The Practice of Prayer
The Practice of Prayer
The practice of prayer is the most important aspect of my ongoing spiritual development—especially the type of prayer that seeks to know God for the sake of knowing Him.
It’s in this context that one also most fully comes to know oneself. By establishing an intimate relationship with God, we are subconsciously following Socrates’s admonishment to “know thyself.”
John Calvin wrote, “Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.”1
Saint Augustine prayed, “Grant Lord, that I may know myself that I may know Thee.”2
There are many ways of praying, but the kind of prayer I am specifically advocating in this context is contemplative prayer.
The most important methodology in this prayer is to be alone with God.
Talking.
Listening.
Contemplating.
Meditating.
Thinking.
Blaise Pascal wisely wrote, “The sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.”3
“When we spend time alone with God, we become more conscious of His presence and His thoughts and ourselves and our thoughts. We are expanding in the depths of our spirit selves.”
The only way to learn this is to practice. We have to learn how to talk with God and somehow, in a way I cannot fully explain or even understand, listen to God. Not for an audible voice but for that inexplicable awareness that the Spirit of God is communicating into our spirits.
Frequently, people approach me with much frustration and say, “Pastor Terry, I don’t know how to pray.” And I reply, “Well, just say that to God.” They usually look at me rather embarrassed but inquisitively and announce, “God, I don’t know how to pray,” to which I respond, “Congratulations! You just prayed!”
Don’t overcomplicate prayer.
You don’t have to approach God with a certain kind of voice, using these and thous, or having your life perfectly in order. In fact, spending time knowing Him in this manner is the avenue to allow Him to help you straighten out the crooked areas in your life.
“To pray,” Emilie Griffin wrote, “means willing to be naïve.”4
I used to think that I needed to get all my motives straightened out before could pray, really pray. . . .
The truth of the matter is, we all come to prayer with a tangled mass of motives—altruistic and selfish, merciful and hateful, loving and bitter. Frankly, this side of eternity we will never unravel the good from the bad, the pure from the impure. But what I have come to se is that God is big enough to receive us with all our mixture. We do not have to be bright, or pure, or filled with faith, or anything. . . .
We will never have pure enough motives, or be good enough, or know enough in order to pray rightly. We simply must set all these things aside and begin praying. In fact, it is in the very act of prayer itself—the intimate, ongoing interaction with God—that these matters are cared for in due time.5
There’s a difference between knowing about God and knowing Him.
Study is important, but the most important “thing” to study is God. We should study Him through the Bible. Through our relationships. Through nature.
But the most essential way to study God is through our relationship with Him.
How has your practice of prayer informed your study of God? Drop a comment and tell us about it.
John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion 1.1.3, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.pdf
Saint Augustine, Confessions, 10.3.
Blaise Pascal, Pensées, rev. ed., trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (New York: Penguin Putnam, 1995), 37.
Emilie Griffin, as quoted in Richard Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s true Home (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 8.
Foster, Prayer, 8.
Adapted from Live Ten (Thomas Nelson) by Terry A. Smith. All rights reserved.
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