On My Knees: Rebuilding our confidence in prayer

By Chris Band

Life has a tendency to knock our confidence in prayer. In the face of persistent difficulties, our prayer-fuelled hopes can be overwhelmed by such despair that we end up "on our knees" not so much in prayer, as in defeat. In this honest and engaging book, Chris Band discusses the issues that we may have about prayer but were perhaps afraid to ask: Is prayer wasted effort? Is God less involved in the world than we might wish? Is his will going to be done anyway, whether or not we pray? We discover that our prayers, far from being squandered by God, are powerfully and consistently used by him - both to build his relationship with us and to build his Kingdom through us. On My Knees examines our understanding of who God is and how he works in the world, taking us beyond proof-texts and wishful thinking, to the heart of what the Bible actually teaches about prayer. This encouraging and practical book will inspire and lead each of us afresh, to be on our knees, in prayer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Monarch Books
• Release date: Oct 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9780857217769

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

"This is where the real work is, I said, stamping my foot several times on the floor. A few friends were inspecting the conservatory that I’d just built, but I felt their appreciation was a little misdirected. For me, the achievement had not been in putting up the visible structure. That had taken my father and me just a few days and could almost have been described as the fun bit". The real feat had been in digging out and laying the foundations: several weeks of gruelling, back-breaking work; though I’m glad to say my dad’s mostly recovered now!

If I’m honest, my understanding of prayer for the first thirty years of my Christian life was little more than a pleasant-looking superstructure. The building appeared sound. The walls met quite neatly at the corners. Yet in truth, it was compromised by a foundation that was too shallow. The real work just hadn’t been done. As a result, my prayer life was ill-prepared for the tough questions that came along to shake it.

But that is how this book, in reality, got started. It didn’t begin with many answers about prayer but rather with an overwhelming number of questions. However, over the past nine years of reflection, most of those questions, which at first felt so undermining, have become my friends. The word question, in fact, derives from the Latin word quaestio, which means seeking. The word quest is taken from the same root. Questions, then, should send us looking for answers, not running for cover. They’re not so much to be regarded as barriers as doorways. Initially we find those doors closed, and that can feel threatening. But, as with careful thinking and reflection we try the handles, we find those same doorways opening before us, revealing new and promising vistas.

Throughout this book we will be building. In the Gospels, Jesus’ aspiration was that God’s Temple might be known as a house of prayer. And as his living temples, he wants no less for us. But if we desire a robust and enduring prayer life, we need a solid foundation. This consists both of who we perceive God to be (our doctrine of God) and also of how we understand him to be involved in the world (our model of providence). These two areas of belief are so all encompassing that it’s hardly an exaggeration to say that the study of prayer is the study of everything!

Our prayers are founded, first of all, then, on our understanding of the character of God. C. S. Lewis wrote, The prayer preceding all prayers is ‘May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.’¹ But who is the real Thou that we address in prayer? Theological doctrines of God vary from deism to classical theism, from open theism to the dipolar theism of process theology. Faced with such bewildering terms most of us might quickly take refuge in the claim that we believe in the God of the Bible! And yet even in our churches, we encounter, though not a different God, certainly different perspectives on who he is, shaped by our own emphases and traditions. And those varying beliefs about God most certainly affect the way in which we pray.

We can, after all, be many different characters in prayer, can’t we? We can be the dictator who demands from God, the compliant who readily submits to his will, the wrestler who struggles on in prayer, the defeatist who doubts the answer will ever come, or the determinist who believes everything is pre-decided anyway. Each of these approaches to prayer arises from a particular understanding of God, because what we expect him to do depends on who we believe him to be! This is why we will be examining God’s revelation of himself in Scripture with great care.

And our approach to prayer is also founded on God’s providence, the way in which we understand him to actively look after the world. The eminent German theologian Karl Barth defined providence as:

the superior dealings of the Creator with His creation, the wisdom, omnipotence and goodness with which He maintains and governs in time this distinct reality according to the counsel of His own will.²

As with doctrines of God, so also with models of providence, there is quite an array of options to choose from, even, as I found to my surprise, within a single church congregation. A number of years ago, as part of some postgraduate research, I interviewed around thirty people in my own church to obtain a clearer appreciation of how they understood God to relate to the world and, on the basis of that, how they prayed. Using variables such as human freedom, risk, evil, divine knowledge, miracles, and God’s experience of time, I was able to identify among the group at least nine recognizably different models of providence.³

At one end of the scale were those with a semi-deist understanding of God. They believed in his existence but had a limited expectation of his involvement in the world. At the other end were those with a determinist outlook. They held God to be in specific and meticulous control of everything, from what they would eat for breakfast to the turning of each individual atom. And there were, of course, many other positions in between. Clearly, everyone’s expectations of how, why, and if God would answer their prayers were being shaped by what they believed to be his chosen way of working in the world.

