Problem solving takes five steps: (1) general orientation; (2) problem definition; (3) generation of alternatives; (4) decision making; (5) verification.
D’Zurilla and Goldfried1
THE STEPS OF PRAYER
First, decide what you really want.
Second, decide whether the thing you
want is a Christian thing.
Third, write it down.
Fourth, still the mind.
Fifth, talk with God about it.
Sixth, promise God what you will do to
make this prayer come true.
Seventh, do everything loving that comes
to your mind about it.
Eighth, thank God for answering in his
own way.
Ninth, release the whole prayer from
your conscious thinking. E. Stanley Jones
I am not gifted, but I can plod.
William Carey
Writer Derek Price reports that in the 1920s, practically every piece of research equipment in British physics laboratories was stuck together with red Bank of England sealing wax. The wax was the best cement then available for holding a vacuum. Researchers depended on the wax for almost all their experiments. In a sense, progress in physics depended on a substance developed for businessmen’s correspondence not scientific experimentation; this red gooey wax determined what the finest minds in the golden age of physics could discover about their science.2
Prayer benefits from technique in a similar manner. The postures, memory aids, spurs, and other tools we use, like the red Bank of England sealing wax, can make the difference between what is possible in prayer and what is not. They can lead to a greatly enriched and deepened prayer life, even though they themselves are peripheral to it.
Unfortunately, each person’s prayer life is so unique that no set of techniques works for everyone. Warren Wiersbe, Bible teacher with Back to the Bible radio broadcasts, said, “In talking to pastors and other leaders over the years, I’ve always tried to stress that everyone is led by God to prayer in a little different way. In fact, it often seems one person’s approach may even contradict another person’s approach.”
We must develop our own techniques to fit the nature of our struggles and strengths. We must experiment.
Isolating the Problem
Christian leaders face different challenges. But despite the specialized circumstances, Christian leaders attribute their inconsistent prayer lives to four basic problems:
Not enough time. The most commonly mentioned problem. The root cause may be busyness or inefficiency, but many church leaders admit to their need for a course or two in time management.
Administrative jumble. A second commonly mentioned reason is the diversity of tasks the Christian leader must perform. Being pulled in several different directions at once can fragment concentration, making it difficult to center on God. Carl Lundquist, president of the Christian College Coalition, put it this way:
“The unpredictable daily schedule of a busy administrator has been my greatest single hurdle to regular formal prayer. Early breakfast meetings and late-night meetings have been devastating. When my family was young, I sought to overcome this by having an earlier dinner hour so we could have a leisurely time for prayer before evening activities. In more recent years, since the children are gone, my wife and I have practiced early morning prayer before we move into the day. But administrative tangle is still a problem.”
Inconsistency. This problem is variously described as a lack of discipline, weakness of the flesh, or inconsistency. Jacques Ellul identifies it by saying “the first aspect of the combative nature of prayer is that we are combating ourselves. Through prayer man avoids anguish and the divided self, but to pray is the last action he can think to take to come out of his own tragedy and destruction.”3 Paradoxically, prayer is the answer to weakness of the flesh, but that very weakness keeps us from consistent prayer.
One pastor said, “It’s so easy to shortchange my prayer life. I’ll go to bed one night and suddenly wake up with a deep sense of guilt, and I’ll realize I haven’t been praying. I feel tense until I start to pray. I’m glad God does that to me, but it makes me realize how weak I am in the face of Satan’s attempts to get me to stop praying.”
Keeping freshness in prayer. Many leaders said they fell into ruts, patterns of prayer that over time became dishonest. “I think I should be praying for certain things, so I do. But my heart is in a different place, and the content of my prayers doesn’t match where I am in life.”
C. S. Lewis said in Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer: “It is no use to ask God with facetious earnestness for A when our whole mind is in reality filled with the desire for B. We must say before him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.”4
You likely can identify with one or more of these problems. Your situation is more specialized, perhaps, but if you were to write out in one sentence why you have difficulty praying, the reason would probably fall into one of these categories.
