Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

May burning coals fall on them;
    may they be thrown into the fire,
    into miry pits, never to rise.

• Psalm 140:10

I am worn out calling for help;
    my throat is parched.
My eyes fail,
    looking for my God.

• Psalm 69:3

I pour out before him my complaint;
    before him I tell my trouble.

• Psalm 142:2

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
    He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
    he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
    for his name’s sake.

• Psalm 23:1-3

Praise the Lord, my soul,
    and forget not all his benefits—
… who satisfies your desires with good things
    so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

• Psalm 103:2, 5

Every day I will praise you
    and extol your name for ever and ever.

• Psalm 145:2

“There we have the fears, and if all that’s true, then why would we pray?
“1. Pray Because You’re Overwhelmed
“The great social sin of the modern world is naivete. Belief is out; cynicism is in. Where did that modern phenomenon come from? Historically, the Enlightenment set forth the great myth of human progress, which assumes that with the passing of time, everything is improving, people are becoming more whole, and the world is getting steadily better. That assumption, which served as the backbone of the developing world, was deflated by two world wars and the bloodiest, most barbaric century in recorded history. The balloon was popped on the optimism of human progress, leading to an equally widespread sweep of disillusionment. …
“Constantly overwhelmed lives should drive us to prayer at its purest and rawest, but the tendency for many of us is to pray safe, calculated prayers that insulate us from both disappointment and freedom.
“2. Pray Because Trust Comes before Faith
“We fear silence. But the thing that calms that fear isn’t faith; it’s trust. Faith is the assurance of what we hope for. Trust is confidence in the character of God.
“Before we can have faith that God will answer a given request, we simply have to learn to trust the character of the God we’re talking to. …
“Jesus hasn’t revealed a God we can perfectly understand, but he has revealed a God we can perfectly trust. Trust is the certainty that the listening God hears and cares. I trust the God who, even when he doesn’t make the suffering go away, wears the suffering alongside me. Trusting the God revealed in Jesus means silence is real, but it’s not forever.
“3. Pray Because Complaints Are Welcome
“God isn’t nearly as worried about our mixed motives as we are. I can prove it. Here’s a few prayers that made the cut as part of the inspired, inerrant, canonical Scriptures: Ps. 140:10, Ps. 69:3, Ps. 142:2
“If the Bible tells us anything about how to pray, it says that God much prefers the rough draft full of rants and typos to the polished, edited version. C. S. Lewis said of prayer, ‘We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.’
“The way your motives change isn’t by working them out in silence; it’s through such brutal honesty with God that he, by prayer, can refine your motives. Complaints are welcome.
“4. Pray Because the Only Way to Get It Wrong ls by Trying to Get It Right
“I find it so helpful that when teaching his disciples to pray, Jesus included this line right in the middle: ‘Give us today our daily bread.’ What a simple request! Bring your felt needs to God—the needs of this day—and talk to him about them. How should we pray? The most straightforward response is to talk to God about what’s on your mind. That’s it! You talk to God like a friend. You vent. You ask. You laugh. You listen. You unload. You just talk. You don’t try to sound more holy or pure or spiritual than you are. Prayer isn’t a noble monologue; it’s a free-flowing conversation, and the only way to get prayer wrong is to try to get it right.
“In the wise words of Candler School of Theology professor emerita Roberta Bondi, ‘If you are praying, you are already “doing it right.” ‘ ”

• Tyler Staton, Praying like Monks, Living like Fools

In this past week on the reasons we do not pray and now the reasons we should pray, Rev. Staton sets some boundaries.  There are very good reasons for us to pray.  The four reasons above are among them.  But also, the fact that God answers prayer.  God speaks to us.  Rev. Staton talks of the silence, but not the fact that if we talk to God until we run out of things to say, God can speak in those quiet moments.  We should expect an answer.  Sometimes we get the silence, but when are we silent?  We set aside ten minutes in the morning and when we stop talking, we grab our car keys and go to work.

Does God, at that moment say, “What kind of a conversation is this?  You don’t just ask, you make demands, and then you do not even stay long enough to hear my reply.”

That gets back to the fears of last week.  We overcome our fear that God might say “no” by getting up and walking off without listening for the “no.”  Not much faith in that.  Not much trust in that.  Not much hope in that.

In this first chapter, Rev. Staton entitled it Holy Ground, but it is not about finding a prayer closet that is our personal Holy Ground and we take our shoes off when we enter.  This Holy Ground is prayer itself.

We must fight for the time we have in formal prayer with God, but we must continue praying after we have prayed.  If we only have that ten minutes in our prayer closet, and we stop praying at that moment, a car will cut us off in traffic, the boss will spill coffee all over the report you put on his desk the night before, your only copy, and there might be a freak hailstorm that dings your car at work.

These aren’t punishments for cutting off the prayer, just examples that we need God every second of the day.  We need to keep the communication lines open.  Then, we might be pulling into our parking space at work, and we might hear God’s answer to our prayers.  Keeping the communication lines open means two-way communication can happen.

That is our Holy Ground.

Lord, guide me.  We are beaten down by this fallen world, but You have us in Your hands.  We may complain, even though we usually only have ourselves to blame.  But we need to keep our prayer time real.  Your Son did not have it easy.  He knows our plight.  And all You ask of us is that we trust You and we should do Your will on this earth.  And really, we can’t even do that without You in our hearts. Come in Lord and cleanse us.  Make us usable for Your kingdom.  In Your name I pray.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.