The Starting Point of Prayer

Praying Below the Roof - #2

In my last post, I discussed that we are wired to pray, expected to pray, and commanded to pray. But where do we start in prayer? How do we begin? Many begin by asking God for something. It might concern us personally or it might be a request for someone else. In most cases, it is a legitimate request. However, beginning our prayers by asking God is beginning in the wrong place.

When the disicples asked Jesus to teach them to pray., our Lord gave a pattern for prayer. He said…

"This, then, is how you should pray: 
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 
your kingdom come, 
your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 
Give us today our daily bread. 
And forgive us our debts, 
as we also have forgiven our debtors. 
And lead us not into temptation, 
but deliver us from the evil one."
-- Matthew :9-13 NIV

According to the model prayer, we are, to begin with praise - “hallowed be your name.” The Greek word translated as “hallowed ”in verse 9 is hagiazo, which means “holy.” This means that our prayers should begin by focusing on the “otherness” of God. He is beyond our understanding. He is incomprehensible. We will never be able to comprehend his greatness, his majesty. his power, his mind, his character, or any other thing about him. Yet, he allows us to come into his very presence.

As Moses found out, to do so is to step on holy ground. But we can get so preoccupied with the things of this world that we forget to “take off our sandals,” and we simply rush into his presence. The first focus and starting point of prayer needs to be God himself, “high and lifted up” (Isaiah 6:2). But we are so easily distracted by the “important” things of this world.

In his insightful book, The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis develops a storyline of a series of letters sent from Screwtape, a seasoned devil, to his protege nephew, Wormwood. In one letter, Screwtape gives Wormwood the following advice to sidetrack the “patient” (the man being tempted).

“Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours—and the more "religious" (on those terms) the more securely ours.”

We can easily “make the World an end, and faith a means.” Our contemporary world and our personal situation easily become major distractions from praying properly. The purpose of prayer is communication and communion with God. If our focus is more on our situation and the world than on God, then Satan has succeeded in distracting us. The starting point for our prayers is God himself. This means, first and foremost, coming into his presence with awe. The all-powerful, all-present, all-knowing creator and sustainer of the entire universe allows us to come before him as his beloved adopted children. That should make us fall on our knees and cry out “holy, holy, holy” before we ask him for anything.