My "Prayer Huddle" at church is currently studying a book called Kneeling with Giants, by Gary Neal Hansen. The book is about different prayer practices in the church down through the ages, many of which have all but disappeared from modern Protestantism. We're studying a chapter each month and practicing that form of prayer for the month.
I thought that rather than post a normal book review, it might be interesting to kind of chronicle the experience of praying using all of these different methods. I hope that this chronicle will encourage others to reach out and try some different practices. We're currently three chapters into the book, and I highly recommend it based on my experience so far.
In this first entry, I want to focus on the introduction to the book, which explains the rationale behind experimenting with the different prayer methods. I found several of the author's arguments compelling, and I hope I do them justice here, adding in a few of my own responses.
Many of us have been brought up on the ACTS method of prayer, which provides a balanced, well-rounded prayer outline. I have used this method myself for years and find it to be an effective guide. But we have at times elevated this method almost to the level of Scripture, with the end result that we know no other ways to pray. Catchy acronym aside, this is a man-made method. It's beneficial and balanced, but it is not a "Thus saith the Lord". In fact (and this is my own thought, so don't blame the author...), I think a strong argument could be made that the Lord's Prayer as recorded in Matthew 6 does not follow this format. While the "hallowed be your name" opening to the prayer might be considered "adoration", the next few requests are about "supplication", totally skipping over the "confession" and "thanksgiving" (heresy?). There's no confession here as the ACTS format teaches it - just a general admission of sin. And we could argue that "thanksgiving" is altogether absent.
Martin Luther would argue that all of these can be found if you use the Lord's prayer as a pattern rather than as a rote recitation, and I agree - but that will be Chapter 2. The point here is that the ACTS format simply is not the be all and end all of prayer. It's one beneficial method among many. Learning other prayer methods can help us stretch our prayer lives and relate to God in different ways.
Hansen makes another argument that I consider a compelling case for learning different prayer methods. Those of us who lead others in prayer need to be able to lead them into prayer methods that fit them, or perhaps that fit the season they are in. A person whose life situation is full of pain, or perhaps of sin or some other negative context, might find that the ACTS format doesn't help them relate to God. Perhaps the so-called "Jesus prayer" ('Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me [a sinner]) may help them more to relate to God in that season. The point is that the more "tools" we have in our "arsenal" as prayer leaders, the more able we are going to be to lead others into meaningful prayer experiences. And, I'd argue, the more well-rounded our own prayer lives will be.
I'll be the first to admit that I started this book with a bit of trepidation. My prayer style is comfortable for me (isn't that true for all of us), and I wasn't too thrilled with the idea of that style being challenged. But as it turns out, the book is not about trying to get me to change my prayer method. It's more about teaching me other methods that might also help me relate to God through prayer. These methods have been used by Christians down through the centuries; to think that my "more modern" style of prayer leaves nothing else for me to be taught would be the height of pride.
As I mentioned above and will detail later, our group is now in the third month of this experience. Already I have been surprised at how a couple of the prayer methods that I thought I would struggle with have turned out to be significant blessings. I'm looking forward to the rest of this experience and hope you would even consider joining me!
--Andrew
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Our first month focused on a form of prayer that goes by many names, including "The Daily Office" and "Praying the Hours". This prayer is based on the habit and instruction of St. Benedict of Nursia (c. 480-550 a.d.) The idea behind this form of prayer is that we connect to God at various times of the day to keep us in communion with him. We see an example of this in Daniel's habit of praying 3 times a day (Daniel 6:10).
Benedict's idea was that we alternate work and prayer through the day so that our entire day is spent in God's presence. Benedict specified seven different "hours" or times of prayer during the day (based on Psalm 119:164) and a prayer "vigil" in the middle of the night (based on Psalm 119:62). Each "hour" was set aside for a specific type or topic of prayer, based on the needs of that time of day. For example, the first morning prayer, called "Prime", dedicates the day ahead to God; the bedtime prayer, called "Compline", closes out the day and invites rest in God. Different prayer times between focused on other specific areas.
This type of prayer is very liturgical, which is a stretch for many Protestants, especially Evangelicals. My entire adult prayer life has been spent praying my own words (with the exception of the Lord's prayer - but more on that in Chapter 2), and I expected to struggle with this form of prayer at the beginning. Additionally, I knew that my daily schedule (not being in a monastery) wasn't going to permit me seven consistent prayer times during the day. Finally, if you've ever tried to use the Book of Common Prayer, it can get pretty complicated with flipping pages back and forth to pray different parts, etc.
Fortunately, there are other resources to help with this, and I found a website recommended by the book to be extremely helpful. The Mission of St. Clare (www.missionstclare.com) maintains a website where you can find both a printed version and an audio version of the three most common prayer "hours" - morning, noon, and evening (compline). I used the morning and evening prayers as part of my daily prayer life for the month in which we studied this chapter, and I've continued - most consistently with the evening prayer since then. I found the audio part of the website to be the most helpful, and listened each morning and evening to the respective prayers.
