4/7/57

What Do You Say To God?

Scripture: Read Psalm 142.

Many people who go to a foreign land go there as tourists. What they see is interesting from the standpoint of variety. Because of the difference from what the traveler knows at home, certain customs, food, manner of speaking, and other expressions may seem interesting or even queer to the tourist. The tourist may even feel uncomfortable, and out of place, unless he is in the competent care of one who is experienced in the ways of the place where he is traveling - perhaps the guide of some agency like American Express. One of the penalties of being a tourist is that there is so little time to really get acquainted with people -- not only the way they act, but the way they think and the way they feel. This takes more time than there is available, when the trip involves so many sights that the tourist does not want to miss.

I suppose that prayer is, for many, somewhat like traveling in a foreign land. Perhaps one goes there like a traveler -- a tourist, feeling out of place, far from native, with the conviction that one really knows very little about the land. And, like most tourists, one moves on before too long, and goes somewhere else.

Well, perhaps the tourist needs a guide book in order to begin acquaintance with the land of prayer where one had decided to visit for a bit. What we are to consider this morning may be a page from the guide book, if you care to put it that way.

It is easy to say the word “Spain.” But to know Spain takes a lot of study and length of acquaintanceship and continued contact. It is easy to say the word “prayer.” But to know and experience prayer may take a lot of definition and experience.

It was a medieval Catholic saint, Brother Lawrence, who observed that prayer is establishing ourselves “in a sense of God’s presence by continually conversing with him.” And it was Protestant leader of the 17th century, Jeremy Taylor, who said that prayer is making “frequent colloquies, or short discoverings, between God and my soul.” Probably the best way to find out what prayer is is to “visit the land” and “stay with it” for a while in order to become better acquainted than it is possible to become on just a “short tour.”

The very language of prayer may be a problem at first. I have never ordered a meal in French, and if I tried I should have a rough time with my neglected and forgotten acquaintance with college French. But I should think that after doing it for a few weeks, it should not be too bad. Perhaps it would become a familiar experience. So it is with prayer. I said the prayers of a child when I was a child, and prayed by myself as a youth. But I was near-frozen with apprehension when, during college years, I made up my mind that there was no sufficiently good reason why I should not take my turn in at least a sentence or two of prayer in weekly meetings of the campus YMCA. What should I say? And how should I say it? Fortunately, I realized that I did not have to do a lot of research on what to say. There was no form, or content, to be learned -- except learning by experience to say what was on my mind.

What do you say to God when you want to pray? We can soon find out what the Psalmist said in the first verse of the 142nd Psalm. He had a controversy with God. He was appalled at the enemies of his life. He felt unnoticed in his need. He needed deliverance. “I cry with my voice to the Lord,” he says, “with my voice I make supplication to the Lord; I pour out my complaint before him. I tell my trouble before him.”

A good deal of prayer can be like that. And if that represents one’s need, it is well to say it! There is a considerable amount of life that puzzles, confuses, or even angers us. Why is man at the receiving end of so much cruel and brutal fate? Couldn’t God have done a better job of creating a world free from churning passions and crippling miseries?

If we had the power of the creation, would we not have made a world full of beauty and with no ugliness? --- With glorious skies and marvelous flowers, and breath-taking scenery --- but no floods, or tornadoes; no mosquitoes or poison ivy? We would not have included famine, terror or destruction. (We don’t know just how it could be done, but isn’t that the business of a creator, to get it done?) Yes, we think we have a controversy with God, when we have days of questioning and doubt and rebellion. Well, why not express the doubt and questioning? Say what is on your mind. After all, it’s foolish not to, since God knows it all, anyway. There’s nothing one can keep from Him, and it’s just as well for me to bring my complaints into the open.

What do we say to God when we have something to ask? Most of our prayers are petitions, or at least involve some asking. We can go to God with pleading words. We can ask for health and strength for us and for our loved ones. We ask for success at our tasks, and for prosperity. We ask for a good life for the ones we love. Is that wrong? Is it all right to ask for more laughter than tears, for more joy than sorrow, more happiness than trouble? Of course it is right to ask these things! For all of our days we shall pray: “Give us this day our daily bread.”

