Prayer and the Christmas List

Like thousands of kids around the world, I too have a Christmas list. It's a short list (compared to my grandson's list). Here it is:

1. baseball glove
2. mitre saw
3. a new roof
4. mock turtleneck
5. belt

Although it is a brief list, it does reveal something about my heart's desires. In a sense, a prayer list is just as revelatory.  Here is my prayer list:

1. finances
2. good health
3. missionaries
4. family
5. church

There is nothing inherently wrong with either list, except that neither list brings me closer to God. Augustine received a letter from a Christian believer, Anicia Faltonia Proba (died AD 432), a Roman noblewoman who was afraid she wasn't praying as she should. Augustine responded with a brief essay that outlined four principles about prayer.

The first principle is that before we pray, we need to become a certain of kind of person—one who "accounts himself desolate in this world, however great the prosperity of your lot my be."   Tim Keller in his new book, Prayer, asserts that unless "[t]he scales have fallen from your eyes and you see clearly that no matter how great your earthly circumstances become, they can never bring you the lasting peace, happiness, and consolation that are found in Christ. Unless you have that clearly in view,  your prayers may go wrong." In other words, I need to see how disordered my heart's loves are. So often I begin my prayers with a petition, neglecting that I am desolate, and that my desires are "disordered". 

Once I have recognized my desolation, Augustine then says that I can begin to pray "for a happy life." Odd as this seems, it makes sense when I realize where my happiness truly lies: "One thing have I desired of the Lord, one thing will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord to behold the beauty of the Lord." Knowing God intimately, brings happiness, regardless of my circumstances. In my recent trip to Africa, I saw happiness expressed in the laughter and singing of women who lived in 8x8ft. rooms with their children. Their happiness, their contentment, came from "loving God, for what He is in Himself, and loving ourselves and our neighbors for His sake" (Augustine). 

Augustine's third directive is to study the Lord's Prayer, noting the order and form of the petitions. Augustine writes: He who says in prayer..."Give me as much wealth as you have given to this or that man" or "Increase my honors; make me eminent in power and fame in the world," and who asks merely from a desire for these things, and not in order through them to benefit men agreeably to God's will, I do not think he will find any part of he Lord's Prayer in connection with what which he should fit in these requests. Therefore let us be ashamed to ask these things. 

Take a look, a hard look, at the kind of prayers in the Lord's Prayer: adoration, petition, thanksgiving confession.

Augustine's fourth principle is about the kind of prayer that many of us are very familiar with: prayer in the dark times. What should we pray for when we feel that the weight of world crushing us? "Tribulations...may do us good...and yet because they are hard and painful..we pray...that they may be removed from us." Tribulations, pain, heartache, are difficult to pray about. Augustine points to Jesus' own prayer in Gethsemane—"let this cup pass from me." But then, Jesus balances his request with "nevertheless, not my will but thine be done." God is good—all of the time (even during the dark times). All of the time—God is good.