Hansen lists several benefits of praying the Hours, but I'll focus here on how I experienced it. The most consistent benefit for me, especially in using the audio portion of the website, was that this form of prayer took me away from focusing on my own words. Most of my prayer life is about intercession, and I'm really pretty weak in all the forms of "listening" prayer. This is where the audio really helped me - I didn't have to focus on words on a page or on creating words on my own, but could simply "listen" as the prayer was spoken from the website. I found that God brought to my mind people and situations to pray for (and the morning prayer allows a time of silence for this), but even more than this, I found that God brought me back time and again to some of the most basic aspects of prayer and faith through these prayers. I felt almost like I was "receiving" prayer rather than than "giving" it, and the experience both refreshed and renewed me. Intercessory prayer is work, and in this form of prayer I found rest - rest that helped balance my prayer life and helped strengthen me for the work of intercessory prayer.
I highly recommend the website to anyone who might be feeling a bit weary in prayer. My wife and I still regularly end our days with the Compline prayer, and find that it helps focus our minds on God and brings peace at the end of the day. Occasionally I still use the morning prayer as a way to focus my thoughts at the beginning of my devotional time. I feel that God speaks to me in these times, and this more liturgical form of prayer gives me a chance to listen to him rather than having to fill all the spaces with my own words.
This form of prayer won't be for everyone, as Hansen acknowledges, but I believe that my prayer life is greatly enriched from having experienced it. I hope this is helpful for others as well.
For our second month, we studied Martin Luther's teaching on the Lord's Prayer. Luther taught on the Lord's Prayer for most of his life. Hansen breaks down the Lord's Prayer into sections and summarizes Luther's teachings by section, also providing excerpts of how Luther himself prayed each section of the prayer.
Luther did not primarily use the Lord's Prayer as a rote recitation but as a pattern for prayer. As an example, the phrase "Hallowed be your name" was both a source of praise ("your name is honored") and of petition ("may your name be praised in such-and-such a situation"). Luther used the Lord's Prayer to guide both brief and longer prayer times. Luther argued that prayers fitting the pattern and theme of the Lord's Prayer would be answered because this is the way Jesus taught us to pray.
Contrary to the first month (praying the hours), I felt that this one would be pretty easy for me. I often use the Lord's Prayer to guide how I pray about specific issues or requests. For example, if asked to pray for a church member about an upcoming job interview, my general practice is not to give God the answer ("Lord, please get John this job") but rather to pray in a way that seeks his will and outcome ("Lord, please open the doors to the right job for John"). Whether praying for healing, financial needs, or any number of issues, this is typically my pattern. So I figured that using the Lord's Prayer as a pattern would come fairly easily.
As was the case with the first month, I was surprised. This time, the prayer practice was much harder than I had imagined. I found that I struggled a bit to come up with the words to pray specific requests using the pattern of the Lord's Prayer. Interestingly, I didn't have this problem when our prayer huddle used the Lord's Prayer to guide a time of praying together through the church's requests. I found that I could feed off of the prayers of others in the group, and that the Spirit guided me using their prayers.
I wonder if this is why the prayer is worded as though meant to be prayed in a group setting. All the pronouns in the prayer are plural (us, our) rather than singular. Certainly at a minimum, the prayer is not about "me" but about "us", leading me to focus prayers more on the needs of the body rather than always just my own needs.
I find that I have some growing to do in understanding and praying according to this pattern. But the experience - especially the experience of using the prayer in a group setting - has been a rich one and one that I look forward to continuing to practice.
In our third month, we focused on a prayer often called "The Jesus Prayer". It's found many times in the Gospels with several minor variations. Perhaps the most famous is in Luke 18:9-14, the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector praying in the temple. The tax collector's prayer, "God have mercy on me, a sinner" (v. 13) was praised by Jesus as the prayer that received God's answer. Jesus was often approached with this cry for mercy by people who were looking for healing (for example, Matthew 9:27; 15:22; 17:15; 20:30-31). Although Hansen doesn't mention this in the book, there's an interesting parallel with the Psalms, which contain many cries for mercy on the part of the Psalmists.
There are many ways to practice this prayer, but the most common one involves simple repetition as a sort of "breath prayer". Repeated this way, the prayer can become a way of praying without ceasing. The idea is that the prayer so works its way into the fabric of our thoughts that it eventually becomes almost a subconscious ongoing prayer. The author admits that it takes a long time to get to that point, but emphasizes the importance of getting started by praying the prayer.
Hansen recommends a three-step process for incorporating the prayer into our prayer lives. First comes the simple repetition - just repeating the prayer over and over as a breath prayer. To begin with, he recommends praying it a certain number of times or for a certain amount of time as part of our normal prayers, expanding the number or the time as we grow comfortable with the prayer. Praying, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God" while breathing in and then "Have mercy on me" while breathing out, the breath prayer establishes a rhythm. This phase emphasizes praying with the body - repeating the words with our mouths.
