The Work of God

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When you study the life of Jesus, you realize that He did not simply teach us how to pray; He also modeled a life of prayer. Those closest to Him noted that “Jesus often slipped away to be alone so he could pray” (Luke 5:16, NCV).

But such prayer is not simply a way of life—it is work. It takes intentional commitment and concentrated effort. This is why prayer is known by the monastics as the opus Dei, the “work of God.”

Prayer is to be our principal vocation. There is nothing of greater importance nor more vital investment. This is why Esther de Waal notes in her exploration of Benedictine spirituality, at any hour of prayer (and there are up to seven for the Benedictines each day), “anything else in the monastery must be immediately abandoned: the work of God takes precedence.”

But this is not labor in the most common sense of the word, bringing up images of drudgery and fatigue. It is that which liberates our souls for the experience of life itself. Increasingly I see it (or perhaps should say I experience it) as Quaker author Douglas Steere has described:

Prayer... is simply a form of waking up out of the dull sleep in which our life has been spent in half-intentions, half-resolutions, half-creations, half-loyalties, and become actively aware of the real character of that which we are and of that which we are over against. It is an opening of drowsy lids. It is a shaking off of grave-clothes. It is a dip into acid. It is a daring to “read the test of the universe in the original.”

Prayer is an encounter with God, raw and unfiltered.

It is not for the shallow of spirit, but rather for those who wish to plunge head-first into the deep waters of encounter. As Thomas Kelly challenged, “Let us dare to venture together into the inner sanctuary of the soul, where God meets man in awful immediacy.”

There, and there alone, comes intimacy, transformation and a position in eternity that lifts us into the transcendent in such a way that we can return to the temporal with something the world does not supply.

Yet it remains an event of disarming simplicity.

I rise every morning at 5 a.m. to meet with God. During that time, with a large cup of coffee before me, “I lay out the pieces of my life on [His] altar” (Psalm 5:3, MSG).

I pray to God as my Father. I imagine Him in my mind as Father: loving, encouraging, walking with me down an autumn path or a beach with His arm around my shoulder.

I pray to Him as the God in heaven, able to act in ways that supersede the petty boundaries of circumstance.

I pray that I would not disappoint Him, but instead that I would please Him more this day than the day before.

I force my dreams and passions, sins and failures into the dimensions of His will, while sharing them freely and guileless before His throne.

I pray that I could be used, in whatever way needed, to change the world. That even this day might hold a strategic Kingdom advance, a new foothold, as heaven grapples with hell for the possession of the world and its inhabitants.

I pray to Him as the One who alone gives me my very next breath, as the One who alone is able to forgive.

I pray to Him as the One who alone is able to deliver me from the sinful man I most naturally am, as well as the one who seems most naturally intent on my demise.

Along with Douglas Steere, I plead my case with the most measured eloquence, until finally God listens me into silence, into humiliation, into humility, until at last I come into some faint splash of the deep sanity that recalls me to what I am on earth for.

The Lord’s Prayer guides this conversation. It informs it, shapes it, challenges it. It holds my prayer accountable, giving it the contours it needs. While seldom spoken verbatim, it always shadows what is.

Yes, all prayer will forever remain shrouded in mystery, for it is deep calling to deep. Paul admitted as much to the Romans: “We do not know what we ought to pray for,” and we must rely on “the Spirit himself” to intercede for us in ways “that words cannot express” (see Romans 8:26).

Yet the words Jesus gave us for prayer are the words that bring our spirits into the conversation and communion needed for the Holy Spirit to take over. “How great, dearest brothers, are the mysteries of the Lord’s Prayer,” writes Cyprian, “how many, how magnificent, gathered together in a few words, yet abundant in spiritual power. There is nothing whatever with regard to our pleading and our prayer omitted, nothing not contained in this summary of heavenly doctrine.”

All I know is that without it I would not know what to pray.

And without prayer I would not be able to live, for prayer truly is the breath of spiritual life, and through it we inhale the very air of eternity.  

James Emery White

Sources

Adapted from the ebook by James Emery White, The Prayer God Longs For. Order HERE on Church & Culture.