A New Way to Pray
When I was a sophomore in college, I took an organic chemistry class. I had this problem where, in class, I could completely follow what the professor was saying and doing. I wrote out the same problems that he did and actually understood them and felt so confident in the material...but then came the homework and the tests. That’s when I realized that I had absolutely no idea what was going on. In theory, I knew all there was to know about organic chemistry; I could look at my notes from class and make perfect sense of them. But when it really came down to it on a test, I didn’t actually know much about the practice of organic chemistry.
I’ve come to realize that I am the same way with prayer that I was with organic chemistry. When it comes to the practice of prayer, what do I know? If someone came to me asking the same question, what answer would I be able to give them? In her book Sacred Rhythms, Ruth Haley Barton says, “One thing I know for sure about prayer these days is that we do not know how to pray.” When you think about it, the disciples themselves didn’t know how to pray. In Luke 11, they watched as Jesus went away to talk to His Father, and then said: “Lord, teach us to pray”. We can grow in our practice of prayer when we humble ourselves enough to ask God to teach us how. When we have reached this place of humility and readiness to be shown a new thing, we can be moved beyond thinking of prayer as just communication with God to thinking of prayer as communion with God. Communication is so important in a relationship with God, both in talking to Him and receiving His Word. But in communion with God is where real growth and change can happen.
The problem is, most of us are hesitant to open that door. It’s easier to speak words to God than it is to sit and wait for His presence to give us words. Barton says, “We cry out for closeness to God, but we resist it at the very same time. In most cases, the reason we prefer to talk about prayer and read about prayer but don’t actually pray has more to do with our hesitancy to be vulnerable with God than anything else.”
So why are we hesitant?
Intimacy requires risk – the risk of allowing someone to see me in my weakness and vulnerability as well as in my strength and beauty. It involves bringing more and more of myself into God’s presence and receiving more and more of God’s being into myself. Maybe the deepest reason we are hesitant to be open with God is that intimacy always leads us to a place where we are not in control.
Here’s the more difficult question: how do we let go of our control?
We have to first let go of what’s not working. Sometimes, words can be so necessary and healing and life-giving in prayer to God. But there are also times when words, or a lack of words, hinder us from reaching that place of vulnerability with our Creator. Words alone fail to capture the depths of our longing for God, the empty God-shaped hole we feel without Him, and the struggle to remember that He alone can fill that hole. The effort to capture these depths in words feels difficult, if not impossible. We are almost afraid that this deep experience of longing will disappear if we try to impose words on it.
Instead of trying to come up with the right things to say to God, try sitting in silent communion with Him. Have you ever just sat in the presence of a really good friend, or a sibling or a parent, and felt at complete peace because nothing was being said and nothing needed to be said? Maybe you were in the car or maybe you were both reading, maybe you were struggling with something or maybe you were just really tired, but nothing felt more perfect than just being in the presence of that person. Sitting in silence with people whose presence is a delight to you can be life-giving. This is what communion with God through silent prayer looks like when we don’t have words to express our longing or needs to Him. The reason this kind of prayer is so satisfying is that it is about knowing God experientially rather than just knowing a lot about God.
Eventually, when we stop the flow of our own words, another gift comes to us, quietly and imperceptibly at first: we find ourselves resting in prayer. We rest our overactive, hardworking minds from the need to put everything into words. We rest from clinging, grasping, and trying to figure everything out. We rest from the need to control the conversation. In this stillness, we make yet another discovery: the Holy Spirit is the One who really knows how to pray.
Romans 8:26-27 says, “And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.”
Let the Holy Spirit intercede for you, and even listen for the words He is speaking over you. Here’s a way we can practice this:
Spend time quietly in God’s presence, allowing yourself to settle into that beyond-words place of comfort and intimacy.
Imagine Jesus calling you by name and asking “Child, what do you want?”
Allow your truest, most honest answer to this question to come up from your heart, and express this to God.
Work with the words that come to you until you feel that it captures your desire as truly as possible right now. (could be a phrase from a hymn or passage of Scripture or not)
Combine this request with your favorite Name for God, or the one that speaks the most relevancy to you in life right now. Creator, Good Shepherd, Jesus, Father.
This small but powerful prayer is what is called your “breath prayer”. Even though it’s as short as a breath and may not use complicated or smart words, it is your stark, honest need expressed to God with love and expectancy. Let this phrase wash over you in times where you are hurting and confused or content and experiencing fruit or angry or tired or bored or joyful or sorry. And eventually, the prayer will begin to pray itself, it will become as natural as breathing. This is such a simple, deep way to commune with God while waiting to hear from Him.
This “breath prayer” is a step we can take to move towards praying always, as 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 instructs us to do. The more we see prayer as communion with God, the harder it becomes to distinguish prayer as a spiritual discipline separate from all the others; all of the other disciplines (solitude, fasting, reading Scripture) simply become different ways to pray. The more we commune with God, the more we can be aware of and give thanks for His constant presence. The more control we can let go of so we can take hold of more of Him. The more we will experience all of life as prayer.