I began reading/listening to a new book about prayer called Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools by Tyler Staton and despite only being a few chapters in, it’s already been such a source of encouragement!
Prayer is something that shaped him as a 12-year-old when he prayed through his grade 8 yearbook. He would go to his school at 6:30 in the morning and pray through his class, name by name. The small Bible Study he launched at his school the next year ended up growing so big they needed to move out of the math classroom and into the school’s theatre! …Did I mention that they also met at 6:30 am?!
As a pastor ministering in Brooklyn he shares how drastically prayer has changed his life. Although it’s been more than twenty years since he was back in that little old public school, the growth and connection to God that he experiences through prayer remain absolutely vital to his daily journey with God.
One of the things he writes about is how Western Society looks down on naiveté (lack of experience, wisdom or judgement) and celebrates knowledge and mastery instead. With prayer, he says, there is no mastery. And often that’s why people don’t want to engage with it!
There’s a risk in prayer… there’s the risk that we pray and we’re met with silence. There’s the risk that we pray and face disappointment instead of the answers we hoped for…
Instead of mastery, “prayer always means submission… there is only humility and hope. To pray is to risk playing the fool.”
And as we grow in prayer lives, and mature in our understanding of who God is… as we experience God breaking through in miraculous ways, this faith and trust begin to develop and we begin to see that God truly does want what is best for us! God’s will will always reveal to us that He truly wants to connect with us and teach us and challenge us and love us.
This evening a group of Lifespring folks will gather on Zoom to pray together. We call it Intercession and we meet every Wednesday to pray for one another, to pray for our church, to pray for situations in the world – far away and close to home.
We take a risk and we bring our requests before God. And, speaking only for myself, I leave these calls encouraged and uplifted every time. Not because all of my prayers get answered on the spot or because suddenly everything is glowing and beautiful… I leave encouraged because I’ve gathered in the presence of God with fellow brothers and sisters in the faith and, together, we have taken a risk, dared to hope and trust that God will hear, honour and answer our prayers.
And faith begins to stir up in my heart. And the more it stirs up the more I find that I’m actually not afraid to play the fool… instead, I’m looking forward to spending time with God and sharing with him what’s on my heart. Because as we humbly surrender the temptation to be the master or to know all the answers, we get to see God do even greater things than we ever could’ve imagined!
“This is the confidence we have in approaching God:
that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.”
1 John 5:14