The topic of Prayer, I have realised, has been the central theme of many things I have been reading and researching lately. Be it in books, sermons, podcasts and even scripture, I have come to understand that the praying life is at its core, life with God. Prayer, in my own life, has never really been about solemn liturgical sayings, nor Grace before meals and not even about asking God for stuff, but the older I get, the more certain I am on this one truth: That Prayer is a way of life, the kind of life that says: “God is alive and He is here and He wants to be with me.”
I know this deeply in my own life, but I have toiled with finding the words to express what has been stirring in my heart about this kind of life! So when I came across this sermon by John Mark Comer, called “Fixed Hour Prayer” as part of the Prayer practice at his church, I found it really fitting to share on.
Continue reading to see what I took away from this teaching, you can also access the teaching here.
“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
1 Thessalonians 5vs16~18This line from the New Testament simply yet beautifully quite simply captures what a life of following Jesus really is all about. Living right in the Kingdom of God is moving through life in a posture of joyful prayer and gratitude.
“Proseuchomai,” the Greek word for “to pray” holds the intention of face to face with God. It reminds me of when Moses would talk with God in the book of Exodus.
“The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.”
Exodus 33vs11In Thessalonians, Paul is establishing that prayer is not a functional transaction but a relational movement. You don’t “tick” prayer off your to-do list, you live in it.
Comer describes prayer as “a whole life orientation toward God” while Robert Mulholland defines prayer as “an established posture of relationship with God that becomes the context within which we experience all the events and relationships of our lives.”
When Paul wrote Thessalonians, he intended you to realise the end goal of your life to be aware of and connected to God. In the book of Galatians, Paul talks similarly, but using the metaphor of “walking in the Spirit”
“So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.”
Galatians 5vs16This is the picture of living side by side with God.
Jesus calls it “Abiding.”
“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.”
John 15vs4“These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”
John 15vs11Here, Jesus talkings about the joy that will overflow from your life when you abide in him. The joy He speaks of is a deep pervasive sense of wellbeing at a soul level, the fruit that our souls crave. This kind of life that abides in Jesus may also be known to you as “quiet time” or “contemplation” or even “practising the presence of God”.
Dallas Willard said, “The first and most basic thing we can and must do is to keep God before our minds… this is the fundamental secret of caring for our souls. Our part in thus practising the presence of God is to direct and redirect our minds constantly to Him. In the early time of our “practising” we may well be challenged by our burdensome habits of dwelling on things less than God. But these are habits ~ not the law of gravity ~ and can be broken. A new, grace~filled habit will replace the former ones as we take intentional steps toward keeping God before us. Soon our minds will return to God as the needle of a compass constantly returns to the north. If God is the great longing of our souls, He will become the pole star of our inward beings.”
Comer speaks about the three part phrase that his church (which, at the time, was Bridgetown Church) lives by. He says there are ultimately three goals of apprenticeship to Jesus… Be with Jesus, Become like Jesus, Do what He did. It’s not a formula, rather it is a flow. And although it’s nor formulaic, one could argue that to grow in apprenticeship to Jesus, we must first of all be with Him, we must abide in Him, we must practise His presence!
Are you doing whatever is necessary to connect with Jesus at the start of your day and then living your day out of that place.
“But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
Matthew 6vs6This is what Jesus means when he talks about, “what is done in secret.” This is, in Christian terms of today we call “the secret place.” However, translating this from the original text written according to 1st century culture, we must remember that Jesus was not talking about a physical place but a posture of your heart. A posture rooted out of a place of awareness and seamless connection to the Father. It is living out of this place that opens your heart to the ultimate source of joy. It is this kind of life of abiding that seamlessly connects the discipline of abiding to the fruit of joy.
The beauty of the way of Jesus is that joy is not from out there, but within you. You don’t need more money, or a nicer house, new car, promotion, or a relationship… those things are all good and well, but you don’t need that to tap into joy! There is an undercurrent running right beneath the distraction of the mind and the disordered love of the heart. The fruits of the spirit are the by products of life in the Spirit, not a life in the world.
How do we find this kind of life?
Slow Down
Living in a world that is rapidly becoming too fast for our capacity results in our lacking ability to live out of abiding. Abiding doesn’t fit in well with hurry culture. But the paradox is that a life of hurry will sweep the rug away from under a life of abiding. This goes along with the well known phrase: “If the devil can’t make you sin, he'll make you busy!” and it’s simply because both sin and hurry have the same effect of cutting your life off from relationship with God. When you sin, you are losing your trust in God. When you hurry, you do the same. When you hurry, you step out of the moment in a futile and frantic attempt to bend space and time to your will because you’re constantly running out of time to achieve all you feel compelled to achieve.
It’s not just the workaholics that need to slow down and cut out. It’s everyone in our society that is living lives filled to the brim with meaningless activities and excuses to keep busy as a futile attempt to feel purpose, the kind of purpose which funny enough doesn’t actually come from busyness but from abiding.