Once you have identified your particular problem, what’s the solution? You are probably willing to experiment with different ways of solving the problem. That’s an important step: having the freedom to experiment.
It’s not unlike the experimentation one goes through in adjusting to a mate. Over the years, my wife and I have discovered we complement one another in many ways. She is practical and detail oriented; I am idealistic and look for the bigger patterns. I like to teach; she would rather administrate. She’s good with money; I buy unneeded gadgets. These differences need not lead to incompatibility; if seen as advantages, they make for a good marriage. Judy and I, however, often clashed over them early in our marriage.
We learned to perform relational experiments to turn the clashes into efficient divisions of responsibility. For example, early in our marriage, I handled the money, a responsibility I dealt with by not paying much attention to it. I didn’t shop for the best values; I didn’t search out the best interest rates; I didn’t stop to think whether I should eat out for lunch or settle for a sandwich at home. (The problem was heightened by the fact that Judy was earning the money while I went to school.)
My lack of attention did not create knock-down, drag-out fights, but Judy could not understand my disinterest in matters financial. She realized we weren’t on the poor-house doorstep, but she also knew we weren’t being the best stewards of what God was giving us.
For a long time, we didn’t do anything about it. It seemed quite normal and right to us for me to handle the bankbook.
We didn’t change until Judy decided to buy a house. I didn’t want a house, mainly because of the bother of it all. Judy wanted a house because it was a good investment for our future. After several months of disagreement, I said in exasperation, “If you want a house, you buy it.” So she did—and in the process, took over responsibility for our money. And it has worked out very well.
We talk frequently about overall financial goals and decide together what they should be. Then Judy does the rest. Both of us feel better. I feel relieved of a burdensome responsibility. Judy has thrived with it because she, with her careful approach to detail, does not consider it a burden.
A similar reluctance to change is often at the core of frustrated prayer lives. Our prayer lives aren’t that bad. We pray enough to get by and satisfy ourselves further by noticing no one else seems to do so well at it either. But in our most honest moments, we realize the relationship isn’t all it could be. We know we aren’t on the doorstep of hell, but this nagging guilt is keeping us on the defensive. This lack is in the one spiritual area that infects all the others.
Often we don’t deal with it because we’re not sure what to do. We have advanced beyond just giving thanks before meals and using a four-step formula for bedtime prayers. But most of us, upon careful reflection, would probably find that we are more bound up in limited technique and idealized prayer roles than we realize. The role models of prayer we had as young people and the corporate prayer our denominational traditions set forth influence us greatly. For me, it was whether or not to vocalize an “Amen” or “Yes, Lord” while someone else was praying, a practice I have come to enjoy and appreciate as a community-building exercise during public prayer. For you, it may be something else: a particular form of addressing God, a particular way of closing prayer, a list of behaviors permissible during prayer time. Some of these guidelines may be theologically motivated, but most are strictly cultural (like the man handling the household money) and can easily be modified or changed if it adds to the effectiveness and vitality of prayer.
Like the marriage relationship, our relationship with God needs constant care. Prayer is the communication vehicle through which our relationship with God develops. God is open to different ways of coming to him in prayer. Since our bond with God is strong enough to stand some experimentation, why not try some different approaches? It’s likely some simple changes will, first of all, relieve boredom. More important, they might spur further growth and help us build on our personality strengths instead of accentuating the weaknesses. It has been said that “Prayer is to religion what original research is to science.” In praying and exploring different ways to pray, we are doing the original research that will eventually contribute to spiritual maturity.
One caution is in order. When trying to fix something, such as prayer, we don’t want to do more harm than good in the process. I recently heard about an action by the State Unemployment Office in Oregon. They went to a computerized system to produce checks for the unemployed residents. In seeking to more efficiently distribute money, however, they laid off two hundred workers, thereby contributing to the very problem they were trying to solve.
Any similar adjustments we make in our life of prayer should be done with the realization that our problem probably is not that extreme and that minor tinkering rather than major rebuilding is what we need.
