HIGH SPIRITS: Let Us Pray
Aitken, Jonathan
HIGH SPIRITS JONATHAN AITKEN Let Us Pray IHAVE SPENT MOST OF THE SUMMER WRITING a new book, Prayers for People Under Pressure. The two subjects concentrate the mind wonderfully. Most of us spend...
...Personally I like short prayers of adoration taken from Scripture or from the words of great saints, such as: Be exalted 0 God above the heavens: let your glory shine over all the earth...
...Remember the story of the Publican in Luke Chapter 18 who stood at the back of the temple stumbling out the words: "God have mercy upon me a sinner...
...So it is essential to strike the right balance between petitionary prayer and other forms such as confession, contemplation, thanksgiving, and adoration...
...Adoration comes first because it is the starter motor of prayer, the energizer of all our communications to God...
...God loves to hear His children's requests but not to the exclusion of all other elements in the relationship...
...We should pray as we can, not as some religious book tells us to...
...One way of increasing the chances that our prayers will not be answered is to pray self-centeredly or disobediently...
...PSALM 57:13 NOW to the ping of the ages, immortal...
...The acronym stands for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication...
...The best prayer I have come across on this theme was written by Queen Elizabeth I's Lord High Admiral, Sir Francis Drake: 0 Lord when thou givest to thy servants to endeavour any great matter, grant us also to know that it is not the beginning but the continuing of the same unto the end until it be thoroug finished which yiefrieth the true gro rough him who for the finishing of thy work !aid down his fife, Our Lorrf and Saviour, Jesus Christ...
...It will not be a good one if praying is equated with asking...
...The first priority is to find time to pray...
...0 Lord 1 love the" My God and my all...
...Sometimes He spent a whole night in prayer...
...Jesus made this clear in John 14:13 ("Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it") and in John 15:7-8 ("If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will and it shall be done for you...
...The second priority of prayer is perseverance...
...These can become so oppressive that, paradoxically, they often provide strong reasons for requesting God's help...
...God likes to hear our petitions but He will only respond to them if they are presented in His name and in accordance with His will...
...Much of His guidance gets ignored by contemporary people who pray to Him, not least because of the pressures of modern life...
...Jesus told several parables about the rewards for persevering in prayer and He himself gave the ultimate example of finishing-power by His death and resurrection...
...For prayer is about God's will, not our wills...
...Anyone who says they are too busy to do this should read a marvelous book entitled Too Busy Not to Pray by Bill Hybels, the pastor of Chicago's famous Willowcreek Church...
...Hybels's argument in a nutshell is: Get your priorities right for God's sake and yours...
...But there is no reason why the Catholic Hail Marys orthe great Anglican confessions written by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer should not be prayers with wings to heaven provided the heart of the prayer giver is soaring with them...
...If one believes this, one starts to search for the right thoughts and language with which to express adoration...
...Even here in pagan Britain, where less than 10 percent of the population attends church even once a year, the polls say that over 90 percent of this same population addresses God in prayer much more often...
...Yet there are glimmerings of light into this mystery revealed by Scripture...
...Ignatius of Loyola, which sums this up beautifully: Take Lord and receive all my wilt, all my memory, all my small abilities and takntsaft that I have and possess...
...By following such a path we can position ourselves to receive God's greatest gifts: His mercy, His peace, and His grace...
...So we need to sort out our priorities on these two intertwined topics of prayer and pressure...
...Most of us pray—at least occasionally...
...In our hectic 21st-century lives it is not easy to imitate Him, but it should not be too difficult to carve out a daily 20 minutes of "quiet time" when the study door is shut, the mobile phone is off, and uninterrupted concentration can be given to prayer...
...fairest and strongest...
...So it appears that the practice of prayer is far greater than the practice of religion...
...Jonathan Aitken, a formerBritish MP and cabinet minister, is the author of seven books, including Nixon: A Life, and the Spectator's High Spirits columnist...
...AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO My God and my al FRANCIS OF ASSISI However good prayers written by other people maybe, reciting them by rote is not real prayer unless the heart and the lips are in unison...
...My God and my all...
...It follows that one of the greatest challenges of prayer is to discern God's will—and then to surrender to it...
...In these areas the Evangelical, Pentecostal, and Baptist traditions of extempore oral prayer have much to commend them...
...Both have to be deeply personal communications with God...
...Amen...
...This is particularly true as we move on down the ACTS format to Confession and Thanksgiving...
...He gave them not only the Lord's prayer but many more examples of how to pray...
...gldy God and my all...
...They are not always in harmony...
...Jesus encouraged us to come to him with our requests...
...fixed yet incomprehensible...
...The order is significant because asking comes last...
...One useful format for doing this is known as the ACTS structure...
...After God has been glorified, confessed to, and thanked, it is time for Supplication...
...unchanging yet the author of all change...
...For you gave these gifts to me, so to you I gfildly return them...
...1 TIMOTHY 1:17 0 God my glory and my confidence Highest, best, most mighty...
...NOVEMBER 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 43...
...invisible, the only God, be honour and giory for ever and ever Amen...
...Once you start persevering with a quiet time of 42 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2004 JONATHAN AITKEN regular daily prayer you are building a relationship with God...
...But they are not always granted...
...never new, never old...
...Only dear Lord, in your mercy, grant me your peace and your grace, for these are enough for me...
...Those who regard prayer as a way to summon up holy electrical energy to benefit their lives, fill their wallets, or even solve their problems have lost the plot...
...most far and yet most near...
...For how can we hope to receive His gifts and mercies if we fail to transmit to Him our love, reverence, and praise...
...Here is a 16th-Century prayer by St...
...The problem of unanswered prayer is a mystery, painfully highlighted every time a loved child dies, an earthquake or a terrorist strikes, or evil triumphs...
...Lord teach us to pray," was the cry of the disciples to Jesus...
...His prayer was far more acceptable to God than the self-justifying prayers of the religiously knowledgeable Pharisee who entered the temple at the same time...
...Jesus used to withdraw to lonely places early in the morning to say His prayers...
...Most of us spend a certain proportion of our lives feeling under pressure...
Vol. 37 • November 2004 • No. 9
