Life Prayer

Where is God when you pray? How do you perceive Him? What role does He play? What portion of your life is given to this person and His active involvement in your life? How would you describe this aspect of your life?

During my years working on a Master’s Degree at Azusa Pacific University I did a serious study of prayer. While it never ended up in an Academic Paper I did save a Manuscript of the work. Recently I taught through that Manuscript for a Class of Single Adults at Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena California. The result of that teaching was a re-write of the Manuscript and a new title.

The new title came out of what I would agree was a discovery of the nature of prayer in Judaeo-Christian understanding and practice. Prayer for the characters in the Bible is a “way of life.” It is “life” lived in virtually constant contact with the one to whom they pray. It is, in essence, “companionship” with God who is “always near” and intensely, intricately interested in the life of people who pray. He is determined to be active in these lives. Consequently those who pray quite often find the activity takes up more and more of their lifetime. It becomes a most important, if not the most important aspect of their lives.

Out of these conclusions the title, Life Prayer: A Companionship that Transforms, was born.

Nowhere have I found a better, more succinct summary of the premise on which this Manuscript is built than these words from the pen of Walter Wangerin, Jr. He is showing, petition by petition, how the prayer Jesus taught His followers to pray formed the framework for His own prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. He writes, “When Jesus teaches us to pray, He does not teach plain recitation. Rather, He calls us to a way of being. He makes of prayer a doing. And by His own extreme example, He shows that prayer is the active relationship between ourselves, dear little children, and the Dear Father, Abba.” (Walter Wangerin, Jr. Reliving the Passion ...)

May you, this Lenten Season, find yourself more intimately involved in a life being lived as a truly childlike companion of the Most High God A Supreme Sovereign determined to have you know Him as your tirelessly attentive, truly devoted, inexhaustibly loving, joy-filled, delightful Father who is never any further from you than the air that you breathe.