The Prayer God Hears

More Than Using Our Lips

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 

—     Matthew 6:2-4

Following the Call—Chap. 27: When You Pray

The essence of prayer. The way of the heart. What is your native soil? Your turn.

Prayer must be an act of affection; it is more than a question of using the lips, for God asks the allegiance of our hearts. If the heart is not in it, if it is only a form, which is carried out more or less correctly, what is it then? Nothing!

—     Karl Barth

The Essence of Prayer

Prayer includes many things: praising God for who he is and what he’s done; thanking God for his blessings; interceding on behalf of others; petitioning God for our own needs. But prayer is more than this – much more! The “you” in this verse is in the singular. Why? Because each one of us can and must begin to approach God singly. Such prayer occurs in a “room” with the “door shut” – it begins and ends in a hidden, private place in communion with God. That is the true aim of prayer: meeting God, heart-to-heart.

Like the “pagans” in this verse, we who profess belief in God can also forget why it is we pray. We can mistakenly believe that verbosity or frequency or certain techniques will get us a hearing with God. Instead of coming to God and doing his bidding, we can implore God to listen to us and do ours. This kind of praying is not interested in God, let alone his will.

Genuine prayer is not ultimately a matter of words; it is a posture of the heart that seeks to know God personally. “The purpose of prayer,” writes Abraham Joshua Heschel, “is not the same as the purpose of speech. The purpose of speech is to inform; the purpose of prayer is to partake.” Gregory of Nyssa puts it this way, “The effect of prayer is union with God.”

For Sadhu Sundar Singh, an Indian Christian who lived one hundred years ago as a sadhu, or wandering holy man, prayer was far more than talking to God in hopes of getting help.  

When we see a crane or heron standing motionless on the shore of a lake or pond, we might think it is meditating on the beauty of the water. But this is not so! The bird stands there for hours without moving, but as soon as it sees a frog or small fish, it darts forward and greedily snatches it. Many people have the same approach to prayer and meditation. Seated on the shore of the boundless ocean of God’s love, they actually give no thought to his majesty or to the divine grace that cleanses us from sin and satisfies the hungry soul. Instead, they are consumed by the thought of receiving something for themselves, some morsel to gratify their self-indulgence. Having visited the very source of true peace and bliss, they fail to appreciate it and instead give themselves to fleeting pleasures.

The essence of prayer does not consist in asking for things, but in opening one’s heart to God. We can only approach God with empty hands.  Prayer is continual abandonment to God. It is the desire for God himself, the giver of life. Prayer is communion with God, receiving him who is the giver of all good gifts, living a life of fellowship with him. It is breathing and living in God.

A little child will run to his mother exclaiming: “Mother! Mother!” The child does not necessarily want anything in particular. He only wants to be near his mother, to sit on her lap, or to follow her about the house. The child longs for the sheer pleasure of being near her, talking to her, hearing her voice. This is what makes him happy. It is just the same with those who are truly God’s children. They do not trouble themselves with asking for spiritual blessings. They only want to sit at the Master’s feet, to be in living touch with him; then they are supremely content. (Wisdom of the Sadhu)

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” Jesus says. “If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will go in and eat with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20). How wonderful! Jesus knocks at the door of our lives, longing to eat with us, to commune with us. Prayer opens the door.

The Way of the Heart

Prayer is our way of being in living touch with God. Obviously, God wants to hear from us, and wants us to hear from him. When we encounter God, our hearts become so full we cannot help but speak to him. Words, or the number of words, are not the problem. What concerns Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount is when what we say to God and how we say it becomes more important than God himself.

Heschel writes, “Prayer is an act which makes the heart audible to God.” This is certainly the sense one gets after reading the account of Jesus’ struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane. It’s not that our hearts have to be perfectly right before we can pray. Jesus had to come to yet a deeper experience of surrender to God’s will. Often it is prayer that gets our hearts into the right place. Prayer, writes Johann Christoph Arnold, is a “protective armor around the quiet flame of the heart…. It is a life-giving discipline that can bring us to our senses — back to God.” (Seeking Peace). This is what true prayer does: it leads us back to God himself.  

God’s home is not “up there.” It is found deep down in the one who wants God to be God. So when we pray, is our heart in it? If not, do we want it to be? And if we want it to be, will we allow God himself to move and change us so it can be? If prayer is only a duty and not a delight, then why pray? Such prayer, as Karl Barth observes, is nothing. It is mere lip service.

What Is Your Native Soil?

Plants grow best in native soil. Like plants, which depend on nutrients from the soil, we must be nourished by prayer. What kind of prayer? The following excerpt from Helmut Thielicke, a post-WWII German Lutheran pastor and theologian, helps to explain what prayer actually involves.

Why is it that we have so much trouble with our prayer life, instead of finding in it the real substance and joy of our existence? Why is it that we have to force ourselves to keep company with the Father? Why is it that we are always so weary and indolent and that every silly newspaper, every vexation, or even every joy that comes our way is able to kill or crowd out our prayers, until finally we only talk about God and after a time even stop doing that? For anybody who only makes of God a mere topic usually turns after a time to more current and immediate topics.

The reason for this lies in the fact that prayer is no longer the native soil of our life. . . . Down underneath we know very well that God does not have first place in our life—neither the first place in time at the beginning of the day nor the first place in the actual importance he has for our life.

That’s why we think that certain conditions have to be fulfilled in order that we may pray. Among these conditions we include, for example, the stipulation that we must first have time and quietness (though it is just the other way around—it is only in praying that we get this quietness!); and also that we must be in the mood, for which again we need leisure and quiet and above all the stimulus of some kind of solemn ceremony (perhaps a Christmas or Easter service) or some great moment in our life. But anybody who sets up conditions for God is off the track from the start and again had better keep his mouth shut. God gives himself only when we put ourselves unconditionally in his hands.” (Life Can Begin Again)

Will we? Does God have our heart’s allegiance? When we pray, do we want God to be our all in all? If this is not our starting point, we will surely miss the wonder of prayer.

Your Turn

What helps you to commune with God in prayer?  Just reply to this email to leave a comment.