Techniques to Combat the Problems
What are the possible solutions to each of the major problems of prayer? As we have seen, much depends on individual temperament. Some, for example, are inspired by reading of lifestyle praying, such as Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence of God.5 Some want to know how to structure that early morning hour to make maximum use of their devotional time. Others call God to mind for ten-minute stretches throughout the day.
Following are ideas and techniques gleaned from church leaders in each of the four major problem areas. The ideas are meant as shopping lists rather than prescriptions. They are listed as idea sparkers—you must translate each to see if it fits your particular life circumstance, if it needs some modification to fit, or for some reason does not fit at all.
Lack of Time
Fitting prayer into a schedule already overcrowded with the organizational demands of ministry is difficult. Several simple efficiency hints can help.
Many revolve around scheduling prayer as a regular appointment. Logan Sparling, pastor of Christian Life Fellowship, Greentown, Indiana, said: “As a pastor I depend heavily on my appointment book. Each appointment is carefully entered and diligently kept. One day while feeling guilty of my own prayerlessness, I concluded that I did not spend time with God because I didn’t consider it as important as the other appointments in my book. I decided prayer needed to be scheduled on a daily basis. I began to enter those appointments in my book. After several weeks of diligently following my plan, my prayer life became a joy. My divine appointment is the most important one I have each day.”
Fred T. Hall, pastor of Central Christian Church, Sherman, Texas, uses a daily reminder sheet to keep him on schedule: “It’s headed with the title ‘Things I Must Do Today’ followed by the date and fourteen numbered lines. The first item I enter each day is prayer. I try to do the things on top of the list first.”
One of the added values of such scheduling is that of record keeping. Because the appointment with prayer is written down, it is easy to see if the appointment was kept. Positive or negative trends in prayer time can be accurately gauged. Psychologists call such practices “self-monitoring.” Counselors who use this approach with patients discuss the importance of accurate record keeping.6
Benjamin Franklin kept a little moral account book where he daily recorded his ethical successes and failures. The book was essential to his scheme, for it not only enforced daily self-examination and thus daily renewal of his efforts, but it also measured growth just like an accountant records credits and debits. Franklin carried the book with him all his life.7
There are other ways to fit prayer into an extremely busy schedule. Roger Janke, pastor of Our Father’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, Greenfield, Wisconsin, said that once he realized you can pray with your eyes open as well as shut, there were many additional times he could pray in the midst of his schedule: standing in line for the cash register, riding the bus, waiting for someone else’s tardy arrival, while doing dishes.
Another pastor, Robert Bundy of Northwoods United Methodist Church, Jacksonville, North Carolina, said his most effective prayer time was while driving. He described his prayers as bullet prayers lifted quickly to God for action on others’ behalf.
Dave Zehring, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church, Mesa, Arizona, uses stoplights as times to pray. He gains an additional benefit—he used to be frustrated at being slowed down by stoplights. Now they are positive motivation to pray.
Vic Pentz, a pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Yakima, Washington, prays while watching the television news. “While watching the news, an inevitable feeling of helplessness about the human needs depicted on the screen causes me to pray silently for them. It’s a way of lifting up the problems of the world to the Lord when I probably wouldn’t take the time otherwise.”
Another way to fight the demon of busyness is to recognize that even within the busy times of ministry, prayer opportunities arise. Lowell C. Strumpfer, pastor of First Alliance Church, Lakewood, Colorado, finds some of his deepest times of prayer during sermon preparation. “The urge to fall before God in the midst of reading or studying the Scripture is the one exercise in prayer that has stood out above all others for me in my thirty-five years of pastoral ministry.”
Administrative Jumble
Lack of time is not always the problem for Christian leaders. Sometimes it’s the confusing diversity of tasks they must perform. Most leaders do not have a consistent schedule from week to week, and the confusing array of tasks can inhibit consistent prayer. Even Jesus was plagued with this problem. Different interest groups constantly besieged him: the sick wanted healing, the questioning wanted counsel, the opposition wanted incriminating statements, his immediate aides wanted policy decisions. His way of coping? To frequently withdraw to a quiet place.
