Prayer

I said I would teach a Adult Sunday School class. There was a suggestion for one called "When God's People Pray" by Jim Cymbala. I looked at the outline of sessions and some sample questions for the first lesson. They seemed pretty good so we ordered it. Can't hurt to talk about prayer.

The class starts tomorrow and as I watched the DVD I have become quite disappointed. He is apparently the pastor of a mega-church in Brooklyn and I tire of his message very quickly. There just doesn't seem much depth to his message. The first question in the study guide is kind of negative and rhetorical; "What do you think Christians and the churches they attend miss out on when calling on God in prayer is not an essential part of their life and worship?" Well from watching the video, I learned they don't get big churches that cost millions of dollars.

Am I too cynical to see his talk as "all about me?" Maybe I have developed a negative attitude and I don't want to be too critical but I have heard one to many stories about a "struggle with Satan." He writes about how a conference asked him to give a talk to 10,000 people (golly, I'm impressed). Then he struggled all night because God told him to change the topic and talk on something he was unprepared for. He had to struggle all night because Satan tried to stop him. The sermon was a great success and a tape of it has traveled all around the world helping people. In a similar vein, both the testimonies that I've heard so far from the people at his church on the DVD are folks who have been saved from drugs. They are supposed to be inspiring but I find them formalistic.

It is a good group of people so we will have a good study. I may be feeling a bit embarrassed to be using something so shallow for such an important topic.

I decided to try to supplement the lesson with other resources. The God We Never Knew by Marcus J. Borg had some good discussion of prayer. The initial summary fits right in; "Being intentional about a life with God - Prayer transforms those who pray." Borg adds depth as he adds on page 124,

"If God is “the one in whom we live and move and have our being” then prayer is not addressing a distant being who may or may not be there and who may or may not answer. Prayer is the primary individual means of consciously entering into and nurturing a relationship with God."

The study seems to emphasize "God give me this, God do that" rather than the depth of relationship Borg is talking about. While acknowledging that prayer is a part of the collective worship life, Borg mainly writes about the individual outside public worship. I made this outline;

• Verbal - Spoken out load and said silently or journaling
• - - - - Petitionary Prayer - Asking God for something, May include thanks
• - - - - Conversational - simply talking to God and ideally will include listening, natural part of relationship and feels like a way of caring for people, “reminds” one of God and spending time in relationship (not thinking about God)
• Nonverbal - meditation and contemplation
• - - - - also “reminds” one of God and spending time in relationship (not thinking about God)
• Many forms
• - - - - repeating mantra - rosary, Jesus Prayer
• - - - - - - - - Lord Jesus Christ, you are the light of the world; fill my mind with your peace, and my heart with your love
• - - - - focusing on one’s breath
• - - - - sitting silently and watching whatever arises in one’s mind without becoming involved in it
• Stilling the mind before God
• - - - - Exercise - turn off the internal flow of words for a minute
• - - - - - - - - mind is busy, noisy, distracting - we would have trouble walking if this was the same as our control over our bodies.
• Combined
• - - - - Begin verbal: thanksgiving, introspection, petitions, and intercessions
• - - - - Move into internal silence with images to create a space for God to speak to us through imagination
• - - - - Acquired contemplation - becoming silent inside
• - - - - Infused contemplation - the experience of God’s presence in the silence of wordlessness

I also like this definition in Gratefulness, the heart of prayer by Brother David Steindl-Rast.
“We must distinguish prayer from prayers. Saying prayers is one activity among others. But prayer is an attitude of the heart that can transform every day activity. We can not say prayers at all times, but we ought to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17).That means we ought to keep our heart open for the meaning of life. Gratefulness does this moment by moment. Gratefulness is, therefore, prayerfulness. Moments in which we drink deeply from the source of meaning are moments of prayer, whether we call them so or not. There is no human heart that does not pray, at least in deep dreams that nourish life with meaning. What matters is prayer, not prayers. But prayers are the poetry of prayerful living. Just as poetry gives expression to one’s aliveness and makes one more alive, so prayers give expression to one’s prayerfulness and make one more prayerful. Page 211 (emphasis added).