Reading habits are conditioned by three factors: the existence of privacy, the purchase of books by adults, and the presence of at least one adult who reads frequently.
C. S. Medina1
A single day spent in your Temple is better than a thousand anywhere else. I would rather be a doorman of the Temple of my God than live in palaces of wickedness. For Jehovah God is our Light and our Protector. He gives us grace and glory. No good thing will he withhold from those who walk along his paths. Psalm 84:10, 11
Once the decision has been made to pray, the time and place we decide to pray, and the people we associate with, all become crucial.
Carl Hines, a communications engineer for the Santa Fe railroad in Topeka, Kansas, credits some of these physical elements for stimulating his prayer life:
“I grew up in a home with a Christian mother and went to church regularly until I was five or six years old. But Mom got cancer and died when I was nine. Dad was an alcoholic, and we moved around a lot. I was bitter. From that point on, I moved far from the Lord.”
He was searching, however, and when he moved back to Topeka, the need for a spiritual life became unbearable. His marriage had begun to deteriorate—his whole world seemed in danger of collapsing. Then he found Fairlawn Heights Wesleyan Church:
“I’d heard Pastor Ed preach once, and I remembered his name. So when I needed someone to talk to, I thought of him. I drove to the church. I had only visited the church once; I didn’t know who to ask for. But someone there remembered me and called Pastor Ed. He and Pastor Tom came over to talk.
“Right there I made a commitment. It was December 3, 1981—an important date to me. As I look back, not a lot changed right then—and it didn’t help my marriage at that point. My wife and I continued to argue. Over the next two years I was in and out of our house about four times.
“But in May, my wife asked me to come back home. It’s been a little over a year now that we’ve been back together. I can’t say all the problems are gone, but it’s getting better, and I have confidence in the Lord that it will heal all the way.
“One of the constant areas of growth through all this has been my prayer life. I didn’t really know how to pray. I still don’t, I guess, in a final sense, and I pray daily that the Lord will teach me to pray better. Several things have helped. Our pastor, Tom Kinnan, started a prayer program, which has made my prayer life better in a number of ways.
“One, I can talk to Pastor Tom, and he can explain some of the hard questions I have about praying. Two, I have a prayer partner. When things are going bad, I can call George Fultz, and he’ll pray for me right over the phone.
“I also like the prayer vigil. Someone is always praying—we’re trying for round-the-clock coverage. My time is 1:30 to 2 a.m. At 1:30, the person with the shift before mine calls me and prays with me over the phone. Then I pray for a half hour and call the next person. It’s quiet, and it’s easy to be worshipful at that time in the morning. It’s helpful to know that I am one part of that program and that there are others before and after me who are carrying on the vigil of prayer.
“I have other specific places and routines that stimulate me to pray. I pray first thing in the morning while I’m still in bed. I also pray at my desk at lunch hour. My Bible’s in the top drawer of my desk, and I simply open it and read it during lunch.
“There are times when I flat don’t want to pray. I’m tired or I don’t want to get up and do it, but I made this commitment and I say, ‘OK, Lord, I said I’d do this, and I’m going to pray, but I need your help to do it.’ The Lord honors that.
“I don’t want to leave the impression that I’ve got it all together now, but when I look back at the problems I had before and the ones I’ve got now, the ones now are nothing. I’ve seen great things happen through prayer both for me and the church. The church has grown because of the prayer vigil, the prayer chains, and the prayer-partner programs. And I’ve had some great personal answers to prayer.
“The biggest was during the worst part of my marriage. I wasn’t handling things too well. I didn’t want to go to a counselor, but I needed to talk to somebody. So I arranged to see Pastor Tom, but my wife wouldn’t go. I was at work one day, praying about it, and I said, ‘Lord if there’s any way possible, let me and my wife come together for this counseling.’ I knew the minute I prayed that something was going to happen. I’d prayed the same prayer before, but somehow this one was different. Within twenty minutes my wife called and asked if she could come to the counseling, too. The counseling session did not go particularly well, but I was amazed that within twenty minutes, and as hard as it was between us, that she came at all.”
Several factors entered into Carl’s decision to become a praying person. Certainly the time was right. The Spirit of God working within Carl had created a sense of need. His job was in a state of flux, and his marriage was on the ropes. It was a time when he could really learn.
He also came across a body of believers in the process of dedicating themselves to the ministry of prayer. The Fairlawn Heights Wesleyan Church was filled with people talking about prayer and looking for others to join them in their rededication to prayer. By joining this group of people, Carl enhanced his own enthusiasm for it.