Once we've acclimated physically to the prayer, the second phase gets to praying with our minds. Hansen emphasizes really thinking through each word in the prayer, taking time to pray the meaning of the words. Starting with the word, "Lord", Hansen leads the reader through what could be thought of as a series of very brief meditations on each word, so that when we pray the prayer, we're actually focusing on the meaning of the words rather than just repeating the words without thought.
The final phase is about getting the prayer into our hearts. This one is the most "mystical" step and I'm not sure that I fully grasped this part of the prayer. But the part of this phase that spoke to me most was the idea that even the wandering of our minds as we repeat the prayer can be an indication that the prayer is itself working into our subconscious and becoming a basis for other types of prayer.
I have to admit that I approached this chapter with even more hesitation than the first chapter. I've experienced "rote prayers" repeated over and over before, and I didn't want any part of the ritualism that I associated with that form of prayer. But I determined to try it and to try to be as open-minded as I could. I started like the author suggested, repeating the prayer several times at the beginning of my prayer times. And I spent some time meditating on the words and praying around each one.
All of this was fine, but it really only laid the foundation for what the Jesus Prayer has become for me. I find now that I use this prayer as I begin to intercede for anyone - for individuals, for unreached peoples, for the persecuted church, etc. When I receive requests for prayer at church, I begin with the Jesus Prayer. My thought is that, as the people who came to Jesus in need of healing seemed to recognize instinctively, the primary need isn't really the expressed one. It's the need for God's mercy. His mercy might or might not include healing, or a new job or other financial provision, or whatever else we might specifically be hoping for. Maybe sometimes his mercy is the provision of grace to get us through a situation rather than taking us out of the situation (as with Paul in 2 Corinthians 12). In any case, it's his mercy that I now seek primarily when I pray, whether for myself or for others.
It's hard for me to put into words exactly how much this brief prayer has revolutionized my thinking about intercession. I find that I focus less on the details in people's lives and more on God's mercy and his will for them. I also find that I'm freed up from the need to "multiply words", going into long explanations (to God, no less!!) about people's situations and their needs. I can simply cry out to God for his mercy on them, and trust him to respond to that prayer as he deems best. I don't need to prescribe for God what the answers should be - I can simply ask for mercy, and leave the answers to him. The effect has been very freeing to me. I find that this prayer that I've resisted the most of any in the book so far has done more to revolutionize my prayer life than the others. I'm not sure if I'm using it exactly the way the author meant, but I do know that I feel that my prayer life has been greatly enriched as a result of praying this way.
"Month" four actually lasted a couple of months for our group. This month focused on John Calvin's use of the Psalms in prayer. And while his method lines up very well with the Inductive Bible Study method I was taught in college, I have to admit that I've struggled to put this one into practice on a regular basis due to the time and focus that it takes.
I really appreciate the idea of "study as prayer" that Calvin brought to the Psalms. The idea was that God speaks to us through his word, and specifically that he shows us how to respond to him in prayer through the example of Jesus. For a person like me who has difficulty "listening" to God in the sense of stilling my mind and allowing him to speak (a discipline I'm still working on), the idea of God "speaking" to me through his word is a comforting one. There's solid reality there, in place of what feels like subjective musings tainted by my own thoughts and desires. I know this isn't an "either/or" choice in terms of how to listen to God - it should be a "both/and". Still, God has wired us differently, each of us reflecting a small piece of his image. My "wiring" seems to be better suited to study than to listening for God in more subjective ways.
Hansen points out in this chapter on the Psalms as prayer that a study of the Psalms necessarily requires a different perspective than a study of most of the rest of the Bible. Most of the Bible is written from God's perspective, instructing us and giving us examples of how God has acted and how he has interacted with his people. But the Psalms are written from the opposite perspective: how do we (as exemplified by David) respond to how God is working in our lives? The entire book of Psalms is a collection of reactions of the writers to their circumstances and their ideas of how God is working in their lives. As Fee and Stuart put it ("How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth"), how do these responses of individuals to God serve as God's word to us?
Hansen takes Calvin's understanding of the Psalms as prayer a step further by outlining a method for actually praying using the Psalms, suggesting a way of seeing our experiences in light of the experiences that serve as a basis for the Psalms. I won't list all of the questions that Hansen suggests here, but here are a few representative ones (with a couple of extras that I use thrown in):
Personally, I have always found the Psalms a bit challenging. Maybe I'm too left-brained to really get them the way God intends, but I've struggled to know how to apply the Psalms. I don't have a son who has run me out of town and taken my throne; I've never hidden in a cave from a king who's out for my life; I don't have "enemies" (thankfully!) in the sense that David did.
But going through Hansen's exercises on a couple of the Psalms has helped me to generalize the experiences a bit. I may never have committed adultery and murdered a friend to get his wife, but I certainly have sinned in many ways in my life. And while my work isn't exactly life-endangering, I do find myself surrounded and sometimes overcome by challenges there, facing "giants" in a more metaphorical sense. So I'm starting to see the Psalms in a different way as a result of this study, and I'm getting excited about getting to know them better and working to express my own responses to God in light of the Psalms. It will be an ongoing adventure.....