Prayer By the Numbers
It happened that while Jesus was praying in a certain place, after He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John also taught his disciples.” Luke 11:1 NASB
Teach us – Do you want to pray? Did you ever learn how to pray? Most of us who grew up in spiritual circles were taught prayer by osmosis. In other words, no one actually gave us instructions. We were told that prayer is simply talking to God, and since we all know how to talk, everyone assumed that talking to God is just like talking to your friend or your spouse. Heschel begs to differ. “It is incorrect to describe prayer by analogy with human conversation; we do not communicate with God. We only make ourselves communicable to Him. . . . It is not a relationship between person to person, between subject and subject, but an endeavor to become the object of His thought.”[1] Furthermore, anyone who has ever conversed with a friend or a spouse knows that talking isn’t communicating. Not only are we woefully unable to really relate with another like us, we can’t even comprehend what it must really be like to communicate with a Person who isn’t like us at all. We need to be taught because this is not a natural skill set. It is one of life’s great tragedies that we were never taught such a vital part of life and that our spiritual arenas tend to operate as if this kind of teaching isn’t necessary. Actually, maybe the reason no one teaches us is because no one really knows.
If prayer is an “ontological necessity” for us to become human,[2] then inadequate training here means disaster. Without communication with my Creator, I will be forever less than intended. I will remain in that limbo state of “not-yet-human.”
So, let’s start. Yeshua taught his disciples. Did you notice that the request also indicates that John taught his disciples? Teacher to student so that the student can become the teacher. Nahmanides teaches us that prayer “is a function of et tzara, feelings of distress, inspiring a sense of dependence on God and our fellow person.”[3] Weiss continues: “the word ‘tefilla’ may be derived from . . . to judge oneself. There is, however, an alternative meaning. It can also mean hope.”[4] Self-assessment often leads to discouragement and depression, but in Hebrew self-assessment rests on another foundation—hope, not in myself but in the compassionate heart and sovereign control of YHVH. So prayer begins, before there are any words at all, with an interior look, a look at who I really am right now, standing before the Presence. What I discover is the agony of my existing as I am, the brokenness of my life, the angst of my concerns, the emptiness at the pit of my stomach, the sorrows I bear, the regrets I have, the temporality of all joy, the inevitability of death. And when I have come into the vacuum that sweeps over me, when I realize that my life is at stake in the next words I want to say, then something happens before I can speak. Hope arrives because my Father who is in heaven cares about me.
Prayer begins where my life ends. Otherwise it is only babble of conversation.
Have a nice day!
Topical Index: prayer, Avraham Weiss, Nahmanides, Heschel, Luke 11:1, teach
[1] Abraham Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, p. 10.
[2] Cf. Heschel, Man’s Quest for God.
[3] Avraham Weiss, Holistic Prayer, p. 44.
[4] Ibid., p. 45.
“Shall not the day of YHWH be darkness, and not light –even very dark, and no brightness in it?
– I hate; I despise, your feasts:
– I will take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
– Yes, though you offer Me burnt-offerings and your meal-offerings, I will not accept them,
– neither will I regard the peace-offerings of your fat beasts.
– Take you away from Me the noise of your songs, and let Me not hear the melody of your psalteries.” (Amos 5:20-23)
BUT, even if all these avenues of approach are rejected … prayer is not mentioned.
It may be wise to find out how.
Great insight.
Maybe it takes an extreme situation for God to even stop listening to prayers. I thought he stopped listening to Saul’s.
So did I : “He who turns his ear away from hearing the Torah, Even his prayer is an abomination.” (Proverbs 28:9, ISR)
WOW! Amen!
I found Today’s Word to be very compelling and foundational.
Confirmation after confirmation. This walk in Torah obedience began 25 years ago for us with that very same pleading request. “Father teach me to pray!” The content of today’s post was His answer.
It feels so much less lonely today than it did back then. Loneliness is fading away into the anticipation of the in gathering of all of us that He has taught in years past (like Heschel) and continues to this day to teach by His Spirit.
It’s a process that fosters patience that nurtures hope.
Hallelu YAH!!!
The response from the Messiah to the disciples was the poetic Abba prayer, the Our Father. You may be thinking, that’s not a poem, but John Dominic Crossan describes it in his book “The Greatest Prayer” thus; The Lord’s Prayer you could say is a Jewish prayer (from the Jewish Messiah Yahweh or if you prefer, Jesus) for his Jewish disciples, but it doesn’t mention Jews or Christians. It doesn’t mention church, covenant, law, circumcision, Temple or Torah either.