Thirdly, the physical places of church, desk, and home as places to pray regularly contributed to Carl’s development as a praying person.
The Teachable Times
Common wisdom tells us we’re more open to learning at certain times than others. Parents learn this quickly. One night I took my son David to the White Sox baseball game and had a great time. The next morning, however, his mother asked him how he liked the ball game. He said, “It was great, except Dad didn’t buy me a second Coke.”
As a parent, I have begun to learn I can react to such complaints in nonproductive or productive ways. It’s nonproductive to get angry or even to be disappointed by such a response. It’s productive to see these moments as teaching opportunities.
I explained to David that the reason that I didn’t buy the second Coke was that little people cannot satisfy their desires in an unlimited manner because they have limited funds. If I were to sit down and try to communicate that lesson at just any time, David would not understand it. When especially thirsty for a Coke, however, he listens carefully. I may not convince him of my argument’s validity—certainly not when a second Coke is involved—but he will remember the argument and, if it makes any sense, someday make it his own.
The same is true of prayer. Prayer can be taught at certain times; other times it cannot. Trying to convince someone that prayer is necessary in an abstract setting is difficult. However, tie the need to crucial decisions, and the lesson sticks.
Is there anything we can do to create times of openness to prayer? Some come only through the circumstances of life and can’t be simulated. Others, though, can be enhanced by placing ourselves in the position of learner about prayer. Or playing the role of prayer counselor to others.
Take, for instance, a study done with twenty chronic smokers who wanted to quit. Each was asked to play the role of a physician trying to counsel a lung-cancer patient to give up smoking. After attempting to articulate the arguments against smoking to someone else (the same arguments they had heard from others for years), the twenty subjects were far more open to changing their own ideas about smoking. They began to believe formerly ineffective arguments.2
Christian leaders find themselves in ideal positions to create times where the prayer habit is a topic of discussion. Rather than feel guilty about counseling others about an area where we might feel weak, we can view such counsel as an actual aid to our own practice.
Gib Martin, pastor of Trinity Church in Burien, Washington, runs a Bible class on Wednesday nights that he calls the Derelict Bible Study: “One of the prerequisites of the course is that we all call ourselves ‘derelict’ in this area. That way there’s no posturing, and we all start out on even footing. Then we teach each other and learn more in the process.”
A second way to stimulate teachable times is to create cues that trigger prayer behavior. For example, we have all been irritated by people who set their digital wrist watches to beep on the hour or half hour. (There’s no better way to fight the irritation than to get a watch of my own—with the loudest beep I can find—and give others a bit of their own medicine.) But “beeps” during our day can be reminders to pray, a call to a short time with God.
We can create in our own lives several of these cues to tell us it is time for prayer. The bells in the old European monastaries rang six times daily as “cues” to prayer. Because of our erratic schedules today, we’ve put the church bells on our wrists. Perhaps there are other cues we could create to further sanctify our time.
Martin Cossins, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Monroe, Michigan, uses the times he awakens in the middle of the night as cues that something needs to be prayed about: “Sometimes someone or some specific need is on my mind and I pray for that. Other times I just use the fact of waking up as a cue to pray.”
Both natural and artificial cues can be used as signals to short times of prayer.
The Place of Prayer
In one sense having a special place to pray is not important. We notice a startling variety of places in Scripture where prayer takes place: in the temple (Acts 3:1); in private rooms (Acts 1:13, 14); at house meetings (Acts 2:42); in prison (Acts 16:25); at the river bank (Acts 16:13); on the waterfront (Acts 20:36); and even by letter (1 Cor. 1:4).
For most people, however, a special place for private prayer is helpful. Henri Nouwen tells about the importance to him of the poustinia. Poustinia is a Russian word that means hermitage.3 Nouwen has applied the concept of hermitage to his everyday living. While teaching at Yale, he lived in an apartment with a huge walk-in closet. Being a priest, he had a limited wardrobe and no need for that much space. He converted it to a prayer closet.
“The simple fact that I’m in the closet means I’m praying,” he says. “I might have a thousand things to think about while I’m in there, but the fact that I’m sitting in this physical place means I’m praying. I force myself to stay there for fifteen minutes. I do my best to center my mind and clear it of distracting thoughts and get down to prayer, but if after fifteen minutes I haven’t been entirely successful, I say, ‘Lord this was my prayer, even all this confusion. Now I’m going back to the world.'”
