Teach us to pray… Luke 11:2 (NIV)
There Is More To Prayer – The Practice Series – Part 3
Go to PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6
In Luke 11, Jesus disciples asked:
“Would you teach us a model prayer that we can pray, just like John did for his disciples?”
Which, when you think about it, is super interesting. Especially this time of year, when many of us are making resolutions to pray more. These guys wanted to know how to get it right.
In the Ancient Hebrew world, Rabbi’s and their disciples had their own prayer. It was part of their identity, and it belonged to the group. That’s why the disciples asked Jesus if he could teach them a prayer, “just like John did for his disciples.”
But of course, he wasn’t teaching them the structure of prayer; he wasn't giving them a set of words to recite… he was inviting them into a deeper connection between God, the world, and themselves.
“Whenever you pray, be sincere and not like the pretenders who love the attention they receive while praying before others in the meetings and on street corners. (Jesus replied) Believe me, they’ve already received in full their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your innermost chamber and be alone with Father God, praying to him in secret. And your Father, who sees all you do, will reward you openly. When you pray, there is no need to repeat empty phrases, praying like those who don’t know God, for they expect God to hear them because of their many words. There is no need to imitate them, since your Father already knows what you need before you ask him” (Matt 6:5-8 TPT).
There is more to prayer than our public words; there is more to prayer than our words being witnessed and heard and applauded. There is more to prayer than our words.
Since most people in Jesus day had houses with only one or two rooms, it was an interesting suggestion to “go into your innermost chamber and pray in secret.”
Perhaps it was an invitation for the disciples to embrace emptiness and solitude, to go into their hearts and interiors. Instead of filling up space with noise, get quiet and alone, and enter into Presence. Allow the presence of God to fill their lives; their inner selves, not just the space around them.
It’s one thing to talk; it's another to listen, it's another thing again to simply ‘BE' in the presence of God. A place where words seem inadequate.
Richard Rohr wrote:
“Western culture has tended to be an extroverted culture and a “can-do” culture. Prayer too easily became an attempt to change God and aggrandize ourselves instead of what it was meant to be – an interior practice to change the one who is praying, which will always happen if we stand calmly before this uncanny and utterly safe Presence, allowing the Divine Gaze to invade and heal our unconscious, the place where 95 percent of our motivations and reactions come from. All we can really do is return the gaze.” (1.)
What is prayer but connection to the Divine? And in turn, connection with what he is connected too.
How can we be present TO and WITH the Divine, and TO and WITH those we love, interact with, and share this beautiful, crazy world with? That’s prayer; awake, aware, and alive to Divine presence in us, around us, and among us.
How can our prayer practice become more than just words we recite and a bed we kneel next to?
Go to This Certain Hope – The Practice Series – Part 4
Written by Liz Milani
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1). Richard Rohr. The Naked Now. Learning to See as the Mystics See. Crossroad publications.
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