“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
Søren Kierkegaard
The Battle of Prayer
Prayer links faith to endurance, and links obedience to discipline. As such, prayer is the greatest weapon of the saint. Most of us are not called to have our blood shed in the struggle against sin, as Christ did. Rather, the battle we are called to fight against sin involves prayer, and the prize is our very souls.
Prayer is the battle to surrender our rebellion against God. Prayer is the battle is over which master we will choose to serve.
In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul instructs us to put on the whole armor of God in our struggle against the cosmic forces of darkness.[1] He describes the armor of God as consisting of a belt of truth and a breastplate of righteousness, shoes for standing firm in proclamation of the gospel, a shield of faith, and a helmet of salvation.
Perhaps the most lethal weapon in this holy armor is the sword of the Spirit, which is Scripture – the word of God.
“Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”[2]
Jesus Himself demonstrated that Scripture could be a powerful sword for battle when He used it against Satan’s testing in the desert.[3]
After we put on the whole armor of God, how do we use it? Paul leaves no doubt; his immediate instruction, literally the very next word after describing the armor of God, is to pray.
Again, Jesus is our best example. Over and over – more often than telling parables, more often than healing, more often than performing signs and wonders, more often than giving sermons – Jesus withdrew to lonely places and prayed. In those times of quiet contemplation, Jesus was battling for our souls. We are called to do the same; we are called to fight the powers of evil through prayer.
“Indeed, we live as human beings, but we do not wage war according to human standards; for the weapons of our warfare are not merely human, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.”[4]
Inside Out and Outside In
God is at once the paradox of the infinite and the paradox of the infinitesimal; working to transform the world from His transcendent throne outside of Creation, while working to transform the world from the temple he is preparing inside each heart. Because of this, there is power in the solitariness of individual prayer to affect cosmic transformation, much in the same way that Kierkegaard described faith elevating the individual above the universal.
Prayer functions to take what we do with our solitariness and join it to God’s will, to the communion of saints, and to all Creation. In this way, unlike any other human gesture, prayer encompasses the full spectrum of humanity’s stature, both as lowly dust of the earth as well as sanctified children of God. Because the invisible is more real than the visible, our prayer represents a connection with true reality, not an escape from it. Instead, prayer is escaping from our present unreality by giving us a glimpse beyond exile.
Like the Samaritan woman, we go to the well looking to draw water, only to find that Jesus is already there asking us for a drink.[5] This is God getting our attention and calling us to prayer. God gets our attention through Nature, love, empathy, beauty, wonder, and, yes, even paradox.
God also gets our attention through pain and suffering. In fact, in a world where many (perhaps most) of us have been numbed to the deep, inner aching for an intimate relationship with God, pain is the only way to get our attention. “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”[6]
However we are called to pray, we know that every prayer is answered because every prayer leaves us transformed.
Eavesdropping on God talking to God
Psalm 62:11 mysteriously says that, “Once God has spoken; twice have I heard this: that power belongs to God.” When God speaks, things come into being by the sheer power of his words. And those words continue to echo, creating as they ripple throughout all space and time.
“Once spoken” is the Word made flesh. “Twice heard” is the abiding presence of the Word made flesh throughout all Creation. In prayer, we empty ourselves like a hollow canyon so that the Word can echo inside us and create us anew. “It is simply to create an empty, hollow space within ourselves, so that we can become a sound-board, or echo-chamber, for the Word.”[7]
In pure contemplative prayer, when we quiet ourselves enough to hear the echoes of God speaking, we find that we are merely eavesdropping on God talking to God. We have been inserted into the strange loop of God’s Triune relationship. In this rarified air, we are assured that everything said comes first from Him, and that everything said returns to Him.
“You have heard from me before I utter it; and whatever good You hear from me, You have first spoken to me.”[8] Never underestimate the power of silence in prayer. Let God do the talking. Let God fill in the gaps. Focus on listening. And if you become distracted when listening to God, then listen to the distractions, because they are telling you exactly what things are pulling you away from God.
Prayer is a Covenant Relationship
In Ephesians 5:32, Paul takes Genesis 2:24, which speaks of marriage as the joining of man and wife into one flesh, and explicitly applies it to the relationship between Christ and the Church, which elsewhere Paul equates to the body of Christ.
Marriage is meant to be the closest exemplar of God’s love for us. We, both individually and as His Church, are His bride, and He desires that we become one with Him. This is more than a marriage, this is a covenant in which we belong to Him, and He belongs to us.
As with any marriage, in our relationship with God, communication is key. Through the communication of constant prayer, we maintain focus on what’s most important, which is the covenant relationship. Marriage is a daily devotion that involves dying to one’s self and rising again in service of the other. Marriage is a continual rededication to the preference for the giver over the gift.
We can practice these same dispositions in prayer. Like an adoring spouse, we desire to please God out of love, trust, acceptance, and, yes, even obedience, not because it is required or demanded but because it pleases Him.
One of the great examples of the power of prayer exemplified in the Bible happens at a wedding.[9] When Mary the mother of Jesus becomes aware that the wine has run out, she brings this need to her Son. Despite His (seeming) reluctance, she casts all her worries and the worries of the wedding party onto Him, telling the servants to do whatever He instructs.
At His direction, they fill up six large jars with water, which He then makes into wine. Jesus could have produced the wine from nothing, but He preferred their participation. No doubt, Jesus was already aware that the wine had run out. Perhaps it was His awareness that somehow prompted Mary to notice and come to Him for help.
While God already knows what we want and what we need, He desires for us to cast our cares on Him in prayer so that we might know our own hearts. In answering our prayers, God takes what we are able to offer, no matter how meager and how imperfect, and He perfects it, giving it back in superabundance.
