An Exploration of World Prayer

Prayer

• Basic human need• Expression of who we

are• All people at some

time (i.e. trenches)• Small, insignificant

beside mountains or stars

• An emptiness that calls for fulfilment

Thomas Merton 2001Leonardo da VinciThe Vitruvian Man (1487)

That Basic Human Need!• For something outside

ourselves• For something beyond

our reach• For something spiritual or

supernatural• A place to run to• To feel there is someone

out there to cry to• For someone to take

notice of our predicamentLeonardo da VinciThe Vitruvian Man (1487)

Prayer is universal

• The act of addressing, or communication with a God(s) or Spirit(s) or with ourselves

• For all faiths or none• For petition or thanks• To awaken inner wisdom/enlightenment • For forgiveness or strength• For assurance that we are not alone• From Latin – “precarius” (doubtful, precarious) or

“precari” (to beg or implore)

Unusual Prayer in the past

• Aztecs used blood sacrifice to attract attention and appease the Gods of Sun and War

• 2,000 prisoners once sacrificed over 4 days Aztec Temple

Unusual Prayer in the past

• Population in Stalin’s Russia were told by the State to pray to Lenin’s portrait

• Atheists?

Prayer in the East:Japan

Shinto• Shinto ‘Tori’ leading to

shrine• 400+ deities• Nature and Spirit

worship• Rattle ‘Sugi’ bell, hand

clapping• Throw coins into

wooden collection box to purchase prayers

Shinto Shrine

Prayer in the East:Japan

• Bow X2, clasp hands X2, bow again X2

• Prayer tablets (wood) and power of beautiful words

• Bought prayers

Prayer of Man

Prayer tablets (Ema)

Prayer in the East:Japan

• Physical activity important before prayer

• Contact with nature too

• Mud a sign of good luck

Prayer in the East:China/Korea

• Tao (essence of life) ism• 400,000,000 worshippers• Prayer links to a deity or

ancestors• Ying-Yang• Ghost money• Printed prayers bought and

burned• Yoga, meditation and

martial arts (Kung Fu, Tai Chi etc) more important than prayer

Tao Deity

Tao Priests

Prayer in the East:India

• Devotion to one or many Gods

• Salvation is freedom from repeated birth and

death• Yoga assists meditation• Mantras of praise and

prayer rituals• Cow is sacred –

caretaker and maternal figure

Shiva

Sacred cow

Prayer in the East:Buddhism

• No real God • Enlightened ones (Buddhas)

are prayed to• Prayer awakes our inner

capacities rather than to petition external forces

• Spiritual enlightenment through meditation – prayer enhances

• Self-quieting through meditation or stimulation of senses (bells, chanting, incense, flickering candles)

Buddha’s temptation

Buddhist Temple

Prayer in the West:Monotheistic

Christian prayer• Wide variety from

spontaneous to ritual• To God the Father, through

Lord Jesus the Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit

• Praying in tongues• Prayer of the 12 steps – to

a higher power• Meditation less common –

use of rosary• Society of Friends

(Quakers)

Prayer in the West:Monotheistic

Judaism• Prayer X3 / day• Prayer book (Siddur)

contains a set order of daily prayers

• Communal prayer preferred over solitary

• A quorum of 10 adult males a prerequisite for communal prayer

Rabbi

Wailing Wall

Prayer in the West:Monotheistic

Islam• Brief ritualistic

prayers (salah)• Facing Mecca X5

daily• Call for prayer• ‘Dua’ in own words

Mosque

Praying

Our Lord and other gods

• You shall have no other God’s before me (Ex 20:3)

• For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods (Ps 95:3)

• O give thanks to the God of gods, for His steadfast love endures forever

(Ps 136:2)

Titan

Bible : 1407 Malmesbury Abbey

Non-Christian Prayer (pseudo-Christian)

• Use of prayer to get what I want!

• To make my life easier and happier

• God is my genie in the lamp

• Prayer is a formula; get ingredients right and answers will abound

• Prayer only when at the end of our human resources?

Christian Prayer

Prayer only works when you learn to put our Lord at the centre.

When He calls, you have to listen.

Can we hear Him?

Christian Prayer

Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God for things agreeable to His will, in the name of Christ, with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgement of His mercies.

Thomas Vincent 1674Shorter Catechism

Pray-ers of Yesteryear and Today

• Martin Luther – prayed for 2 hours each day on his knees

• Susannah Wesley – apron over head

• 24-7 prayer movement

So What is Christian Prayer Anyway?

Many things – depends upon personality, faith and experience.

• requests for guidance• confessing sins• expressing thoughts• gratitude and praise• Begging or pleading• whining• bargaining• focus • meditation• silence or anger• praying in tongues

And yet?

“Of all the activities in which the Christian engages and which are part of Christian life, there is surely none which causes so much perplexity and raises so many problems as the activity we call prayer.”

Dr D Martyn Lloyd-JonesDr M Lloyd Jones

Why the Problems and Perplexity with Prayer?