Through the following chapters I will be sharing the insights of a number of these individuals. I quote them not because their viewpoints carry any special weight; it is more to illustrate the impact that different beliefs have on our everyday practice of prayer.⁴

We will begin in part one by examining our foundations for prayer. This will involve subjecting our current ideas to close scrutiny. But it is surely right, if we are disappointed with prayer, that we examine the correctness of our theology before questioning the goodness of God. In part two we will start building our house of prayer by considering the impact that prayer has on us, on the world, and even on God himself. Then in part three we will meet the occupants, for the house is a residence in which we not only know the company of God and one another but also the less-welcome company of the surrounding powers of evil. Finally, in part four we’ll consider the house rules. How are we to behave in this place? In what way, exactly, has Jesus taught us to pray?

But good building work can’t be too hasty. So let’s start now where the real work is…

PART ONE

EXAMINING OUR FOUNDATIONS

CHAPTER 1

IS GOD UNDER-INVOLVED IN THE WORLD?

As I write this, I have just been diagnosed with clergyman’s knee. This condition is an inflammation just below the kneecap which is common among those whose work involves lots of kneeling. My doctor, unaware that I have been writing a book on prayer but knowing me to be a minister, was predictably sheepish when she asked me whether I spend much time on my knees. Reluctantly, I had to admit that I don’t. But, worried she might jump to the wrong conclusion, I quickly added, I do pray, by the way, but I tend to pace around the room a lot.

Being the wonderful doctor that she is, her response was very gracious: Well, it doesn’t really matter which position you pray from, does it?

She was right, of course: our physical posture doesn’t matter too much when we pray (and perhaps, like me, you prefer to be on the move). But there is another position that we pray from which really does matter. And that is our theological position. Unfortunately, however, our ideas about prayer don’t always serve us well. And they may not be as biblical as we might think. This can result in such personal disappointment that in the end it’s not so much us that’s on our knees as our prayer life itself.

In this first section of the book, I am going to explore two opposite ways of understanding God’s relationship to the world. In this chapter we will ask ourselves whether we’ve come to regard God as somewhat under-involved. Does the gift to us of free will mean that he is, by necessity, less involved than we might wish? And if so, what impact does that have on our confidence in prayer? Then in chapter 2 we will consider the contrasting perspective of God being over-involved in the world. By this term I refer to the idea that he has prearranged and predetermined all that will happen. But if the whole plan is already written, to be followed without deviation, then what meaning can be found in petition? What difference could our prayers possibly make?

These alternative understandings hinge largely on how we understand divine and human freedom to interrelate. For instance, has God limited his own freedom and power so as to guarantee ours (God as under-involved)? Or has he limited our freedom and power so as to guarantee his (God as over-involved)?

Now, undoubtedly, very few of us are the fatalists who believe God to be running the whole show, or the deists who suppose that he has actually left the building. But most of us do wrestle in varying ways with a sense of God being either under- or over-involved in the world. We can even swing rapidly from one opinion to the other as we react to events and situations around us. It might be, then, that you are able to identify some of your own questions or struggles about prayer as you read these first two chapters.

Later, in part two of the book, we will explore the idea that human freedom need not counteract God’s own freedom to act. So rather than understand him to be constrained (chapter 1) or controlling (chapter 2), we can approach him instead as a co-regent: one who has chosen, in large part through the gift of prayer, to freely share his reign with us.

It is necessary to mention that these first two chapters are somewhat more demanding than the rest, and I almost wished I could have put them at the end of the book! So if you do find them a little complex, perhaps you can return to them later on. But ideally we should start here because these preliminary issues are crucial to our understanding (or misunderstanding) of prayer. And the hard thinking will definitely be worth it, perhaps even just what the doctor ordered, if we’ve been experiencing pain as we kneel.

But before we get too ahead of ourselves, let’s begin by exploring the extent to which God’s action in the world might be described as self-restrained, and what effect this might have on our confidence in prayer.

To what measure is God self-restrained?

I have occasionally challenged people to show me any place in Scripture where God has forcibly changed someone’s mind. Invariably Pharaoh is the one who is mentioned. And it is true that during the ten plagues of Egypt we’re told several times that God hardened his heart. But there are also at least eight occasions where this leader is said to have hardened his own heart. If God were to have overridden Pharaoh’s will, surely that would have meant softening his heart rather than hardening it? And there is no indication of any divine mind control. It is rather the action of God, in sending the ten plagues upon Egypt, which hardened his heart (just as we can soften or harden the attitudes of those around us through our own actions).