Today’s Christian leaders often do the same. Chilton Knudsen, pastor of St. Benedict’s Episcopal Church in Bolingbrook, Illinois, spends one day each month at a nearby retreat center. She tries to clear her mind of problems and refocus on the broad goals of her church’s ministry.
Lynn Scovil, pastor of Plymouth Church, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, retreats one day a week to the local library where he doesn’t check out books but takes time for quietness before God.
Retreat isn’t always possible. Many Christian leaders have developed ways to carve out time in the midst of being pulled six different directions at once. Several said they use a verbal cue of some kind to facilitate the switch. R. Stewart Wood of St. John’s Episcopal Church, Memphis, Tennessee, pairs his prayer with a mental stimulus of praise that is a cue to begin: “Closer are you than breathing, nearer than hands or feet.” Stewart notes that this helps him be still and simply listen for God and acknowledge his presence.
Martin Luther in his famous note to his barber, Peter Beskendorf, on how to pray, tells a similar story of something he used to initiate his prayer time. “I take my little Psalter, flee to my room, or, if it is during the day and there is an occasion to do so, join the people in the church, and begin to repeat to myself the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and if I have time, some sayings of Christ or verses from Paul and the Psalms. This I do in all respect as children do.”8
Some harried church leaders use the jumble of their ministerial atmosphere to good advantage. They wed the tasks of ministry to their prayer life. Perhaps the most overarching approach to this kind of prayer was one developed by Harold Ockenga, long-time pastor of Park Street Church in Boston. At one point in his life, Ockenga was commuting almost weekly from Boston to Pasadena, California, in his dual role of pastor at Park Street and president of Fuller Theological Seminary. “I’ve always been very busy, but I feel there is a secret. My secret was administration by prayer. For forty-one years I have kept everything on a detailed prayer list:
• I kept problems on there—when I went over it daily I was reminded by the Lord if I hadn’t done anything about them. Problems with my family, with our evangelistic outreach at the church, with the faculty at Fuller, everything went on the list.
• I kept a list of people I disagreed with on my prayer list so I could pray for them, asking the Lord to change the situation between us. Many times the Lord forced me to either mellow my position or seek rapprochement in some way.
• Of course, I also kept special requests on my list.
“When any of these prayers were answered, I would just write answered across the notation and then I wouldn’t look at that entry again.
“Keeping this list kept me alert to my responsibilities, the chief one being my need to bring everything to God in prayer.”
Dan Cole, pastor of Rio Grande Baptist Church, Terre Haute, Indiana, uses the occasion of praying for people to also write a note of encouragement to them. This strengthens his prayer life and establishes a written relationship with them through the notes.
Richard Foster, author of Celebration of Discipline, learned to pray in church committee meetings when he was a pastor: “One of the things I quickly learned was silence. I didn’t always have to speak and didn’t always have to control the meetings. I took the opportunity to silently pray for people as I watched them interact. It was exciting for me to see some of their heaviness lifted as the meeting progressed.”
Pastor Arthur Maendl said he infused his prayer into his gardening chores: “I have found no better place to pray than when I’m mowing the grass. The noise from the mower drowns out all other sounds, and no one ever bothers you when you’re mowing the lawn.”
Inconsistency
Weakness of the flesh attacks all of us. And as Paul notes in Romans 8, there is no way to overcome our lower natures but the power of the Holy Spirit. Utilizing the Comforter’s power can be helped by three common techniques.
First, accountability. Many Christian leaders make themselves accountable to others for regular prayer. Sherm Williams, former pastor of Fremont Community Church in Fremont, California, developed what he called a prayer support team made up of members of his church. He asked one person to be responsible for each day of the month. At a weekly meeting, the seven men responsible for that week would meet with Williams at breakfast. Sherm would give each a three-by-five card outlining his schedule for the day of the week assigned to them: “I not only listed my schedule, but I would list a personal need and a ministry need that I felt I needed prayer support for. The men would also give me a three-by-five card with their schedules and their needs listed. Sometime during the day we would pray for the day’s partner.
“The results were meaningful. Often my prayer partner for the day would be just the person I needed prayer from; or it would be a day when they needed the particular prayers of their pastor. The group also became the prayer base of the church and heightened the entire church’s awareness of the fundamental necessity of prayer. My wife had a parallel accountability group of women, which gave her an important prayer support base also.”
