As the title indicates, I am late on Prayer–blogging about it, anyways. We are reading Phil Yancey’s book on Prayer, in addition to a book written by the founder of this mission agency. Thus, since it’s on everyones’ minds, and everyone seems to have blogged about it, I might as well hop on the bandwagon.
I didn’t like Yancey’s book at first, because he didn’t answer any questions. It is written in a stream-of-conscious manner, in my opinion. Essentially, he asks questions about prayer, tells stories on the subject at hand, etc. There is no substantial instruction or teaching, so at first i didn’t think there was anything to gain from the book. It only asks questions. But what has been my reason for disliking the book has become my reason to enjoy it.
Since we’ve been reading these two books on prayer, I can tell you that at the very elementary level, prayer is communication with God. It’s that simple. But as you start asking questions about how that communication works, how to communicate, how to listen in addition to just ask, things get a bit more complex. The first thing written in the book is a discourse between Einstein and a PhD student trying to come up with an idea for his dissertation. He asks Einstein what he should research, to which the former rejoins: “Prayer! Find out about prayer. Someone must find out about prayer.”
What I am finding, though, is that prayer is structured on words. When I pray, I present my strife and requests to God through words. I don’t burn an animal, nor do I draw pictures. From what I am beginning to understand, the same is true when God speaks to us.
As D.A. Carson astutely explains in his lecture “The Revealed Word,” God’s words are not the only locus of God’s revelation. I realize revelation and prayer are not synonymous, but in a certain sense, I think God’s revelation is very much what answering prayer is. Think about Moses. God revealed his word to Moses through a burning bush–not just words.
But the next point in Carson’s lecture is that God’s words are crucial to every locus of God’s revelation. That means that these different means of God’s disclosure always come with words. To refer back to the burning bush allusion, the bush “would just have been an intellectual curiosity to Moses. It became a revelation when God’s voice–his words–were heard,” as Carson put it. Thus in learning more about prayer, I am learning the importance of words, and of course, the Word as the ultimate record of God’s use of words.
I still have many questions about prayer. What I earlier mentioned as the thing which I love and hate about this book is that it only puts questions in my head. But it’s interesting to me, as I am presented with these different questions without any direct answers, my prayer life is expanding. I am growing in the “how” aspect of prayer: how exactly am I to pray? So I have all these questions about prayer going through my mind. What do I do to find answers to them? I pray.
