Healthy Spirituality Part 4:
Prayer
Text: Psalm 23
It seems to be a natural fit. In speaking about healthy Spirituality, prayer is almost always the one subject that comes up. Of course it does. Prayer is that one moment where we pause and talk to God. It also seemed to be a very fitting piece into the overall puzzle because of the readings that we have today. The 23rd Psalm, is arguably the most famous Biblical passage. I would guess that it is one of the few passage of scripture that most people of a certain generation and old would have memorized. Why? Because it was part of how we were raised. The 23rd Psalm is a very pastoral image… calm, serene, prayerful language. At only six verses long, it is easily committed to memory. Because it reaches back into the childhood of so many, even those who have in recent years never darkened the door of a church know it… It’s for good reason that the 23rd Psalm is the most-often read passage of scripture at funerals.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The book of Psalms are a collection of hymns, songs, and prayers that were part of the worship life in Israel long before Jesus came along. If anything they are the one book in the Bible that one could be forgiven if we thought it was part of the New Testament because it plays such a central role in our own worship. It is exceedingly rare that at least something from the 150 Psalms is not read on a given Sunday. They are a major part of the expression of our Spirituality because they do the one thing that no other part of the Bible can. They can help us give voice to our own thoughts and our own feelings to God. They can express raw grief and anger… including being angry at God to the point of even saying something that seems inappropriate… and they can also give expression to the calm serenity that we so often long for. In other words, the Psalms can help us learn how to pray… and pray in a way that is healthy. As a whole, the Psalms can help us when we find ourselves struggling for the words or thoughts.
It may seem like a no-brainer, but Prayer, of course, is a major part of Healthy Spirituality. As part of this series we’ve already come through taking responsibility, trust, and study. Today, prayer, and next week, putting it all into action. Yet why didn’t I start with prayer? Logically and naturally that would be the first thing on the list, after all, prayer is indeed how we talk to God.
Yet when it comes down to truly understanding what prayer is, what it does, and what healthy prayer looks like, I think we still have a lot to learn. Borrowing from the other weeks, it’s important that we take responsibility for our prayer life, to trust that God is part of it, and to always be learning and studying so that we might develop ways to better discern what God is calling and leading us to through prayer.
What is it that we’re actually trying to accomplish with prayer? We do it every Sunday. Many of us do it several times during the week if not every day… even so what is it that we’re looking for?
When it comes to prayer, it’s been unfairly tagged as a laundry list; a list of things that we would like God to do for either ourselves or for others. Similar to the way our children provide a list to Santa Claus for Christmas. Granted, this may or may not be our personal experience of it, but certainly it has been characterized this way. We also tend to approach it as if it’s a battle of wills… that if we only pray long enough and hard enough God will see things our way, give in, and grant us our request.
But is that really a healthy approach to prayer? I don’t think so… because it portrays God as being somehow cold, distant, and unfeeling… and only if we prostrate ourselves enough, or yell loudly enough or pray hard enough, we could bend the will of God to reflect our own. In following the current US presidential race, someone posted on candidate Mike Huckabee’s website that they were going to pray harder than they ever have before to get their candidate nominated and implored fellow conservative Christians to do the same. Yet what does that say if Huckabee doesn’t get the nomination? Did they not pray hard enough? Right now the odds aren’t great, but for any political watchers that one may be over by Tuesday. There are dozens of current examples of this kind of thing, and none of them are really all that healthy! Prayer is not about trying to get God to see things our own way! Maybe it’s about time that we learn that it’s the other way around…
So why not turn back to the 23rd Psalm… even if only briefly.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters.
He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.
The first half of the Psalm is more a description about God. A healthy reminder that God is like a Shepherd who guides us, leads us and keeps us safe. A healthy reminder that God is the one that is in control. The next part of the Psalm it moves into a personal conversation:
Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no evil; for you are with me;
Your rod and your staff –they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
my whole life long.
This is about giving things over to God. In the same way, prayer is not about bending God’s will to our own. It doesn’t mean that we should not pray for others and for ourselves… of course not… but it does mean that we leave ourselves open to change and listening for where God is in the midst of our lives. At its best, prayer allows us to be open to change… to be transformed into the very answer to prayer that we seek. One pearl of wisdom about prayer goes something like this:
Pray like everything depends on God.
Work like everything depends on you.
Unfortunately, we more often put it the other way around. We pray as if we are trying to somehow through our own force of will, bend God to the point so we get our own way, but we’re not willing to do anything more than that. Pray like everything depends on God, work like everything depends on us. In other words, be open to what God is calling us to in life, but we need to be willing to work for it… to be a part of the very answer to prayer. That way, our lives themselves become a living prayer… but it’s not an easy road because we’ve learned this “laundry list” type of approach when it comes to our prayer life. Maybe that’s something that we need to “unlearn” –a habit that we need to break.
Fortunately, there’s a great deal of examples in the Bible that we can follow that is much more healthy.
In a few weeks time, as we draw closer to the events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday, there is a revealing moment in the life of Jesus that can really teach us so much about prayer. Remember that Jesus prayed intensely, almost fearfully, in the Garden of Gethsemane. He willfully, aggressively, and tearfully prayed that he would not have to face the cross himself… and yet through that act of prayer that he understood that in order to show that death had no power, the cross was indeed the necessary path.
At its best, prayer helps us to be open to what God is calling each of us to… sometimes to wrestle with those extraordinarily difficult circumstances we find ourselves in. Sometimes through the act of prayer we can find the courage to act in a way that we never thought we could. Sometimes prayer helps us walk through our own dark valleys, or our own gardens of Gethsemane. At it’s best, prayer helps us to realize that it is not God that changes to conform to our will, but we become more in tune with our Shepherd's call.