But let us not forget to ask, not alone for what we want to have, but for what we want to be. It is just as desirable, as having what we believe we want, to be honest, courageous, kind, forbearing, patient when life pushes us; to be Christ-minded.

What do you say to God when the divine hand is laid upon your shoulder? Your heart is stirred and you suspect that you are offered a real leading if you will accept His direction. The prophet, Isaiah, tells us that he once heard the voice of God in his heart: “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?” And, being willing to accept the divine impulse, he answered, “Here am I! Send me.” [Isaiah 6: 8].

What you say to God depends partly on what you have in mind, what are your needs and hopes and calling. And it doesn’t require a foreign language nor a diplomat’s vocabulary. You can begin right where you are. There is a fair sense in which prayer is not initiated by you, anyway. It is initiated by God, who is always present at every time or place in His universe, and who is listening, searching, calling for you. Your prayer is your response to God. So it is God himself who best teaches us to pray, if we want to learn to pray and to practice the experience of His presence.

If you have ever prayed, you have already responded to God. If you have ever wanted to pray, you have begun a response. And if you have never prayed, it may be because you have not recognized his touch.

Look at some of the ways in which God touches people. (1) Have you every looked, with earnest appreciation, into the skies on a clear night when the stars are so bright that it almost seems you could touch one of them? And then, as you look through the multitude of those twinkling lights, you are well-nigh overwhelmed by the immensity of the universe, only partly known to the most highly trained of human observers? If you have ever had such an experience, exalting and humbling you at the same time, it may be that God has touched you at that point.

(2) A young college graduate, having become accustomed to being a careful observer, described a similar kind of observance. “In recent years,” he writes, “I have been struck more and more by my ability to direct my life according to my own best intentions. I find myself again and again caught in patterns of behavior I have firmly resolved to avoid. I discover a weakness within myself which I have not been aware of. At the same time, when I go off on long walks in the country, which has always been a pleasure of mine, I have a vague, uneasy sense that something else or someone else is around and trying to communicate with me. So I ask, ‘What goes on here?’” If you have ever felt like that, confronted with some such sense of “otherness” that may be mysterious or awesome to you, you have been exposed to one of the experiences by which God breaks through a person’s shell to his consciousness.

(3) Some people recognize God through a sense of duty. One man found this in the midst of great sorrow. He lost, in a few months, his wife and two of his children. And he said to a trusted friend, “At that time, I soon discovered that life was spelling out for me a four-letter word, d-u-t-y. So I have tried ever since to do my duty to my colleagues, my family, and my community.” It was through this that he came gradually to relate these duties to his God. So wherever there is an “ought” in your life, when you have nothing that you can see to go on except what you know you “ought to do” and the “right,” it may be that there is the point at which God is touching you.

(4) And again, if you have ever had a suspicion that your greatest problem is yourself --- and not somebody else, or something else --- then you may have an undercurrent of feeling the need for guidance and power, even the need for forgiveness. That may be the means by which God is touching you with a reminder to turn to Him.

(5) Or it may be that you have left yourself “carried away” by some significant idea, or some great music, “lost” for a time to the worries and cares and littleness of living, inspired to become more than your average, normal self. This experience may have come from God, and may be His means of touching you, opening the desire, the wanting, to pray.

(6) And, of course, the word, the will, the presence of God, often dawns more clearly in the minds of those who are reading, searching, meditating, on the Bible.

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It probably makes a difference how you think of God when you pray. Does your mind picture God as policeman or judge? As kindly grandfather? As remote First Cause? This is hardly the way to begin. For these are not the most accurate pictures or ideas of God.

a. If you can think of God as a Person, infinitely more than this, and yet as a person, that is a good place to begin. Then you can pray as from life to life -- your life to the Great Life. You can say “You” and “I” with some meaning, in a two-way conversation.

b. Think, further, of God as a loving person -- not as an indulgent or pampering parent or friend, but as a person filled with genuine love for you. He created you; He watches over you in compassionate love; He has great plans and hopes for you. And what he wants most of all is the return of your love.

If you get the kind of mind picture of God that is anything like this, and that makes it clearer to you that God uses almost any kind of experience as a means to try to communicate with you, you may be brought to try to converse with God saying “I” and “You” and being as frank as you know how to be with your very best friend -- and even more open to the conversation.