Chester E. Larson, a district superintendent for the Evangelical Covenant Church, phones one layman each day of the month as a prayer partner for that day.
Thomas Kinnan, pastor of Fairlawn Heights Wesleyan Church in Topeka, Kansas, has a designated person call him at a time he has set aside for prayer. He then must face this individual as well as the Lord about whether indeed he is praying or not. Kinnan does this on a limited basis—when he feels his prayer discipline is getting weak.
Jane Feerer of Grace Episcopal Church, Waverly, New York, and Christ Episcopal Church, Roseburg, New York, has covenanted to meet twice a day with two separate groups of parishioners. One meets at 6:30 a.m. and they walk two or three miles. Another meets at 5 p.m. and they go through the Episcopal service of evening prayer: “Meeting with others keeps my prayer life consistent and keeps me honest.” Edward Lyman, priest of St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Friendsville, Pennsylvania, has a group of close friends and parishioners that meets weekly at the rectory to offer prayers, sing hymns, and give praise to God. “Praying together with others at a set time insures taking out the time from a busy schedule because others as well as yourself depend upon it.”
What all these leaders are doing is establishing a contract between two or more people that has prayer as its required fulfillment. Some of these arrangements are simply understood. Others are formalized with a written covenant to pray for one another. For many, writing out the words of the exact agreement is helpful. We live in an age when that kind of written agreement is increasingly accepted. Prayer contracts can be very simple covenants—”I will pray for you” or “I will pray at such and such a time”—or they can outline more specific prayer guidelines. Much depends on the purpose of the contract and the level of help desired.9
Weakness of the flesh can also be attacked by providing positive and negative reinforcements for prayer. One pastor, Scott Meacham of Valley Baptist Church in El Cajon, California, wrote that he set aside each morning for prayer and “would not eat a meal of physical food until I first have some spiritual food and prayer time. Food really motivates me personally so I make sure I get my prayer in every morning through this means.”
Weakness of the flesh can also be combated by turning prayer into a physical act. The advantages of physical exercise are obvious and currently popular. Many Christian leaders talked about praying while jogging, swimming, walking, or riding bicycles.
Other physical aids are also useful. One frequently mentioned was the prayer journal. Daniel Berger, pastor of First Baptist Church, Fessendon, North Dakota, said, “I date each entry in my journal, then write out at least a part of my prayer. I find this keeps me going to the Lord daily because the empty pages look like blots. It’s a way to keep me reliant on God’s grace to change myself.” Richard Jessup, principal of Mountlake Christian School, Everett, Washington, also writes out his prayers: “It’s clear to me that there’s a tremendous value in this when I think that Augustine, Thomas à Kempis, Peter Marshall, and a host of other well-known spiritual leaders have done the same.”
Some pastors have a bit more formal method, combining Bible study with journal keeping. Calvin Elifson, pastor of Highland Hills (Illinois) Bible Church, reads a passage from the Bible, identifies a thought that impressed him from that passage, and writes it in a Bible reading record developed by the Navigators. Then he prays. “If I miss a day of Bible reading and prayer I see it in my record and am reminded to be more consistent.”
The most frequent form of physical exercise mentioned in the Bible is fasting. R. A. Torrey, in his book How to Pray, says: “If we want to pray with power, we should pray with fasting. This, of course, does not mean we should fast every time we pray, but there are times in emergency or special crisis when men of earnestness will withdraw themselves even from the gratification of natural appetite that they may give themselves up totally to prayer.”10
Fasting is not as popular today as it was in biblical times. In a society where proper nutrition has become almost a god, no nutrition, even for a short period of time, seems almost a blasphemy. Of course, the body can easily go without food for days without any adverse affects.
It is true that fasting is not commanded in the Bible, but many men in the Bible, including Jesus, fasted and gained spiritual benefit. Fasting is frequently mentioned in conjunction with prayer, especially prayer at times of special withdrawal and spiritual retreat. It should be considered a valid, even desirable option for accentuating the spiritual experience of prayer.
