Day 39.

While I was at university, sitting on high hills, or travelling around in my search for meaning my unrecognised ‘prayer life’ was intense. “God, if you are there, please reveal yourself to me.” Even when I was swearing at God, with all my profanity, in Aunty Margaret’s paddock by the Northern Wiaroa river, I was praying.

I stopped reciting prayers thirty years ago. For 15 years I used to get down on my knees and rattle my way through my lists, and pray for those whom I thought I should, and feel I had done my bit for the days beginning. Then it became unsatisfying, it became a chore I did not enjoy much. I had over 20 books in my library on prayer and I had read them all. Many of them are classics and what they said is true – we need to pray. I prayed through the concept of the Lord’s Prayer (using each sentence as a beginning thought), I prayed through the sanctuary furniture. I used the ACTS formula –(Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication), and other formulas. I struggled to learn the art of prayer, and then one day I stopped – it was meaningless, I saw nothing for it. It didn’t change me & I had some questions about the whole thing. I suffered the anguish of the empty shrine. It was while struggling in this valley of despair that I realised God did not want the mechanics of prayer – he wanted me! I realised I had probably been closer to God before my conversion when I sat on lonely hills asking Him if He was there. A morning ritual, built on the paranoia of performance that has become meaningless, has no significance in the spiritual life.

You want to know the best secret for a good prayer life – just do it! Anywhere, any time!

I guess I picked up the concept in my early Christian days that I had to get on my knees every morning and work my way through a prayer. The spiritual gymnastics went with the daily reading of the Bible, until I realised that I was part of a privileged class who could read and write in a world where most cannot. Did this then exclude the majority of this earth’s population, both past and present, from a relationship with God because they couldn’t read a Bible?

Please do not misunderstand me. Answers to life’s great questions come via His word. The Bible is full of answers and my life of faith is based on the answers I found in His word, but I do not have to read the Bible to have a life of faith and my salvation is not dependent on whether I have a daily Bible reading or not – this can become salvation by works. Abraham had no Bible, but what was he doing under the Oak Tree at Mamre? The heroes of the Bible did not have Bibles under their arms or on their shelves at home as they staggered from one daunting crisis to another, but they were men and women of faith. TBC