Chapter One
LEARN TO PRAYIt seems that almost everyone struggles when they begin to
learn to pray. Even the greatest of saints testify to a very difficult
journey before acquiring mastery in the discipline of
prayer. One of these saints was Saint Teresa of Avila who
became the first female "Doctor of the Church." Virtually every
historian ranks Teresa among the top three personalities in
sixteenth-century Spain. Her spirituality shone with unparalleled
brilliance. This feisty Spanish Carmelite nun became
famous the world over for her tireless work amongst the poor
and, especially, for the supernatural, mystical experiences she
had when she prayed. So extraordinary were these experiences
that her autobiography, The Life of Teresa of Jesus: The Autobiography
of St. Teresa of Avila, became the standard of what would later be
called the Spanish mystics. Her writings helped create the "golden
age" (as Spanish historians like to call it) and greatly shaped
the subsequent history of the Western Church. Having said
that, even this "Doctor" of prayer was repeatedly discouraged
because of the difficulty of the discipline of daily prayer.
Very often I was more occupied with the wish to see
the end of my hour for prayer. I used to actually watch the
sandglass. And the sadness that I sometimes felt on
entering my prayer-chapel was so great that it required
all my courage to force myself inside.
At one point, Saint Teresa quit praying altogether for over a
year. Even though she had joined the religious life in her teens,
she was almost 39 years old before she was able to attain consistency
in her prayer life. At that time, she had a vision of the
wounded Christ, which propelled her forward in her prayer life.
Having overcome, she launched into a prayer life so deep, so
full of ecstatic experiences, so rich in the love of God, that she
became a leader to all. In her lifetime, she sought to reform the
Carmelite order, which had deviated from its original purpose.
She founded her first convent in Avila (hence, her name) when
she was in her mid-40s and went on to establish 15 additional
houses within a 20-year period. This entire time she was sick
with a heart condition and suffered two heart attacks. But this
did not stop her. To her, the love for God that grew out of one's
prayer life was practiced, not merely contemplated.
Let everyone understand that real love of God does not
consist in tear-shedding, nor in that sweetness and tenderness
for which we usually long, just because they
console us, but in serving God in justice, fortitude of
soul and humility.
St. Teresa had things in the right order. She didn't have a
works-based relationship with God. True, she did work "to enter
that rest" (Heb. 4:11) and labored to learn to pray; however,
from that place of prayer, her relationship with God propelled
her into works that were exceedingly abundant above her physical
capacity. Out of the intimacy
of communion with God, all
of her works flowed. This is
what Jesus modeled to His disciples,
and this is the type of
example we want to see emulated
in the Church today.
We observe two major things
from the life of Saint Teresa. One
thing is that the art of learning
to pray rarely comes naturally.
The second thing is that when
an effectual, fervent prayer life is
attained, it affects the whole of
how we live. The reason for this
book is that we long to teach people to learn to pray. After years
of pastoring, our observation is that the reason most people do
not pray is not because they are fundamentally disobedient or
unspiritual but simply because they don't know how. And when
they don't know how, prayer often feels boring, scattered and
ineffective. That is why the first step on the pathway to spirituality
is to determine that you are going to learn to pray. If great saints
like Teresa of Avila had to learn to pray, so, too, must we learn
to pray. For my part, I spent the better part of a decade trying to
teach myself how to pray. Stacey learned alone in her room, driven
by sheer embarrassment at her lack of Scripture knowledge
Therefore, the seven points in this book-separated into seven
chapters-are a distillation of what we have gleaned over our
years of learning to pray.
Strangely enough, even the disciples had to learn to pray.
They came to Jesus and said, "Teach us to pray, just as John
taught his disciples" (Luke 11:1). We say "strangely enough,"
because the disciples were not novices to the world of prayer.
At least one of the disciples (Andrew) was previously a disciple
of John the Baptist, and the rest were at least acquainted with
his teaching (see John 1:35-40,44). John the Baptist also was a
giant of prayer in the world in which they all lived. John the
Baptist was likely the most extreme prayer example of that time.
