The Prayer PracticeSample

Day 2: Talking with God

Most of us learn to pray just like children. First, we learn the vocabulary and grammar of life with God. Say, daddy. Say, mommy. Say, Our Father who is in heaven... To talk to God.

But there comes a time when we desire a more personalized relationship to God. So we begin to talk with God. Just meaning, to tell him what’s on our mind.

We see this progression — from talking to God to talking with God — in Jesus’ central teaching on prayer in Luke 11. Jesus starts by teaching his disciples to talk to God — meaning, to pray a pre-made prayer. But in the following story about the friend needing bread, he assumes his disciples will move on to talk with God. To come to our Father, with all we need and desire. To ask.

Under this category of talking with God, there are three sub-categories. They are gratitude, lament, and petition & intercession.

First off, gratitude — talking with God about what is good in your life and world. Gratitude isn’t just the beginning of prayer, it’s the heart and soul of our entire relationship to God. It is written, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son.” (John 3v16) And of Jesus, “He gave himself for our sins.” (Galatians 1v4) The Father gave the Son and the Son gave his life and the Father and the Son together gave the Holy Spirit. Generosity is at the center of the Gospel and the inner nature of God himself. Therefore, gratitude is the primary way we relate to God.

Secondly lament – talking with God about what is evil in your life and world. What are we to do with all the pain and suffering we carry in our heart? Pray it! It’s an open secret that many Christians find prayer boring; one reason for that is because they aren’t actually praying; they’re performing. We are so used to performing our life with other people; we edit our thoughts; to present a more polished image of ourselves to the world; in order to be loved, and not rejected, and succeed and not fail. It’s like we can’t help but carry that way of being over into our relationship to God. But C.S. Lewis said we are to lay before God what is in us, not what ought to be in us. Learning to pray is about learning to bring all we are to God, because he already knows all that’s inside you!

Lament will naturally lead you into the third category: petition and Intercession – asking God to fulfill his promises to overcome evil with good. Petition is when we ask God to do something on our behalf, whereas intercession is when we ask God to do something on someone else’s behalf. Both petition and intercession are summarized by Jesus’ command to ask.

But the single most important thing Jesus teaches his disciples about asking is to not just to ask, but ask “in Jesus’ name...” Most people put the tagline “in Jesus’ name” at the end of their prayer, but not once is it used that way in the NT. It’s a way of praying. It invokes our status as those who are “in Christ.” The NT scholar Larry Hurtado put it this way: “To pray in Jesus’ name ... means that we enter into Jesus’ status in God’s favor, and invoke Jesus’ standing with God.” And it’s also to pray in alignment with Christ. We ask “in Jesus’ name” when we ask for the kinds of things Jesus would ask for in a given situation.

So, as we pray, we must never forget that - whether we come to God with gratitude, or lament, or petition and intercession - through it all, God is forming us into the answers to our own prayers. Prayer is a way we ask God to act and do things only he can do in the world; and it is a way of giving God the space to do what only he can do in us. So, this coming week, may our anthem be: Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth, and in our own heart, as it is in heaven.