We do learn to identify places with certain actions. The study of the relationship between a people and their environment is called human ethology. Church consultant Lyle Schaller thinks ethology has much to offer church planning. It can help us understand our attachments to places and enhance our spiritual discipline.4
It may sometimes be helpful to pair prayer with some other activity location. My wife recently bought an exercise bicycle. On the bicycle’s reading stand she puts a Bible and her prayer list. Thus, while doing her daily fifteen or twenty minutes of pedaling, she also reads the Bible and prays through her list. Our spare room has become her poustinia.
Praying Companions
When pastors were asked who their role models had been for their prayer life, they most often mentioned a praying father or mother.
But praying parents cannot be chosen. Not everyone will be so blessed. And for the grown Christian leader, help must be found from among current groups. Perhaps the group with greatest potential is other pastors. Such a group would have been very helpful to Jim Davey, who noted that when he was a young pastor twenty-five years ago in Mansfield, Ohio, he would have profited greatly by having other pastors with whom to pray regularly.
The Christian leader can also be helped vicariously through other people totally absorbed in prayer. Watching people in the congregation grow in their prayer life, for example, can be stimulating.
Thomas Kinnan, whose church helped Carl Hines, has profited much from his church’s involvement in prayer:
“When we started the program two years ago, I told my people my dream for the church was to see them in cloisters praying for one another after every service. My dream was to have them praying for one another over the phone, to have people asking me, ‘Pastor, can you pray for something?’ My dream was to have everyone talking about prayer and praying for one another so much that a critical mass was formed and we would become a praying church in every sense of the word.
“We instituted our programs and within the first five weeks, our average attendance increased by fifty-three people. Further, and I know this will sound strange, but we have great worship services every week. Now I know I don’t preach a great sermon every week. But the people think I do, and I attribute that to prayer. Because we pray for one another, we have drawn together in an atmosphere of mutual encouragement and love. The people pick me up even when I’m not doing my best.”
Fairlawn Heights Wesleyan Church sits about a mile south of the Menninger Clinic on the west edge of Topeka, Kansas. It’s the edge of town that’s growing, absorbing much of Topeka’s white-collar growth. The large A-frame building is lighted by windows set at oblique angles to keep out the hot Kansas sun. But the church is more than a building; it’s an oasis of prayer on the edge of the prairie. Carl Hines was attracted to Fairlawn Heights by the caring, praying attitude of the people.
“Carl came because we are a praying people, and he saw this as a place of prayer. We’ve made a conscious effort to come across like that to people in our community. We initiated P.R.A.Y.E.R. (People Responsive and Yielded Experiencing Results) Program to show our priorities. It’s revitalized the people and the ministries here. Those who commit themselves to prayer are involved in any or all of the six different areas:
Prayer Partners. Two people who commit to pray for and with one another. They also become spiritually accountable to each other.
Prayer Corps. These individuals pray daily for the needs of the church as well as praying nonstop throughout all the services.
Prayer Chain. Emergency needs of people are sent through the network of other people who have committed themselves to pray immediately.
Prayer Vigil. From 8 p.m. Saturday night to 8 a.m. Sunday morning, people have committed themselves to half-hour time slots for prayer.
Prayer and Fasting. Designated meal times for people to isolate themselves in the presence of the Lord for constant, consecrated prayer instead of eating.
Prayer Bulletin. In order to keep the current needs of the church before the people, a weekly prayer bulletin is sent out to everyone committed to prayer. “We believe the more specific the requests the more specific and powerful the prayers will be,” says Kinnan.
“Answers to prayer have been abundant, ranging from spiritual conversions to physical healings to material blessings. We have seen significant, tangible growth in all areas of the church: attendance, new Christians, and financial giving. A new vibrancy, a spirit of expectancy, permeates the services.”
A place to pray and people to pray with are tremendous motivators to consistent, regular prayer. What really happens? People are encouraged and the mysterious adventure of prayer is reaffirmed.
Prayer is an excitement. We’re on holy ground when we pray. There are amazing possibilities in prayer. Through it we can influence the principalities and powers of the universe. One man with God can conquer the world. That’s the kind of adventure that needs to be inserted into prayer, and we can do it only by encouraging and building up one another in the practice.
C. A. D. Medina, “Reading Habits: A Sociological Approach,” America Latina (1976): 70-129.
Nancy Streltzer, “Influence of Emotional Role Play on Smoking Habits and Attitudes,” Psychological Reports (1968): 817-820.
Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Poustinia (Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 1975).
Lyle Schaller, “Human Ethology: The Most Neglected Factor in Church Planning,” Review of Religious Research 17, 1 (1975): 2-14.
Copyright © 1985 by Christianity Today