The point I am making is that I fail to find a single place, either here or anywhere else in Scripture, where God violates human free will. He takes this most precious of gifts extremely seriously, even when we use it to reject what is right.

This gift means, by necessity, that God has chosen not to hold a monopoly on power. He is often described as omnipotent. This term is derived from the Latin words omnis (all) and potens (powerful). But while this helpfully reminds us that none is more powerful than God, we shouldn’t understand it to mean that he has all the power. On the contrary, history is the story of God giving away power.¹ C. S. Lewis, exploring the difficulty of human free will existing alongside omnipotence, similarly concluded: It seems to involve at every moment almost a sort of divine abdication.²

Our gift of freedom is, of course, motivated by God’s love. He doesn’t desire a relationship with us that is marked by one-sidedness and coercion, but rather one that is characterized by mutuality and consent. As Peter Baelz wrote:

Love requires freedom. It makes no sense to think that love can compel or manipulate a loving response. In giving freedom love has to let go … There are, then, many things which sheer power can do but which boundless love cannot do.³

If boundless love involves giving away power, then it must also involve risk. After all, love can be rejected and freedom can be abused. Perhaps it might have been simpler if God had used his sheer power to predetermine all human action. That way he could have guaranteed a perfect world by coercing us into always making the right choices. But that isn’t the story that history tells. It graphically and brutally illustrates that risk is a necessary corollary of freedom.

I am not sure this is a popular concept among Christians. I suspect that at times our version of divine protection is a world where God controls all events and all people around us while, naturally, respecting our own individual freedom. But free will is free will, and it would not be that if God were to hastily withdraw it every time it placed us or others in danger. Naturally we find this unnerving. Marjorie Suchocki writes, It feels riskier to be in a world where our power and freedom are real – there is a wistful preference for a sense that God is waiting in the wings to whomp on all evil.⁴ Our freedom, then, though a precious and loving gift, has also proven to be a costly one. Its sinful distortion has caused untold pain, and it cost Christ, who willingly bore the penalty for its misuse, the suffering of the cross.

But what does all this mean for prayer? What confidence can we have in praying for the safety of our loved ones, or for an end to bloodshed around the world, or any request for that matter that impinges on the will of another human being, if God has chosen this path of self-restraint? What hope can we have of his intervention in the world if he has effectively tied his hands by granting free will to humanity and free process to the physical world? Need this mean that he is somehow less involved than we might wish?

The answer, I believe, is no! Even though God has granted us a degree of power, this need not weaken our sense of his power. One of the people I interviewed about prayer offered this helpful understanding of the relationship between God’s power and our freedom:

I don’t think that God’s sovereignty is ever diminished because he has given us some power. It is not the case that God has ultimate power, but then when he gives us some, he loses a bit. I think that he still remains completely and utterly sovereign. But because of his love he can grant us power and we can exercise that power and do things that he is saddened by but he still doesn’t lose his sovereignty. God regretted that he made the earth in Noah’s day, but he didn’t fall off his throne … While God’s power is not diminished, he has chosen to hold off exercising power that rides roughshod over us. I think that my God is more powerful than the traditional view of God because he can give genuine power to others and still win at the end.

Divine self-restraint need not preclude God’s powerful involvement in the world. Yes, his restraint may shape the manner of his involvement, but it does not determine the extent of it. After all, is it not a greater expression of his wisdom and sovereignty that he can give genuine power to others, choosing not to override their will, and yet still win at the end? And though God stops short of manipulating our minds or compelling our actions, he can nevertheless be highly persuasive! For example, for the sake of the Ninevites, he could place Jonah, the reluctant evangelist, at the bottom of the sea in the belly of a big fish to reconsider his act of disobedience. Yes, Jonah’s options were severely limited, but even he, albeit with seaweed wrapped round his head, had to freely embrace repentance.

Let’s examine, then, whether our view of God’s self-restraint has become exaggerated to the extent that we regard him to be perilously under-involved in the world. We will do this by posing the following questions:

Do I believe that God can protect me and my loved ones?

Have I come to see prayer as being just about God changing me?

Perhaps I have to be the answer to my own prayers?

Do I believe that God knows my future?’

Do I believe that God can protect me and my loved ones?

If there is one request that is bound to feature in our daily prayers it is surely for the safety of those close to us. I spoke to one person, however, who admitted that his sense of confidence in God being able to answer this prayer had significantly