HOW to Pray

But for the rest of our time this morning I want to talk about the HOW of prayer. I want to try to inspire you with practical, Biblical possibilities that you may have never considered, or perhaps tried and then failed to persevere - failed to "be devoted to prayer."

This is my effort to sketch what it means to be devoted to prayer without a narrow my-way-or-the-highway mentality. We are all very different. Our schedules are different. Our families are different. We are in different stages of life with different demands on our days. We are at different levels of spiritual maturity, and no one matures over night. What you may be doing in five years in your devotion to prayer may make you look back and wonder how you survived this season of leanness. But all of us can move forward. Paul loves to write to his churches and say, "You are doing well, but do so more and more" (1 Philippians 1:9; Thessalonians 4:1, 10). And if there is any place where the "do so more and more" applies, it is in our devotion to prayer.

I will put these practical suggestions in five pairs each beginning with a different letter that together spell "F A D E S." There is no significance to the word "fades." That's just what they happened to spell. But if you wanted to force it, you could say without these pairs, devotion to prayer "fades."

F - Free and Formed

I have in mind here the difference between structured and unstructured prayer. Being devoted to prayer will mean that what you say in your times of prayer will often be free and unstructured, and often be formed and structured. If you are only free in your prayers you will probably become shallow and trite. If you are only formed in your prayers, you will probably become mechanical and hollow. Both ways of praying are important. Not either-r, but both-and.

By free I mean you will regularly feel like pouring out your soul to God and you will do it. You will not want any script or guidelines or lists or books. You will have so many needs that they tumble out freely without any preset form. This is good. Without this it is doubtful that we have any true relation with Christ at all. Can you really imagine a marriage or friendship where all the communication read from lists or books, or spoken only in memorized texts. That would be artificial in the extreme.

On the other hand, I plead with you not to think you are so spiritually deep or resourceful or rich or disciplined that you can do without the help of forms. I have in mind four kinds of forms that I hope you all make use of.

Form #1. The Bible. Pray the Bible. Pray Biblical prayers. This week we are building our prayers around the prayer in Ephesians 3:14-19.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith- that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Memorize it and pray it often. Pray the Lord's prayer and as you pray it put each phrase in your own words and apply it to the people you are burdened about. Pray the commands of the Bible: "Help me - help my wife, my children, the elders, our missionaries to love you, O God, with all my heart and all my soul and all my strength." Pray the promises of the Bible: "O Lord, take all the authority that is yours in heaven and on earth and make our missionaries feel the sweetness of the promise that you will be with them to the end of the age." Pray the warnings of the Bible: "Or Lord, grant me to fight against lust with the kind of urgency that you taught when you said, gouge out your eye and got to heaven rather than leave it good and go to hell." Open the Bible in front of you and put one elbow on one side and one on the other and pray every paragraph of into contrition or praise or thanks or petition.

Form #2. Lists. Pray lists. I have in mind lists of people to pray for and lists of needs to pray about. If you can remember all the people and needs you should be praying for without a list, you are God. I must have lists, some in my head and some on paper. I have memorized about 70 people that I pray for by name every day. But that does not include the list of people who came to missions in the manse that Noel and I pray for each night from a written list. It does not include the list of our missionaries that I read from a list. And that's just people, not to mention needs that change in my own soul and in the family and in the church and in the world week by week. So I encourage you to use lists of people and lists of needs. Keep some kind of prayer folder or notebook or files in your handheld computer. Remember I am only talking about the second half of this pair: freedom and form. Don't forget the value of freedom. It is both-and, not either-or.

Form #3. Books. Pray through books like Operation World - a different country, and the cause of Christ in it, every day or two. What a powerful way to get a globe-sized heart and vision of God's supremacy! Pray through a book like Extreme Devotion - a one-page glimpse into the suffering, persecuted church for every day of the year. Take my book, Let the Nations Be Glad, and turn to pages 57-62 and pray through the 36 things that the early church prayed for each other. Take The Valley of Vision, a book of Puritan prayers, and pray what great saints of the past have prayed. We are so foolish to think that left to ourselves we will see all the Bible has to say and all the needs we should pray about without the help of good books.

Form #4. Patterns. Develop patters of prayer that give you some guidance of what do first and second and third when you get down on your knees. One pattern, as I already mentioned, would be to structure your prayers around each of the petitions of the Lord's prayer. A pattern that I use virtually every day is the pattern of concentric circles starting with my own soul - which I feel the sin and needs of most keenly - and moving out to my family, and then the pastoral staff and elders, then all the church staff, then our missionaries, and then general needs in the larger body of Christ and the cause of Christ in missions and culture. Without some form or pattern like this I tend to freeze and go nowhere.

So the first pair is free and formed. Unstructured with free flowing needs and thanks and praise; and structured with helps like the Bible, lists, books and patterns. If you are "devoted to prayer" you will pursue freedom and form in your prayer life.

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