WELCOME TO CONVERSATIONS ABOUT PRAYER
Conversation starter week 4:
PRAYER AS CO-OPERATION WITH GOD*
It is not of course necessary to move God to action. But His work, being a work of grace, cannot become completely effective without our co-operation.
God is ceaselessly working for our good. The part of prayer, therefore, is not to beseech God to help us, but to be still before Him so that His work may proceed within us unhindered. We begin to do this when we give our minds to God and take Him into our thoughts as the only Creator and only Power.
Perhaps we are praying for health. We know that it is God our Maker who sustains us in life and health by his loving thoughts. But His thoughts for us can never take full effect unless they are put into complete action by our faith. It is as we meditate on God in simple and thankful trust that He is able to fulfill His will perfectly within us. So having asked for His gift of health (through whatever agent it may come it must come from Him) we continue to think of God, Who forgives all our sins and heals all our diseases. God is always working to overcome evil with good. We think of the power of nature which rushes in to heal a wound or relieve a pain. And we think of the power of Christ to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease and thus to reveal the will and nature of God.
All prayer might be regarded as thus working with God for the accomplishment of His will. Faith which is the sense by which we perceive the invisible, discerns that God is everywhere active for good. By concentrating in our thought on this divine activity, we release it into full power and direct it to any particular need for which it may be required. It is not, of course, our own mental or will power or any ability of our own. Our thoughts only put into effect the mighty power of God.
The Christian faith maintains that the secret of overcoming evil lies in forgiveness as shown and imparted in the life and death of Jesus, of which far-reaching truth the Cross is the symbol. By this power (which we must never forget must be appropriated by faith), God is constantly overcoming evil and turning it into good. To the demonstration of this same redemptive power all Christians are called.
We help to put the Grace of God into effective operation when by faith we realize it in prayer.
*Based on Commonsense about Prayer by Lewis Maclachlan, James Clark & Co. LTD, London.
Conversation starter week 3:
PRAYER AS PETITION
What should we pray for? One answer could be Nothing. Since God knows what is good for us far better than we do, is there anything that we can ask of God that God is not going to give us anyhow? “Your Father knows what things you have need of before you ask Him.” Matt. 6:8.
Christian teaching gives a very definite place to petition. “Ask and it shall be given you.” Matt. 7:7. “If two of you agree on earth, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.” Matt. 18:19. These and many other passages of scripture leave us in no doubt as to the place rightly given to petition in Christian prayer.
One practice is to put our petitions in writing. We need not be unduly discouraged if at first our honest desires on paper look rather shocking. As we confide our desires, God Himself will purify them and bring them in accordance with His own will. After all, prayer is not so much our act as the act of God in us.
One petition which we must never leave out is that which simply asks for God Himself. Whatever our need may be, it is God we need most. So our first request should be for God.
In seeking God and desiring only to hide ourselves in His presence, we do at the same time receive God’s care and protection. When we have made our first petition for God Himself, and have realized by faith God’s holy presence, we naturally go on to ask for the things which we know He is able and willing to give us.
*Based on Commonsense about Prayer by Lewis Maclachlan, pgs.100-105. James Clark & Co. LTD, London. Scriptures from NRSV.
Conversation starter week 2:
PRAYER AS CHANGE OF MIND*
Since prayer is the discipline by which we put aside our own will to accept the will of God, it involves in a radical change of mind. Many people have wrong ideas of God (and therefore of life), which prevent their reception of much good that they could otherwise enjoy. Some believe that God is like a secret police force. Many believe vaguely that they have to save themselves by their own efforts and perhaps by their own sufferings.
Many Christians, who know that Christ suffered, but without appreciating the quality of value of His sufferings, imagine that all suffering has some religious value. Our thoughts make us what we are and largely determine the conditions in which we live. If there is to be any real change in our lives, it must be a change of mind. The New Testament calls for a change of mentality “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” (Romans 12:2)
Mark’s gospel begins with the record of our Lord’s first proclamation in Galilee: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God as come near; repent and believe the good news.” (Mark 1:15).
We receive the mind of Christ in meditative prayer. We lay aside our own mentality, conditioned largely as it is by the community in which we live, and accept the silent and intuitive instruction of divine Spirit. As we do this, continually exposing our minds to the word of God in Holy Scriptures, our beliefs and thoughts undergo a radical change. Old fallacies and prejudices lose their power over us, and we begin know the truth that makes us free.
We cannot have power in prayer so long as we are in bondage to false conceptions of God and of life as God has appointed it for us. Prayer is therefore repentance in the deep sense a change of our whole outlook on life. Our natural thinking must be transformed by grace.
*Based on Commonsense about Prayer by Lewis Maclachlan, pgs.47-49. James Clark & Co. LTD, London. Scripture from NRSV.
Conversation starter week 1:
PRAYER AS CHILDLIKE TRUST*
Two features of the gospel narrative illustrate more clearly than any one text His proclamation of the reign of God as a present reality. One is our Lord’s teaching on prayer, and the other the ministry of healing.
To say that the reign of God is here must mean that the power of God can be effective in all situations in which it is invoked by faith. There are no circumstances in which the pure goodness of God cannot be made immediately available to those who desire it and believe in it. This is exactly what our Lord says in his very remarkable teaching concerning prayer.
The most striking characteristic of the teaching is its complete assurance. It is not qualified by a large number of conditions. There is no failure contemplated. It is taken for granted that God’s power is here and those who want it can have it. “Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive. (Matt. 21:22) “Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. (Mark 11:24)
When the disciples began to practice the faith in which they were instructed by their Master they were indeed astonished by the results; (Luke 10:17) but though they sometimes failed, and thus incurred not the sympathy but rather the rebuke of Jesus, (Matt. 17:17-21) they did learn to do as he did, and after the resurrection the same healing power of Christ was present in the apostolic Church as part of the fulfillment of its divine commission. The power is the natural accompaniment, as convincing proof of the presence of the living Christ in his Church. (Acts 4:10)
Much remains to be learned about prayer. Our failures in prayer are caused by our ignorance in asking and not by God’s unwillingness to give. We never need to wait for God; it God who is waiting for us.
*Based on Commonsense about Prayer by Lewis Maclachlan, pgs.32-35. James Clark & Co. LTD, London. Scriptures from NRSV.