Other People's Prayers

Scripture Reading: Luke 11:1-4

I once heard a man begin to thank God for his food at the close of a church service. Bless his heart (that’s what we say around here for people we pity) it wasn’t all his fault. He had dozed or let his mind wander during the sermon and the preacher, without analyzing the situation well, called on this poor innocent to give the benediction. No one laughed or pointed out his error then or later because we all would have confessed, “But by the grace of God, there go I.”

I come from what might be called an “extemporaneous praying” tradition. What I mean is, we tend to believe the best and most spiritual kind of praying is the praying you don’t think about before you start talking to the Lord. You just say whatever comes to mind and whatever is in your heart. You are to be, as we say, led by the Spirit.

Now, we wouldn’t approve of that in our preaching or singing. None of us want to hear someone get up on a fine Sunday morning and make up a song out of whole cloth, notes and chords all a jumbled-up mess, and lyrics that resemble the angst of a teenager’s diary on a bad Friday. Nor, do we approve of a preacher who stands behind the pulpit, flops open his Bible, points his finger at a verse, and gives us a rambling exposition intermingled with whatever complaints have arisen in his heart the previous week. Yet, somehow praying should never be thought out beforehand, never written down, and we should never read another person’s prayer as if it were our own.

I’m exaggerating to some degree – and then again, maybe not.

I’m not saying extemporaneous, off-the-cuff praying is wrong. I do it all the time. I’m saying that it isn’t the only kind of praying we should do, and we could be helped by praying more thoughtfully. Here’s my biblical proof: Jesus, when asked to teach the disciples how to pray, told them, “When you pray, say…” That was followed by The Lord’s Prayer. That is what they were to say.

But we can go further. What are the Psalms? Are they not prayers? Are they not the Old Testament “Book of Common Prayers?” They are prayers meant to be prayed and sung by the people of God. They are someone else’s prayer that we are encouraged to make our own.

While the prayers of the Church Fathers and the saints throughout the ages are not divinely inspired in the way the prayers of the Bible are, they can be of help to us in our own prayer life. We can incorporate their prayers into our own prayer life. I would encourage you to do so.

Recently, I read some advice to writers and speakers. The person giving the advice suggested one thing anyone can do to improve their writing and speaking skills is to read good writers out loud. He said that reading out loud helps to ingrain the ways others effectively communicate into our minds. It does so in a way that reading silently in our mind doesn’t. I hadn’t thought of that before, and I am going to give it a try.

I think the same principle can be true with learning to pray more effectively. Pray the great prayers of the saints out loud and you might find that they help train you to pray your prayers in a better way.