Crossan suggests it is a radical manifesto and a hymn of hope for all humanity addressed to all the earth. It proclaims the radical vision of distributive justice for all as a hymn of hope using poetic techniques that are the core of biblical poetry. I agree. And it does take him a whole worthwhile book to analyse it.
Skip, if you if you had to limit yourself to one resource, book or audio, that is accessible to everyone, what would it be?
The quick answer: The Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (16 volumes). It is readable, Hebrew is transliterated, it is scholarly, extensive, fascinating. Of course, it has a bias, but they all do. And it is exhaustive, thousands of pages. It just isn’t cheap. But I have used it over and over again and have always found something important.
The second source (with all the same comments above) is the JPS Torah Commentary series in 5 volumes.
I Corinthians 3:21
How To Pray
~ But when the Father sends the Advocate as My representative–that is, the Holy Spirit–He will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you ~ (John 14.26)
“LORD, teach us to pray..” (Luke 11.1)
The passionate plea of His disciples then, can be ours also today. This too, can [and must] be our prayer- “Teach us to pray.”
Personally, to me, prayer is a lot like riding a bicycle. We learn “by doing..” We must make a practice of prayer. Actually, we have been “commanded” – [what a privilege to carry out this command] = “pray without ceasing..” And then? Lo and behold, the very next verse [and next thing to happen to us as a consequence of our choosing to pray will then be] – “Rejoice evermore!” Any praying person is [very much] a blessed person.
Prayer. What’s not to like about it? – It’s all good. Again, we hear God speak through His word: “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you”. Prayer requires practice. – again, just like riding a bicycle.. We learn by doing.
Prayer is not a nicety, – it is a necessity!! ~ If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all [to who?] generously and without reproach, [ask] and it will be given to him.~
Listen to our Father’s wise instruction.. (Proverbs chapter 4)
Hear, O sons, our Father’s instruction,
and be attentive, [pay attention!] that you may gain insight,
[Why?] because I give you good precepts;
Do not forsake my teaching.
When I was a son with my father,
tender, the only one in the sight of my mother,
[from generation to generation]
He taught me and said to me,
“Let your heart hold fast my words;
keep my commandments, and live.
Get wisdom; get insight;
do not forget, and do not turn away from the words of My mouth.
Do not forsake her, and she will keep you;
love her, and she will guard you.
Yes. It is true. “Wise men still seek Him..”
And His promise to “whosoever will” is? “You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29.13)
Though I don’t disagree with your content, and I do understand through experience what you are saying (something very deep happens when we realize how desperately we Need YHVH, and how Lost we are even at the thought of things not being in His control ), I have a hard time comprehending it would be His pleasure that we reside in the depths of that desparation.?.
You know, Paula, the “depths of desperation” is a very interesting place to me. In my self pity I spent years thinking that I had surely plumbed those depths: but no! There were always more! I finally began to be suspicious at one point that, in the guise of suffering, I was attempting to avoid the bottom (like, duh!). I believed horrible things about that bottom! When I finally got there (whew!), I looked around, and said, “oh, this is nothing like what I thought it would be!” I was believing a bunch of lies. The suffering was all about the lies, and not about that bottom. Now, I can go check out that bottom, just for fun, a few times a day, bounce around a little just to see if my Daddy is still going to catch me (He always does), and then I am good to go again.
I am not making light of the misery of being human. I think I am saying that I now think that all the self-generated suffering, anyway, is generated from going in the wrong direction (the belief that it is ‘all up to me’), but relief is always going to be found by going in the right one (its all up to Him), but to us, that can look like total and unmitigated disaster, we are so full of lies. It’s the perception. In actuality, admitting that I am powerless is not so bad after all, because that is the only place in my universe that contains a gas station (His pleasure – the “joy of the Lord” -, which is what I am supposed to be running on), and that admission is what gets the gas cap off my empty tank. It is the only place where I am actually “walking in the truth”, too – the truth that it is He that does His good will and pleasure through me, and not my own. Yeshua knew what we have to learn; it is the Father’s works and will through us that gits ‘er done, but we have to be submitted for Him to be able to do that. I think the misery is where we have yet to learn how to agree to “let go and let God”.
Prayer, to me, is conveying my thoughts, emotions to my ABBA, when I am oppressed, falsely accused; when I see despicable ingratitude, injustice, oppression, enslavery to lies and deception, “the sorrows I bear, the regrets I have, the temporality of all joy, the inevitability of” … torment of not standing up to His standards. I pour out to Him. It’s a release.
Please, please expound on this a bit more.