There are many other physical ways of focusing attention during prayer. Robert Brown, pastor of Round Lake Baptist Church, Gladwin, Michigan, says he prays out loud because it keeps his mind from wandering. John Vertefeuille, pastor of Church at Lakewood, Tacoma, Washington, prays while standing up and walking around: “I have my prayer items written on three-by-five cards, and I flip through them as I’m walking. I haven’t fallen asleep even once doing this.” Robert Munger, associate pastor of Menlo Park (California) Presbyterian Church, also paces while he prays. “I talk with God using this body language to express my petition. It not only keeps me awake and alert but reinforces the fact that I am talking to a living God who is present, powerful, and listening.”
The obvious goal of all these practices is to associate prayer with something positive or something beneficial to help overcome the lethargy that can strike us all.
Keeping the Content Fresh
For some, knowing what to pray about for a long period of time is the biggest hurdle. We can’t pray about everything, but it is very helpful to have some plan of attack regarding content.
The most common way of solving the content problem is to keep a prayer list. Steve Brown, pastor of Key Biscayne (Florida) Presbyterian Church, has kept a prayer list for the past fourteen years. Its major elements are family concerns, prayer needs of church officers and staff, and a list of ministry associates he feels a special closeness to. One section of the list is a bit unique, however, and illustrates some important principles he uses in deciding what goes on his list: “I call it my hit list. On it are people that I am out of sorts with for one reason or another, and I just can’t think of any other way to deal with them except pray.
“For example, several years ago a pastor here in Miami was doing very well, and I found myself jealous. For me, that was a perplexing problem. Ordinarily when I have a problem with someone, I go and talk it out with that person. But the sin of ecclesiastical jealousy is awful—it would kill me to admit that sin publicly. So I put that pastor on my hit list. After praying about it for weeks, I was able to go to that pastor and say, ‘I want you to know what’s been going through my mind. You don’t have to respond to it, but I just want to confess it to you.’ Then we ate lunch and didn’t say anything more about it. And I haven’t had any problem with it since.”
Interpersonal problems and jealousies will always be with us. As Marshall Shelley demonstrated in his book, Well-Intentioned Dragons, dealing with problem people is a fact of life for local church leaders. And some of the problems don’t disappear easily, if at all. Some are so persistent and reconciliation proof that there is nothing to do but give them up to God. Steve Brown has found prayer to be a key in these situations:
“I guess the hit list is my way of saying, ‘God, I’ve done my best with this situation and haven’t resolved it; please help me.’ It’s been good to see the way God has honored the list. As I pray for people they gradually get removed from it—I honestly believe that the only way most people get off the list is because I prayed for them. It’s not a long list, usually, never more than ten or fifteen names. Right now I’m in the eye of the hurricane because there’s nobody on it. No one ever knows if they’re on it or not, of course. A couple of times I have announced from the pulpit that I have removed another name from my hit list, and the congregation has applauded. But I rarely do that because I don’t want people wondering whether they’re on my hit list or not. I really want it just to be a way for me to hold up special interpersonal problems before God and get his help with them.”
There are many other creative ways of using a prayer list. John Barr, pastor of First Church of God (Anderson), Neodesha, Kansas, divides his prayer list into two sections. First, he keeps those things that he wants to pray for every day. In section two he divides it into six different areas, each representing a different day of the week. Each day lists a topic for the day: non-Christians, Christians within the church, fellow ministers, family members, etc.
Larry Troxel, pastor of Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Quincy, Illinois, divides his membership list into seven sections, praying for one section each day. Larry Pillow, pastor of Second Baptist Church, Conway, Arizona, places one fruit of the spirit under each day of the week and asks God to make that one fruit a reality in his life for that particular day.
There are, of course, more formal divisions and prayers one can use. Paul Moser, rector of Emanuel Episcopal Church in Bel Air, Maryland, uses the daily morning and evening prayer published in the Book of Common Prayer as the content of his devotions. He and his wife pray through them together: “Since we have four children, seven to seventeen years of age, we found that the church building is the best place for the two of us together. We open the church at 7:30 a.m. with Morning Prayer and close it at night with Evening Prayer. This does many things for us. It gives us a sense of shared ministry about the church and also lets us listen to one another in our prayer time.”
