“Prayer cannot truly be taught by principles and seminars and symposiums. It has to be born out of a whole environment of felt need. If I say, “I ought to pray,” I will soon run out of motivation and quit; the flesh is too strong. I have to be driven to pray.” (p49)I found this to be a very provocative quote, especially considering the journey towards deeper prayer that River City is moving into. On one hand, we as leaders clearly owe it to the body to teach, to train, to distill principles and ideas for growing in prayer as a corporate body. On the other hand, it is wise for us to recognize the truth behind this quote. At the end of the day we can offer as many seminars and symposiums as we can think of, yet that will not necessarily create a culture of prayer, dependence, and listening to God.
If the end result of this era is a larger group of people feeling guilted into praying and a notebook of new techniques, Cymbala says we will soon run out of motivation and quit. "The flesh is too strong. I have to be driven to pray." Somehow we need to see an environmental shift - we need to move from a culture of self-sufficiency to a culture of felt need (I like that Cymbala adds 'felt' to the need, because we are all in great need of the grace of God; some of us however don't feel how great our need is for grace).
So here is the question i would like to pose:
When have you found yourself 'driven' to pray? Are there catalysts you have discovered along the way that have moved you from 'ought' to pray to instead be 'driven' to pray?
2 comments:
First of all, thanks to both of you, Daniel and Noella, for sharing your thoughts with us in this blog. I really appreciate the effort to include us and involve us all in this journey. I appreciate both of you and the ways that God works through you among our church family.
If I’m being really honest with myself and with you, I have to admit that your question both excites me and scares me. It excites me because I want to be a person who is totally dependent on God – I want US to be people who are totally dependent on God! It scares me because the times in my life when I have found myself torn from my sense of self-sufficiency, driven to cry out to God in prayer, and completely dependent on Him, have been those seasons of my life when I have experienced pain, loss, failure, heartbreak, loneliness, and betrayal.
It’s so easy for me to not feel my need for God’s grace when I feel fulfilled in my relationships and in my circumstances, when I don’t seem to want for anything physically or emotionally, when life seems pretty good. It is when those things that I put my trust in (relationships, financial security, abilities) ultimately fail to be all that I need (as they inevitably will) that I have found myself broken enough to know my need to “be” with God, to listen to Him, to put all of my trust in Him. When I am in that posture, prayer is the natural overflow of my heart; in fact, it’s the only thing I can do. Even in the midst of the most painful circumstances in my life, I have never felt so much peace or experienced the transformational truth of the Gospel so deeply as in those moments when, in my brokenness, I find myself with nothing left to do but pray.
So, I dare to pray a “dangerous” prayer for myself and also for us as a corporate body: that we would be driven to pray, that our circumstances and our experiences would make it impossible for us to make it through a single day without feeling our brokenness and our need for God’s grace. I thank our Father that I can pray this prayer trusting in His goodness, His protection, and the unimaginable depth of His love for us.
I am thinking about the things that keep me from prayer vs. the things that drive me to prayer... and I guess I can say I really resonate with having that experience of "guilt" over prayer being something that I SHOULD do vs. something that is done for Love's sake, as Noella worded it in an earlier post. So many times I find myself in a small group setting or wherever... essentially saying "pray for me because i really haven't been praying/reading the word/meditating like i know i should."
and something about that kind of prayer request has always struck me oddly... because on one hand... prayer and study are admirable and essential parts of my spiritual life... but on the other hand... the guilt that I feel over NOT doing those things in some ways pushes me further away from doing them at all. I guess my conclusion here is that guilt is a poor motivator... i.e. it's not too often that saying "man, i know i'm really not praying like i should" actually gets me to go and pray more.
A few things that I find do drive me towards prayer... 1) preaching about the character and personality of God... i often find that the best sermons end up driving me to pray more... if I leave church and want to go pray... that's a good service... I think this happens because good teaching, when it hits its mark, presents God as relevant to my today... it presents God as someone who is specifically interested in me, and as someone who likes me and desires me even where I'm at... and these things make me want to spend time with Him... and 2) music fuels prayer in my life. I often find it's easier to pray and not be bored when I'm in worship with music... or when I can be in my car or wherever and sing my prayers to God.
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