Open up your life to the flow of the Spirit
Opening your life to the work of the Spirit means removing the obstructions and obstacles that clutter your life.
John Ortberg encourages asking this question before stepping into something; “Does this activity/choice/action open me up to the flow of the Spirit? Or block the flow of the Spirit?” This question goes beyond the ‘moral’ lens of whether you’re sinning or not. Because the far better question is whether it is leading you into a deeper relationship with God, deeper into love and joy and peace… deeper into what we long for at a soul level or not… because when you live in that place, sin is not even a part of the question.
In “Practicing the Presence of God” Brother Lawrence writes that the most important part of practicing the presence of God is “renouncing once and for all whatever does not lead to God.”
You can do this at all times during your days… simply asking; “Does this lead me closer to God or not.” Whether this is a daily chore or a hobby or a Church activity…. You should be able to invite God into all of your life.
Arrange your day around the practice of the Presence of God
The practice of Prayer comes down to your schedule. For a well rounded walk of spirituality, we need both structure and spontaneity. Stephen Covey said; “We achieve inner peace when our schedule is aligned with our values.” The deep soul level connection that we crave is found in prayer (and that life of prayer referring to a whole person relational orientation to God. All. Day. Long)
Dallas Willard writes: “You must arrange your days so that you are experiencing deep contentment, joy, and confidence in your everyday life with God…. You must arrange your days so that sin no longer looks attractive to you.” Like we mentioned earlier, there is a way to live where sin is not even a factor on your horizons
We must learn to live in such a way that SIN NO LONGER LOOKS ATTRACTIVE TO YOU. And that way of living is practicing the presence of God, it is the way of living where your entire beings attention is set on GOD.
“Prayer, more than any other single activity, is what places us in the flow of the Spirit. When we pray, hearts get convicted, sin gets confessed, believers get united, intentions get encouraged, people receive guidance, the church is strengthened, stubbornness gets melted, wills get surrendered, evil gets defeated, faith is born, hope grows and love triumphs. In prayer ~ in the presence of God ~ we come closest to being fully ourselves… the goal of prayer (or life with Jesus) is to live all of my life and speak all of my words in the joyful awareness of the presence of God.” John Ortberg
We become closest to being fully ourselves when we are living aware of the presence of God.
How do we take intentional steps to keep God before our minds?
One practice from the way of Jesus that stems from far before His time is a called “Fixed hour prayer / liturgy of the hours”.
The Psalmist wrote:
“Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress, and he hears my voice.”
Psalm 55vs17It is simply, three times a day, pausing to offer whatever you are thinking, feeling and doing up to God. John Mark boldly states that if you aren’t finding connection in your prayer life, are getting bored with it or simply have no desire to pray this way, it’s because you’re not praying, you’re pretending. You’re not actually offering up to God what it is that you’re thinking and feeling ~ you’re filtering your lousy thoughts and proceeding to offer up to God, whatever it is that is left that you should be thinking and you should be feeling.
He is God and He knows all.
“Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable.”
Hebrews 4vs13Prayer comes alive when you stop praying what you should pray and start praying where you’re actually at. There is a discipline to it because it requires the intentionality of being present and unafraid of reality.
Prayer multiple times a day has been a key factor in the lives of God fearing men and women long before Jesus, it’s not some new trend, it’s an ancient Spiritual discipline.
“Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.”
Daniel 6vs10 This kind of fixed hour prayer was a way of life for Daniel. Morning, noon and night he got down to pray. Note that there is NO COMMAND in the Torah (or even the whole Bible) to pray three times a day! Yet, Daniel was willing to die, to give up the chance of a lifetime just because he will not break his practice of prayer.
And if Daniel realised that if he didn’t ground himself in this practice of the presence of God, he wouldn’t stand a chance in the corrosive soil of a place like Babylon, then neither do you in the corrosive soil of the 21st century.
Daniel needed this practice of prayer, Jesus needed this practice of prayer, John Mark Comer needs this practice of prayer and so do you and I. And no, this is NOT a legalistic guilt trip! This is how you get IN ON LIFE and love, and joy, and peace.
Be challenged to a life of fixed hour prayer. Simply pausing three times a day to bring God into your mind. You can start your day like John Mark describes by asking God. “ What is pleasing to you today?” you can read a Psalm, you can pray the Lord’s prayer, the Examen, Lectio Divina, prayer cards or a prayer walk. You can take 5 minutes or an entire hour. However, it looks, you are simply taking this time to pause and recenter into God. It will, in time, become a habit. It will become an essential part of your life that you cannot live without, and just like the practice of anything else, you must stick with it for your mind to build it into rhythm
Through practice
Through discipline
Through faithfulness
Invite God in. Even if it’s “God, help”
Look for the windows where you can invite God in and train your mind for this habit to stay.
Prayer is not about the great questions or major decisions. You already know 99.9% of God’s will for your life, it’s in the verse:
“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
1 Thessalonians 5vs16~18~ X ~
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