Another church leader organizes his prayer time according to subject in morning and evening. In the morning he focuses on God and his guidance and praise for his family. At midday he focuses on thanksgiving and requests that he keeps on four-by-six cards in his Bible. In the evening he and his wife pray for Christian organizations with which they are involved. Other pastors divide prayer time into sections of so many minutes each, concentrated on a particular subject such as praise, thanksgiving, confession, petition.
Another pastor, Edward Schuit, an area representative for Africa Inland Mission in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, combines his prayer time with junk mail. “Like many Christians homes, we receive many appeals for financial aid. Obviously we cannot respond financially to all of these, so we use each mailing as a prayer request. They are piled beside our breakfast table. A typical morning will find us praying for Columbia Bible College, Jews for Jesus, Greater Europe Mission, and missionary Mary Smith. We feel it’s a real ministry.”
During the week, Steve Moldenhauer walks around his sanctuary praying aloud for people who usually sit in particular pews. “I look at a particular seat and remember the person who sits there. Then I walk behind the pulpit as I pray and ask for special blessing on the message. Sometimes I pick up a hymnal and read some titles or verses to jog my memory in other areas of need. This has become a special time in my ministry.”
Selecting the Alternatives
Obviously, there is no shortage of techniques. Indeed, we are more often paralyzed by having to choose one idea out of so many many options. We’re reminded of Moses standing on the banks of the Red Sea as the Egyptian army was bearing down on him. Moses was sure God would do something and told the whining Israelites so. Yet as Moses stood confidently on the banks the soldiers drew closer and closer. Finally, God found it necessary to tell Moses to get moving: “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on. Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water” (Exod. 14:15, 16).
The time comes when we must quit ruminating over what to do and act. What factors need consideration?
If a counselor were helping you, he or she would probably start by thinking, This is such and such a type of patient, who needs this particular kind of therapist, using that method of treatment, thus yielding the best outcome. This is called a prescriptive view of counseling. It operates on the assumption that most treatments can not be classified as “good” or “bad” in any final sense. Instead it holds that different treatments and therapists may be appropriate for some patients but not for others.11
A similar dynamic works for prayer. Three variables need to be considered in selecting a prayer style:
Content. The appropriateness of the content of prayer is determined by its compatability with scriptural truth. If it is not filled with Christian content, it won’t work for Christian prayer.
Personality. H. B. London, a Nazarene pastor in Salem, Oregon, said, “I never understood the attitude of pastors who get together and pray. Almost automatically the whole personality of the group changes, and they begin to groan, ‘Oh God, help us poor miserable sinners.’ I’m not trying to be the least bit irreverent, and I’m not arguing against my need for help and my sinfulness, but the worm-such-as-I attitude just doesn’t fit my personality. My personality is more joyful, and when I’m on my knees I can say with confidence, ‘Oh God, help me.’ It seems to me that one’s prayer life and prayer practice should fit his or her personality; that’s what I strive for in mine.”
Method. The method needs to be one that will make it useful for the one praying. Trying to read a Bible in German, for example, is not useful content to one who doesn’t know German. Singing hymns, for another example, is not useful to one who dislikes singing.
The method must solve the particular problem you have with prayer. If inconsistency is the problem, and you are a person who relates well to friends helping you, a prayer partner may be the answer. Doc Kirk noted that he welcomes accountability: “Many times I have called up someone and said ‘I would just like you to check up on me in my prayer life. Please ask me, whenever you see me, how it’s going or give me a call if we don’t see each other very often.’ It just takes five minutes and it’s very helpful to keep you on track.”
On the other hand, you may not relate well to someone checking up on you—or such a person may not be available. For you, a specific length of time in prayer may be a stimulating goal. The method should be chosen based on what you feel comfortable with and what you will chafe at the least.
