Recently, I was visiting the church-planting teams in Germany with Johann Matthies, our Regional Team Leader for Europe and Central Asia. We had a simple agenda with each team: listen to their stories and pray together. As we did this, we were humbled. The centrality of prayer and our complete dependence on God emerged again and again as we listened and prayed.
Our prayer life allows us to process our own story as we enter more fully into God’s great story, inviting his kingdom to come and his will to be done in all its fullness. Eugene Peterson, well known pastor, author, and translator of The Message, says in his book, Tell it Slant, that stories and prayers are the core language of our humanity. He writes, “We say most truly who we are when we tell stories to one another and pray to our Lord.”
Today, our world is soaked with information, but it seems like we don’t hear each other’s stories very often. Even though we have more means to connect, we have become so isolated. We need to take the time more often to simply ask people to tell their stories, and then listen well and long. If we did that, we would be able to discern how our stories intersect with God’s story, and it would lead us to much deeper prayer.
Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).
Good storytelling requires deliberate pauses, just like good conversation, to allow listeners to enter into the story. In the same way, we need to pause at times in our prayers, to listen to God’s voice in the silence. When we express our heartfelt longings to God, and then we listen quietly, God will often nudge us with the whispers of his love and the invitations of his kingdom, through his Word and by his Spirit.
Prayer has so many postures and expressions: worship and thankfulness, intercession for others, declaration and lament, confession and repentance, and listening for the still, small voice of God. There are more, I’m sure. Prayer is at the heart of this kingdom life we are invited to live. And yet, we struggle at times to pray. At least, so it seems for most of us, based on the honest conversations I have had with myself and others around this topic.
I take great encouragement from the Scriptures that are filled with life-giving, raw, lofty, and even dark, expressions of prayer. They guide us and resonate with the full range of our emotional experiences as God’s people. In particular, the Psalms give us courage to pray as boldly and honestly as its authors pray. Each of their prayers is a guide to lead us from the mundane into uncharted territories of authentic intimacy with God.
One trellis of prayer that I have found most helpful over the years is the Lord’s Prayer. It’s a simple prayer that Jesus taught his disciples when they asked him to teach them to pray. This prayer is situated almost in the exact center of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), and it seems to hold this great teaching all together and bring it to life. In his book about the Lord’s Prayer, Fifty-Seven Words that Changed the World, pastor and author, Darrell Johnson, describes it this way: “A mere fifty-seven words in the original Greek of Matthew’s Gospel, it manages to gather up all of life and bring it before God.”
One of the great gifts of this prayer is that it frees us from
the anxiety about whether or not we are praying in a way
that pleases God.
Most mornings, I pray through the specific phrases of the Lord’s prayer. Every phrase causes me to pause and allows the Spirit to remind me of specific people and situations. As I pray, I am grounding my story and the story of others into God’s story.
The Lord’s prayer has been a great help to me. What helps to hold you in prayer?
I am also encouraged as I think about how Jesus prays for us and intercedes on our behalf. In the Book of Hebrews, we are reminded that he delights in doing so (7:25) and, as the ultimate high priest who prays on our behalf and offers himself as our living sacrifice, he gives us full and complete access to the Living God.
As we participate in God’s great mission story—sending, partnering and multiplying—we are completely dependent on God in prayer. Throughout this edition of Witness, you will hear from others who are passionate about prayer and who are learning important lessons about depending on God in prayer. May God lead us to deeper intimacy, peace, and power in our life with God in prayer.