Amen.
It seems to be a natural fit. In speaking about healthy Spirituality, prayer is almost always the one subject that comes up. Of course it does. Prayer is that one moment where we pause and talk to God. It also seemed to be a very fitting piece into the overall puzzle because of the readings that we have today. The 23rd Psalm, is arguably the most famous Biblical passage. I would guess that it is one of the few passage of scripture that most people of a certain generation and old would have memorized. Why? Because it was part of how we were raised. The 23rd Psalm is a very pastoral image… calm, serene, prayerful language. At only six verses long, it is easily committed to memory. Because it reaches back into the childhood of so many, even those who have in recent years never darkened the door of a church know it… It’s for good reason that the 23rd Psalm is the most-often read passage of scripture at funerals.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The book of Psalms are a collection of hymns, songs, and prayers that were part of the worship life in Israel long before Jesus came along. If anything they are the one book in the Bible that one could be forgiven if we thought it was part of the New Testament because it plays such a central role in our own worship. It is exceedingly rare that at least something from the 150 Psalms is not read on a given Sunday. They are a major part of the expression of our Spirituality because they do the one thing that no other part of the Bible can. They can help us give voice to our own thoughts and our own feelings to God. They can express raw grief and anger… including being angry at God to the point of even saying something that seems inappropriate… and they can also give expression to the calm serenity that we so often long for. In other words, the Psalms can help us learn how to pray… and pray in a way that is healthy. As a whole, the Psalms can help us when we find ourselves struggling for the words or thoughts.
It may seem like a no-brainer, but Prayer, of course, is a major part of Healthy Spirituality. As part of this series we’ve already come through taking responsibility, trust, and study. Today, prayer, and next week, putting it all into action. Yet why didn’t I start with prayer? Logically and naturally that would be the first thing on the list, after all, prayer is indeed how we talk to God.
Yet when it comes down to truly understanding what prayer is, what it does, and what healthy prayer looks like, I think we still have a lot to learn. Borrowing from the other weeks, it’s important that we take responsibility for our prayer life, to trust that God is part of it, and to always be learning and studying so that we might develop ways to better discern what God is calling and leading us to through prayer.
What is it that we’re actually trying to accomplish with prayer? We do it every Sunday. Many of us do it several times during the week if not every day… even so what is it that we’re looking for?
When it comes to prayer, it’s been unfairly tagged as a laundry list; a list of things that we would like God to do for either ourselves or for others. Similar to the way our children provide a list to Santa Claus for Christmas. Granted, this may or may not be our personal experience of it, but certainly it has been characterized this way. We also tend to approach it as if it’s a battle of wills… that if we only pray long enough and hard enough God will see things our way, give in, and grant us our request.
But is that really a healthy approach to prayer? I don’t think so… because it portrays God as being somehow cold, distant, and unfeeling… and only if we prostrate ourselves enough, or yell loudly enough or pray hard enough, we could bend the will of God to reflect our own. In following the current US presidential race, someone posted on candidate Mike Huckabee’s website that they were going to pray harder than they ever have before to get their candidate nominated and implored fellow conservative Christians to do the same. Yet what does that say if Huckabee doesn’t get the nomination? Did they not pray hard enough? Right now the odds aren’t great, but for any political watchers that one may be over by Tuesday. There are dozens of current examples of this kind of thing, and none of them are really all that healthy! Prayer is not about trying to get God to see things our own way! Maybe it’s about time that we learn that it’s the other way around…
So why not turn back to the 23rd Psalm… even if only briefly.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters.
He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.
The first half of the Psalm is more a description about God. A healthy reminder that God is like a Shepherd who guides us, leads us and keeps us safe. A healthy reminder that God is the one that is in control. The next part of the Psalm it moves into a personal conversation:
Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no evil; for you are with me;
Your rod and your staff –they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
my whole life long.
This is about giving things over to God. In the same way, prayer is not about bending God’s will to our own. It doesn’t mean that we should not pray for others and for ourselves… of course not… but it does mean that we leave ourselves open to change and listening for where God is in the midst of our lives. At its best, prayer allows us to be open to change… to be transformed into the very answer to prayer that we seek. One pearl of wisdom about prayer goes something like this:
Pray like everything depends on God.
Work like everything depends on you.
Unfortunately, we more often put it the other way around. We pray as if we are trying to somehow through our own force of will, bend God to the point so we get our own way, but we’re not willing to do anything more than that. Pray like everything depends on God, work like everything depends on us. In other words, be open to what God is calling us to in life, but we need to be willing to work for it… to be a part of the very answer to prayer. That way, our lives themselves become a living prayer… but it’s not an easy road because we’ve learned this “laundry list” type of approach when it comes to our prayer life. Maybe that’s something that we need to “unlearn” –a habit that we need to break.
Fortunately, there’s a great deal of examples in the Bible that we can follow that is much more healthy.
In a few weeks time, as we draw closer to the events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday, there is a revealing moment in the life of Jesus that can really teach us so much about prayer. Remember that Jesus prayed intensely, almost fearfully, in the Garden of Gethsemane. He willfully, aggressively, and tearfully prayed that he would not have to face the cross himself… and yet through that act of prayer that he understood that in order to show that death had no power, the cross was indeed the necessary path.
At its best, prayer helps us to be open to what God is calling each of us to… sometimes to wrestle with those extraordinarily difficult circumstances we find ourselves in. Sometimes through the act of prayer we can find the courage to act in a way that we never thought we could. Sometimes prayer helps us walk through our own dark valleys, or our own gardens of Gethsemane. At it’s best, prayer helps us to realize that it is not God that changes to conform to our will, but we become more in tune with our Shepherd's call.
Amen.
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