I just came across these words on prayer from a former professor of mine at Princeton, Dr. Brian Blount. This rings true...
"Prayer is not about getting what we want, or even what we oftentimes are sure is right for us and those around us, prayer is about unleashing the frightening, unstable, uncontrollable power of God. That is, if we pray with the kind of prayer power that Jesus unleashed in Gethsemane, and that he tried to teach his disciples about when they confronted the demon possessing that father's son. As frightening as it is, this is prayer. Accept no substitutes. Kneel down and cry out the real thing?
You gonna pray? Get down on your knees, fall on your face, give up your pretenses, surrender your desire to be in control, and have an honest, open, trusting-God's-will kind of conversation.
Most of us don't like conflict, not with our spouses, not with our co-workers, especially not with someone more powerful than us. So we just hold things in, let then fester, don't have that conversation that we should have that will make us feel better and more than likely change the situation that we're stewing about. Don't let that be the way with God. Sure, it's reasonable, given how powerful God is, to want to avoid conflict with God. But if you're gonna pray, pray. None of this namby-pamby, decently and in order, maybe God answers maybe God doesn't, God answers in God's own good time, God always answers it's just that sometimes God answers no, God doesn't give you what you want but what you need, this frozen-chosen, politically affirming, no hackles raising, cutesy-pie feeling, whispering in the darkness stuff. You gonna pray, you get up in God's face and call God out. You fire prayer out like the metaphysical explosive that it is and you let God take it from there."
--from an address to a luncheon at General Assembly this past year
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3 comments:
this is a tough one Pablo. I'd like to say that I do a good job of this, but mostly my prayers feel feeble, and I don't often see God's power working through them. Even when I do see God's power, I write it off to luck or chance. How have you experienced this in your own life? Sometimes it helps to hear what others have experienced.
Chris, thanks for the comments.
What strikes me about his reflections is not the power aspect, so much, as the exhortation to be honest with God. It seems like much of the time when I pray I just go through the motions, inserting the proper words or phrases, forgetting that I am speaking, communing with the Almighty.
This is the quote that really stood out to me:
"You gonna pray? Get down on your knees, fall on your face, give up your pretenses, surrender your desire to be in control, and have an honest, open, trusting-God's-will kind of conversation."
That's what I want in my prayer life. A relationship with God that is as vital and real as any other in my life. I know this is possible because I have experienced it at times. When I cut the crap and approach God with honesty and vulnerability, the connection is there.
As far as any power in prayer goes, I appreciate that he makes it clear that it comes from God. I really like his final line:
"You fire prayer out like the metaphysical explosive that it is and you let God take it from there."
Ultimately it's God that empowers anything, but it seems to me that in our prayer lives we can at least strive to approach our Creator with integrity and honesty, even if it seems feeble.
I resonate with that.
"a prayer life that just as vital as with anyone I know." I aspire to that.
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