Having spent his life set apart from most people, somehow he
was able to connect with God more than most. Jesus said of him
that there was no one greater born of woman (see Matt. 11:11;
Luke 7:28). He was wild and intense, living in the desert on bugs
and honey. So enthused was he that people walked out to the
desert just to see the "burning man" (see Matt. 3:1-12). John was
a wonder of the spiritual world.
Immediately, our curiosity is aroused. What did this man do?
How did he become so zealous? The biblical account states that
"the child grew and became strong in spirit; and he lived in the
desert until he appeared publicly to Israel" (Luke 1:80). It might
be said that John chose Mary's needed "one thing" to the utmost
(see Luke 10:39-42). When John came of age, he literally marched
off into the desert to pray until the word of the Lord came to
him. It was there-through many prayers and much fasting-that
he received the revelation of how he would recognize the Messiah
for whom he was preparing the way (see John 1:33).
The Forerunner of Christ
John the Baptist was the prophesied forerunner of the Messiah
(see Isa. 40:3; Matt. 3:3; Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4; John 1:23). John
saw himself in this role, and Jesus affirmed it (see Matt. 11:10).
As significant as John was as "the voice crying out in the
wilderness" just before the coming of Jesus, most believers do
not realize how crucial John's desert sojourns were in putting
the stamp of monasticism on early Christian spirituality.
Toward the end of the third century, Antony of Egypt withdrew
from corrupt city life to the desert to clarify his thoughts
and draw closer to God. Antony used John the Baptist as his
prototype-following John's way of self-mortification through
isolation, fasting and wearing uncomfortable clothing.
Eventually many others seeking salvation and spirituality
joined Antony in the desert. Thus, Antony became one of the
first Desert Fathers of the Church and an early founder of
Christian monasticism.
Although we do not have much in the way of specific records
on John the Baptist's life, some think he may have been familiar
with the Essenes, a Jewish sect that practiced asceticism in the
desert in Jesus' time. It's important to remember that Judaism at
the time of Jesus was not just one uniform religion, but had
many variations. The four main branches were:
1. The Sadducees, the rationalist antisupernaturalist
skeptics of the day;
2. The Pharisees, the traditionalists who believed in miracles;
3. The Zealots, the ones who wanted to overthrow the
Roman military; and
4. The Essenes (not mentioned in the New Testament
like the other three), a group that might have
evolved out of the Hasidim group, the "pious ones,"
of the Maccabean period (c. 168 B.C.). This group
rejected all compromises of Judaism with Greek
culture.
The word "Essene" means "healer" in Aramaic, the language
of Jesus. Interestingly enough, the Egyptian equivalent of the
Essenes was a group called the Therapeutae, which also means
"the healer" in Greek. Josephus records that there were many
Essenes dwelling in every town and that the individuals who
belonged to this sect took vows "to first bind [themselves] by
solemn exhortations and professions to love and worship God,
to do justice towards men, to wrong no creature willingly, nor to
do it, though commanded." They rejected the blood sacrifices
of the Jerusalem Temple. They practiced voluntary poverty and
held all property in common. Their first objective was to keep
the first commandment in first place (see Exod. 20:3). What was
also unique about the Essenes was that they practiced perennial
praise based on the model of Solomon's Temple in the Old
Testament (see 1 Chron. 9:33; Ps. 134:1). Their rule states:
Let the many keep awake in the community a third of all
the nights of the year in order to read aloud from the
Book and to expound judgment and to sing blessings
altogether.
Practically speaking, this meant that during the night, two-thirds
of the "Community of Righteousness" (as they were also known)
slept in their tents and huts while the other one-third kept up
their continual chant of readings, hymns and psalms. John may
have known one or more of these Essenes communities that practiced
24/7 prayer and worship.
In time, John left the Essenes and started his own monastic
movement in the Judean desert. Gathering disciples, he
taught them the disciplines of prayer and fasting. When we
read the biblical accounts of John the Baptist, it appears that
he was more rigorous in involving his disciples in fasting than
was Jesus. The Pharisees once said to Jesus, "John's disciples
often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees,
but yours go on eating and drinking" (Luke 5:33; see also
Matt. 9:14-1S; Mark 2:18-20). Jesus explained the reason for
this laxity by alluding to the fact that his disciples would have
plenty of time for fasting once he was no longer with them.