1. You might ask yourself the question: “What are the good things I have right now in my life for which I know I am not responsible.” It doesn’t take long to make quite an impressive list! Then test the thought that God is responsible for these good things that you know you are not responsible for.

2. Next, write out a list of things that right now you consider evil. Sickness, failure of some sort, suffering for loved ones, misunderstandings, broken hopes, your sins (being specific with yourself as to what sins) and what else? Then, against this list, test the thought that everything which you consider evil, God permits in the freedom with which he surrounded you at your creation. What are your findings? Is there any good for which God is not responsible? Is there any evil that may be permitted by God for a special purpose? This may be the beginning of the personal relationship that is prayer. God starts it in His creation and love, and omnipresent desire to be known of you. Your prayer is your response.

Instead of saying, “God, he,” you say, “O God, you”... and you have begun to pray and you can take the step of conversation with God. “O God, I have this --- to say to you. What have you to say to me?”

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Now, what are some of the simple “helps” or “rules” in prayer.

I. Obviously, one is “be yourself.” Be natural before God. Don’t pretend some emotion that you haven’t got. Say what is on your mind and heart. If you are plagued with anxiety just pray: “God, I’m awfully worried,” and go on pouring it out in your own way --- and listening, too. If the scriptural-type language that you have heard some of us ministers use doesn’t come natural to you --- don’t use it. There is no pious rule of words or phrases that must be said.

And this matter of being your own sincere self goes a lot deeper than the use of words. If you feel crushed, or resentful, over an overwhelming tragedy, do not think that you have to say meekly with your lips, “Thy will be done” when what your soul is screaming is “This is a terrible thing! God, how awful it is that you let it happen.” Tell God just how you feel! How can you expect an honest, illuminating answer from God unless you first tell Him, with honesty, what you have to say?

The first really honest conversation one man had with God began when he walked away from the coffin of his little boy, dead of polio. And under his breath he said, to nobody but God alone, “God, I’ll get back at you for this. I’ll get back at you for this.” Later, he said to a friend, “That’s the way I talked to God. I suppose it was foolish to suppose that I could ever get back at God. Yet it was honest, and so it kept the relationship open with God. That was the way I felt, and getting it off my chest at least cleared the atmosphere. Then I gradually came to see that death does have to go into some kind of framework that only God can adequately fashion. I read a lot about the experiences of men suffering before God, especially Job. In time, Job’s sentiments became mine, or almost mine. I know now, that my Redeemer does live. And I don’t think I should know it so deep down and confidently if I hadn’t been mad at my Redeemer once --- and said so.”

Be yourself, be honest, open up to the Father your secrets, your desires, your heart, your desperations, your hopes.

II. Another good rule is, “Begin right where you are.” You are where your needs are. In those needs you will probably pray for peace and tranquillity of mind; for power for living; for forgiveness of wrong. You want peace from the little fears that riddle some lives. You want power to cope with life when the ball goes over the plate too fast for you to hit it. If it is not peace of mind or power for living that you need at the moment, it may be that you know you need to be forgiven, to be made clean and wholesome again. This is a need if you have any burden of guilt from which you long to be free.

So, in these needs, or others, begin to pray in natural language and with sincere and frank spirit. Pray for yourself, so long as you know you are selfish in that part of your praying. As you grow in prayer and grace, you will find plenty beyond yourself to pray about also.

But, there are three good prayers at the beginning. First, “O God, help me,” or “Help someone I know.” (to keep my temper, to find a job, to keep calm inside, to get well again -- be specific.) And a second is: “O God, forgive me.” Again be specific, simple and direct. “I spoke in anger; I was jealous; I kicked the dog; I lost my patience with the children; I didn’t try to encourage my friend.”

And then third say, “Thank you, God.” (for my life, for my health, my wife, my brains, my friend’s good fortune -- whatever else.)

And having begun, in your own way, and in your own language to pray, “God help me,” “God forgive me,” and “Thank you, God,” you will find the friendship with the Father growing and you may expect a new confidence in prayer with Him.

And let this be like the love in your family, a growing maturing thing all the days of your life.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, April 7, 1957.

Also at Vesper, WI, Congregational Church, April 11, 1957.

Also in Wisconsin Rapids, March 15, 1964.