Some of our prayers are answered –aren’t they?

House sold!Headache relieved!Operation successful!Fracture healed!Daily strength!Church growth

Why the Problems and Perplexity with Prayer?

But does He really listen?• Why tsunami, earthquake

or holocaust?• How do we reconcile

these despite our prayers and – “If you ask anything of the Father in my name, He will give it to you”

(Jn 16:23)

Tsunami hits

An Experienced Christian’s Conclusion on Prayer

Prayer is simply talking to God!

He speaks: we listen.We speak to Him: he

listens.A two way process:Speaking and

listening. (Mother Teresa of C)

Teresa of Calcutta

Can we Listen for our Lord in Prayer?

Each of us has an inner monologue – self-chatter

Dominates our lives• Worry, Planning,

Remembering

Hinders spiritual insight about our Lord

1) Hearing God’s voice2) Being touched by the Holy

Spirit3) Accepting Jesus as our

Saviour

The Inner Self

Listening to our Lord in Prayer

Prayer and our egocentric self-chatter: problem known for centuries

We “must lose the radical self centred awareness of our being, for it is our own self that stands in the way of God”

Saint John of the Cross

(1542-1591)

St John of the Cross

Listening to our Lord in Prayer

1) Hearing God’s Voice?

Self-chatter prevents us hearing God’s call (i.e drowns out the ‘still small voice’ of the Lord’).

(1 Kings 19:11-14)

Listen! I am standing at the door knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.

(Rev 3:20)

W Holman HuntThe Light of the World 1854

Why May Self-Chatter be Louder in West?

Can we hear God’s Voice?

• Taught to be self-reliant?• Brought up to be

autonomous?• Busy ++. Time pressure?• Pressure to ‘succeed’

ButWe are called to live ‘in the

world but not to be of it’“Do not love the world or the

things of the world……” (1 Jn 2:15-17)

What else can our ‘self’s’ prevent

2) Being touched by the Holy Spirit?

Our response to a spiritual reality – ‘He is risen’!

Transformation!

Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of heaven. (Jn 3:3)

Official tomb of Jesus

Pride and the Existing Self

2) The transformation

We need a rebirth, a transformation or a regeneration. Repentance is confession and a turning away from the old self.

Pride (ego) (image of oneself)Can override ongoing

guidance from our Lord and stifles personal transformation

“Spirit willing but the flesh weak” (Mt 26:41)

Adult Baptism

Effort and the Existing Self

3) Accepting Jesus as our Saviour

Spiritual seeking requires hard work and effort.

• Worship, prayer or meditation, rituals, bible study, pilgrimage

• Existing self can talk oneself out of doing what is required for listening to our Lord (spiritual roadblock)

We are ranged against evil powers and spiritual forces. (Eph 6:12)

Good soil?

Prayer and Prosperity

• Poor countries – pray constantly with signs and wonders – acceptance of our Lord’s will

• Well-off countries –prayer considered less essential – fraught with frustration and confusion when unanswered

What is Christian Prayer ?

• Where we stop life’s routine and focus all our attention on Him!

• Where we can reduce self-chatter – with experience

• Where we can meet with the Lord and listen

‘Be still and know that I am God’ (Ps 46:10)

What Prayer does for us!

Prayer permits us to re-align what we see until we see reality (truth) through God’s eyes

Via Dolorosa

A Prayer Knowing Forgiveness

The focus then moves from me to our Lord!

God does not treat us as our sins deserveOr repay us according to our iniquities.For as high as the heavens are above the

earth,So great is his love for those who fear him;As far as the East is from the West,So far has he removed our transgressions

from us.As a father has compassion on his

children,So the Lord has compassion on those who

fear him;For he knows how we are formed,He remembers that we are dust

(Ps 103:10-14)

King David

What are we doing in Christian Prayer?

• Seeking God’s face ‘Come my heart says, “seek His face!”. Your face Lord do I seek’. (Ps 27:8)

• Seeking the Lord ‘..but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing’. (Ps 34 :10)

• Calling on God’s name ‘..I will call on the name of the Lord’. (1Kings 18:24)

• Looking to God ‘…the hand of our God is gracious to all who seek him’. (Ezra 8:22)

• Approaching the throne of grace. ‘Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we might receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need’. (Heb 4:16)

What is Christian Prayer?Conclusion!

• Prayer is a spiritual place/activity (soul) where our Lord and we humans meet at His request!

• It is a priceless point of convergence

• It is ‘relationship’

• It is the Christian’s secret weapon

MichelangeloSistine Chapel (1508-1512)

Further Topics for Exploration of Prayer?

• What is prayer?• Why pray?• Prayer according to personality? • Our elements in unanswered prayer?• God’s elements in unanswered prayer?• Techniques for prayer?• Types of prayer

o Prayer of salvationo Prayer of Jabezo Prayer without ceasingo Prayer and fastingo Prayer in tongueso Prayer walko Soaking prayero Intercessory prayero Silent prayero Laying out fleeceso Power of prayero Corporate prayer