Our point is this: John the Baptist set such a powerful example
of prayer that when Jesus' disciples wanted a lesson on
prayer, the best example they could find was John the Baptist.
They asked Jesus to teach them to pray "just as John taught his
disciples" (Luke 11:1).
The Journey of a Prayer Warrior
The thought that prayer must be learned is revolutionary to
most modern-day Christians. But over the course of our ministry,
it is our observation that without a teacher, only the
hardiest of souls can excel at this great art of prayer. The rest of
us just seem to wander, struggling here and there, feeling very
inadequate and inefficient. It is not shameful to admit that we
need a teacher, and it is not surprising that it will take time to
learn. We want to extend some sympathy to the reader at this
point. We understand how hard it is to learn to pray. We ourselves
have had many struggles along the way.
My Unresponsive Times
In fact, like many others, I come from a long line of prayerlessness.
Growing up in the Church, there was nothing more boring
to me than the prayer meetings. Of course, as soon as I got
saved, I was zealous for God, but still the one torture I could not
endure was the Wednesday-night prayer meeting. I tried every
conceivable way I could think of to get out of having to attend
prayer meetings and still be a leader. In retrospect, I must confess
that I was saved prayerless, I witnessed prayerless, and I was
even a prayerless missionary. I went through four years of Bible
college prayerless and even started a church basically prayerless.
Looking back, I don't think I really understood prayer. I didn't
know how it worked; I couldn't figure it out. For instance, in the
summer we would pray for sunshine for the Sunday School picnic,
while at the same time the local Christian farmer whose
crops were caught in a drought was praying for rain. What was
God to do? Two Christian teams would show up at the same
game, each praying, "Oh, God, let the best team win." Of course
they both believed that their team was the best team and that
God would answer their team's prayer. I also couldn't understand
why, when I would pray for people to get better, they
would just get worse. The one lady for whom we prayed for healing
the most grew worse and finally died. I didn't really believe
that God was interested in getting us parking spots. Ultimately,
I was confused as to how God could hear the cries of the untold
millions living in misery and still want to bother listening to my
relatively trivial aches and pains. I just couldn't figure it out.
Consequently, I didn't pray.
Eventually I found myself in a theological quagmire. My justification
for not praying went something like this: God is all
wise and God is all powerful! He knows what's going on, and if
it needs fixing, He has the power to fix it. Why then does He
want me to go in a room and tell Him what I think is wrong and
ask Him to do something about it? He already knows the problem
better than I, and undoubtedly, He wants it fixed more than
I. The end of this reasoning led me into a semifatalistic faith
where I would think loving thoughts toward God but would not
really engage in focused prayer. I did what work I was supposed
to for God but left the results to Him. In regard to prayer, I was
only one step better than a deist.
Coming back to the Bible, I realized that this line of reasoning-taken
to its logical conclusion-was really heresy. The Bible
says that the effectual and fervent prayers of righteous people do
much good (see Jas. 5:16). Even though I knew this, I was unmotivated,
because practical help on the subject eluded me. The
turning point came through a prophetic encounter. Early in our
ministry, while we were in the initial years of planting our church,
the Lord moved powerfully in our midst with a great revival. In a
single night, He birthed the spirit of prophecy, and many began
to "see" in the Spirit. Over a period of three months, at least 70
people, without any prior awareness of such things, suddenly
began to shake under the power of the Holy Spirit and prophesy.
The first words God gave in prophecy were, "Pray! Pray! Pray!
I have called you to be men and women of prayer!" During this
awakening, God called us to a life of prayer. Over and over again,
He insisted that we pray. Even with this push, I didn't really know
how to pray, nor did I feel like the little prayer I did was effective.
Though I knew I should pray, I didn't.
Then one night, at a particularly powerful meeting, the spirit
of prophecy was again poured out. The awe of God filled the
room. People were prophesying here and there. Being the leader,
I was the one who wrote the prophecies down as they came. But
that night, I began to have this rather distinct feeling that trouble
was coming. Sure enough, trouble came. A strong "swoosh"
of the presence of God went through the room. Immediately, my
wife began to shake and tremble.
Continues.
