is something that everyone could do, and could do every day. Why not? And why not forthwith?

If we are to know God, we must pray. If we are to become our true selves, we must pray. If we are to walk bravely and honestly through this life, we must pray. If we are to be useful to others, we must pray. And what is prayer? It is getting into touch with God, and getting into touch every day.

[[1]] In further token that it is so we find, apart from Christian Revelation and experience, an instinct to prayer practically universal among men. This natural capacity to pray is one of the greatest attributes of human nature. Man has ever felt the desire to confer with the unseen.

[[2]] Prayer, therefore, if it is to follow the teaching and example of Christ must rise above the thought of making a bargain with God. (E.g. "If this petition is granted then I will do this or that"). Christian petitions are offered in absolute trust, "Nevertheless not as I will but as Thou wilt."