Choosing the right method may be almost instinctive. You seem to know what you can handle and what you can’t. Choosing might be similar, perhaps, to the function the human brain plays in choosing what we eat. Richard Wertman in an article in The Technology Review noted that the human body produces chemical messengers (called serotonins) that tell the brain what the body doesn’t need. For example, the brain may say that the body is well stocked in carbohydrates and doesn’t need to choose those kinds of food anymore. A person’s appetite reflects the message.12
Similarly, a person’s “comfort level” with a certain style of prayer may be a pretty reliable indicator from the Holy Spirit about what style to use. The danger of adopting the “if it feels good, do it” mentality must be counterbalanced by the first consideration that the technique being considered is scriptural.
It’s likely that a significant amount of experimentation may be necessary. But don’t lose patience if some of the things you try don’t work. Some good advice about prayer experimentation might be “Do something quickly, but don’t be in a rush as you do it.”
Verification
The final step in solving the prayer problem is to make sure it’s working. The criteria are not hourly standards set by someone else but the sense of increased faithfulness in your own spiritual life. If faith isn’t growing, prayer isn’t working.
Marti Ensign, an associate pastor at the Free Methodist Church in Seattle, Washington, frequently reevaluates her prayer style: “On a regular basis I check up on my prayer life. If it’s not an effective force in my life, I don’t hesitate to change and use different methods to get in contact with God. I don’t want to get stuck on one style just because somebody told me it works. My needs may change. A prayer list may have worked for me five years ago, but now it doesn’t, so I try something else. Over the past few years, I’ve used hymns, I’ve tried different physical postures, and I’ve tried long periods of solitude and silence. After reading some books on spirituality recently, my life went into a more meditative pattern for awhile. I’ve also done a lot with prayer groups—right now I’m involved with two. There are a lot of different ways to communicate with God, and I’m one who needs variety.”
Ensign’s comments on variety point to a larger truth about the prayer experience. Knowing God is a total experience that calls every facet of our personalities into relationship. We don’t know him in just one way. Thus, it’s unthinkable that we can gain maximum fellowship by just using one method of prayer.
I’ve probably driven by Madison, Wisconsin, fifty times. It’s halfway between my parents’ home in St. Paul, Minnesota, and my current residence in Wheaton, Illinois, so we frequently stop there for a meal. In our traveling rush, we have never gone to downtown Madison, several miles from the freeway; we have always chosen a restaurant off the interchange. My impressions of Madison, therefore, are relegated strictly to the commercial tangle by the freeway.
Prayer life can suffer similarly. We can get so wrapped up in doing prayer one specific way that we don’t get a full view of what it can mean to our spiritual lives. One perspective can limit our understanding and ultimately inhibit the faithful growth that needs to take place.
T. J. D’Zurilla and M. R. Goldfried, “Problem Solving and Behaviour Modification,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 78 (1971): 197-226.
Derek Price, “The Unsung Genius: Of Ceiling Wax and String,” Natural History (January 1984): 49-56.
Jacques Ellul, Prayer and Modern Man (New York: The Seabury Press, 1970), 143.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1963), 22.
Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God (Springdale, Pennsylvania: Whitaker House, 1982). Others may be more attracted to the disciplined approach, such as Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises.Ignatius Loyola, Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1970).
Frederick Kanfer, “The Maintenance of Behavior by Self-Generated Stimuli and Reinforcement,” in Jacobs and Sachs, eds. The Psychology of Private Events (New York: Academic Press, 1971).
“Benjamin Franklin and the Way to Virtue,” American Quarterly 30 (Summer 1978): 199-223.
Martin Luther, Letters of Spiritual Counsel (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955), 125.
L. Homme, How to Use Contingency Contracting in the Classroom (Champaign, Illinois: Research Press Company, 1969).
R. A. Torrey, How to Pray (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming Revell, 1970).
D. J. Kiesler, “Some Myths of Psychotherapy Research and the Search for a Paradigm,” Psychological Bulletin, 65 (1965): 110-136.
Richard Wertman, “The Ultimate Head Waiter: How the Brain Controls Diet,” The Technology Review (July 1984).
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