Prayer is a Strange Loop
When we are called to prayer, we are called to join the infinite. In being called to prayer, we are called into being from nothingness into eternal existence, like a New Creation. Our prayerful offering, whether that be praise or complaint, joy or suffering, becomes joined to the conversation of God speaking with God that reverberates throughout all of space and time.
God always initiates, calling us to prayer, and we answer. By answering, we are offering ourselves back to Him, thereby inserting ourselves into the conduit by which God talks to God. That is the conversation in which we are called to participate. That is the essence of the purpose of life on earth – to be the means by which what comes from God is returned to God, and in doing so we allow God’s work to transform us.
This cadence in which God calls, we answer, and He transforms, is the rhythmic beating heart of the Body of Christ.
We pray not to inform God of our what’s in our hearts, since He is already well aware. God knows our heart fully and in ways we never could without His grace. We pray to allow God’s light to shine in our hearts and reveal its depths to us. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”[10]
Without the light of His grace, our hearts are nothing but darkness. With the light of His grace, our hearts are transformed to look more like His.
Prayer works throughout all of space and time. When Jesus prayed, He prayed for us, and those prayers made us present with Him. We were there with Jesus in His prayers, which continue to reverberate through time and space. Our faithful prayers are joined to this great tapestry of prayer, which has been woven since the beginning when God spoke.
It is often said that Jesus came to fulfill what came before. While true, in a more profound sense, what came before happened in imitation of what Jesus would come to do. John the Baptist recognized this when he said, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.”[11]
In similar fashion, we pray to help bring about the New Creation that God has already accomplished, and yet He continues to call us to participate.
Prayer is Play
Play is the most serious thing we can do, because play is for its own sake, not for producing a result for some other end. As such, play is unproductive in the best way possible. Prayer is likewise. Prayer resets our focus from the regrets of the past and the worries of the future to the grace of the moment. Prayer disposes the heart to desire simply that, “Thy will be done.”[12]
Because play is undertaken for its own sake, there is no need for concern about developing the right skills prior to the attempt. We just do it. Of course, there are those unable to see the point of unproductive play. Like little Susan in the movie Miracle on 34th Street, these people simply need a lesson in the fact that playing doesn’t require a lesson.
When people don’t pray, they often use the excuse that they don’t know how to pray. They are making the same mistake that little Susan made, thinking that certain skills must be developed first. The truth is that the best type of prayer begins by admitting that we have no idea how to pray. The proper disposition of a humble heart in prayer is to admit, in emulation of Thomas Merton, that I have no idea what I’m doing.
In the very first post, I recounted my first attempt at recording the line of thought that became this blog. That attempt juxtaposed virtue and prosperity, noting that virtue is needed for societal prosperity, but that societal prosperity leads to the relaxing of virtue.
I now understand that this happens when virtue is exercised for the purpose of generating prosperity. Once prosperity is achieved, the reason for exercising virtue becomes muddled, thus opening opportunities for vice to seep in. Virtue that is exercised for its own sake is more powerful and more lasting because the reason for exercising it is never diminished.
In the same way, when prayer, like play, is done for its own sake, in glorious unproductivity, it takes on a power greater than we can imagine. Play-like prayer embeds itself in the words of God reverberating throughout eternity.
Triumph of Endurance
Ultimately, the path to sainthood involves living a life of constant prayer. Remaining in prayer is how we stay out of sin. Remaining in prayer is how we stay turned to God. Rightly focused prayer is preservation of proper humility. Rightly focused prayer is keeping watch with Him in the garden.[13] Practicing the discipline of embracing paradox teaches us how to do this.
Metanoia, true conversion of heart, is not a one-time decision, but rather a triumph of endurance. We pray for God to test our hearts so that we may know our hearts and allow Him to transform us, little by little if necessary. Humility begets trust, trust begets reliance, reliance begets surrender, and surrender begets perseverance.
In 1 Thessalonians 5:17, Paul tells us to pray without ceasing. We can do this by joining our prayer to all that we do, and to making all we do suitable for offering to God. Only in this way do we truly become free. “If a man cannot pray he is gagged; if he cannot kneel he is in irons.”[14]
Man finds it natural to worship. The draw of worship is innate, as is our inclination to faith. But God needed to tell us who He is and how to worship, otherwise His nature would be left to our imagination and our error. Embracing paradox helps keep us from stepping into those errors so that our prayer and worship remained directed to Him.
Jesus’s prayer in the garden of Gethsemane, which were prayers from God to Himself, were heard and answered in the miracle that gave us the New Creation. This is the fulfillment of prayer that we are called to imitate, by letting God talk to Himself through us in our unceasing prayer.
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”[15] We don’t demand to know all the answers; we don’t demand that God explain His plan to us. We can barely even understand ourselves.
The battle of prayer is a battle to know our own hearts in the same way that God knows our hearts. We pray not to tell, but to listen. If we can do that, and persevere in desiring Him, then we have no need to unlock the paradoxes. We can simply rest in His hands, embracing paradox alongside our friend Job.
[1] See Ephesians 6:10-17.
[2] Hebrews 4:12 NRSV-CI.
[3] See Luke 4:1-13.
[4] 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 NRSV-CI.
[5] See John 4:7-15.
[6] C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain.
[7] The Way of Paradox, p. 64.
[8] Confessions Book 10, Part II.
[9] See John 2:1-12.
[10] John 1:5 NRSV-CI.
[11] John 1:30 NRSV-CI.
[12] Matthew 6:10.
[13] See Matthew 26:36-46.
[14] The Everlasting Man, “Man and Mythologies.”
[15] Psalms 139:23-24.