"Pray and read your Bible."
This is how to grow in your faith as an Evangelical. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of instruction on how to do either one. After three years of seminary I felt I was fairly capable of reading the Bible; maybe even understanding it a bit.
Prayer, on the other hand, was a struggle. I even took an elective1 in seminary on prayer. Evangelicals typically believe that prayer should be spontaneous, an outpouring of the heart to God. This sounds noble and good, but it places a huge burden on the pray-er2, and even the most creative of pray-ers is likely to settle into some sort of pattern and to repeat certain phrases, or snippets, of prayer. If you attend a service where the same person prays week in and week out, you know, more or less, what they are going to say and how they are going to say it, don’t you?
My personal praying tended to be sporadic for the first twenty years or so of my life as a Christian. I never doubted that I ought to pray, but it always felt dry after a week or two and I would taper off again. I had heard that prayer was supposed to be a conversation, but it felt like a monologue. I never was able to make much progress beyond initial bursts of effort.
Part of my issue is I tend to be fairly succinct in all my conversations, so I would say what I thought I wanted to say fairly quickly. This left me with extra time, since the goal for prayer always seemed to be communicated as x minutes per day.
When I deployed to Iraq, I found myself with time to pray and also with increased motivation—dying suddenly was a real possibility. I knew I should pray, but I also had this feeling that I should probably be conversing with God about more than, "I want to go home, and not in a body bag."
One of the books I had brought with me was John Eldridge's Way of the Wild Heart.3 In it he wrote about writing out a daily prayer and he gave some examples. This seemed like a good idea and I began to experiment with this concept, composing paragraphs of prayer for myself, my soldiers, and my family.
Eldridge also referred to St. Patrick's Breastplate, a prayer attributed to the famous Irish saint which expressed great faith and petitioned for protection from a multitude of evils. This prayer immediately became the center of my new daily prayer routine and remained so for the rest of my time in Iraq.
As I prayed this cobbled together collection of prayers, I noticed something. I started editing my prayers. After a few weeks of praying a prayer I had written, a certain phrase would stick out to me as being selfish, not properly directed, or maybe slightly off theologically. I would change some of the requests, like from being successful to being holy. Some of this was likely the juxtaposition of St. Patrick's prayer with my own meager offerings. Some of it was also me beginning to discover the law of prayer—lex orandi, lex credendi—as we pray, we believe. I realized that by praying the same words repeatedly and not just for the same vague request, I was beginning to see where I was falling short in understanding and practice.
This led to probably the biggest “aha” about prayer I’ve had. Prayer is not about trying to change God, it is about God trying to change me. By going to the Father day after day and speaking to him, he was shaping me.
I maintained the discipline of written prayer even after I came home. When I began moving toward the Anglican Church, I realized I had been carrying around an order of morning and evening prayer with me in the Book of Common Prayer.4 Here was a pattern of daily prayer that included lots of Scripture readings and followed the Church year. How had I never noticed this jewel before?5
For the next seven years, I was a dedicated pray-er of the morning and evening offices. Once my wife was confirmed as an Anglican, we began to pray them together.
As my wife and I started to realize we were becoming Catholic, we transitioned to the Liturgy of the Hours. Our practice was already there, so we just had to pick up a different prayer book and pray as we had been. We've been praying the Liturgy of the Hours together ever since.
Discovering morning and evening prayer was a monumental step of my faith journey. It took praying out of my hands. I was no longer in charge of coming up with the content of my daily prayers. I was now praying the Church's prayer, with and for the Church. I’m still not a very good spontaneous pray-er, though I work at it.
A memorized prayer can be called to mind and meditated upon. The value of this is huge. In the day-to-day it has value, but where it really pays is when life throws a curve. We’re usually too busy trying to figure out what is happening to dedicate much emotional or mental energy to trying to figure out how to address the Creator. Being able to just pray what you know is of great comfort. Consider the Our Father as an ideal example. It’s a written prayer that has brought hope and comfort to millions over the centuries.
Grace & peace,
Chris
That’s right, not a part of the core curriculum. I’m still amazed in retrospect how poor the spiritual formation was. I get it, pragmatically; at a large Evangelical seminary with students from over 40 denominations, how would you even start….but, come on.
For clarity, I’ll use pray-er for the one doing the activity of prayer.
For the record, I do not recommend this book.
For the record, I had the 1979 Episcopal one. Along the way I also got the 1928 and the 1662.
Great writing. I, too, find the Daily Office helpful.