When God is Silent: Praying in the Words of Another

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The first prayer that I remember praying was one I learned. It was a bedtime prayer. I don’t recall whether I learned it from my mother or someone else. It went like this:

Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

To be honest, this prayer disturbed me. Up to that point, it hadn’t occurred to me that I could die in my sleep. The possibility terrified me. The prayer sounded more like an invitation for God to take my life than a prayer for divine protection. But many people have found it helpful to pray using the words of others. Sometimes, these are rote prayers, like the bedtime prayer I learned to recite as a child. Others pray written prayers that are published.

My Christian experience began among people who looked down on written prayers and rituals in general. They believed that the best prayers were spontaneous, framed in one’s own words. Liturgical prayers (prayers that were memorized and repeated) were part of what they viewed as dead traditionalism, and written prayers were even worse.

Yet, it is just as easy for so-called extemporaneous prayer to be undeveloped and unreflective. Often, extemporaneous prayer is not spontaneous at all but a repetition of phrases and themes that we have learned from listening to the prayers of others. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Everyone learns to talk by listening to the conversations of others. The vocabulary of prayer is much the same. Indeed, plenty of evidence in the New Testament suggests that the early church learned to pray primarily by imitation. One prominent example of this is the form of prayer that Jesus taught when his disciples asked him to teach them how to pray. According to Luke 11:1, Jesus introduced his prayer with the words: “When you pray, say …” Matthew’s version begins with a similar command: “This is how you should pray …” (Matthew 6:9). The prayer’s petitions, which are voiced using the first-person plural, also imply that Jesus expected the church to recite it together (Luke 11:3–4; Matthew 6:11–13).

From its earliest days, the church has prayed in both modes—sometimes by praying the words of others verbatim and at others speaking to God using their own words. It does not have to be an either/or choice. We can pray the Lord’s Prayer word for word as Christ delivered it to the church, and we can also use it as a template by adding concerns that are specific to our lives.

One of the first pictures we have of the church is that of a church that prayed together. This is where we find the disciples immediately after Christ’s ascension. They returned to Jerusalem and went upstairs to the room where they were staying: “They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers” (Acts 1:14). Two questions immediately come to mind. First, how could they pray constantly? Second, what did they say?

When some of us pray, our minds wander after only a few minutes! Did the first disciples really engage in a marathon prayer session that lasted seven weeks? Surely they had to take breaks for eating and sleeping. We know that they stopped at least once to conduct business. Acts 1:15–26 says that “in those days,” the disciples took time to choose someone to replace the traitor Judas. As for the content of these prayers, it seems likely that it was a mixture of praying based on tradition, quotes from the Psalms, and specific requests arising out of their circumstances.

Everyone who learns to pray begins by praying words they have heard from another.

James 5:13 declares, “Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise.” The specific mode of prayer that James recommends for the cheerful is song. The word that is translated “sing songs of praise” is a Greek term that literally means “to play on a harp.” It is related to the word for a psalm and is a reminder of the value of using the book of Psalms as a resource for our prayers and the vital role that singing plays in our overall prayer life. We are used to thinking of singing as an act of worship. Indeed, for many in the church, singing is worship. But singing is also a form of prayer.

Another revealing feature of the command of James 5:13 is the connection that it makes between music and emotion. We know from experience that music has an affective quality. Most of us do not choose our music based on its technical quality but because of the way it makes us feel. The same is true of the church. Today’s church uses music to create a mood and attract visitors. Worship and music are so identified that if someone says that we are going to worship, most people will assume they mean we are going to sing. Yet, when Acts 2:42 lists the priorities of the first disciples, it does not mention music or even worship. Instead, it says that they “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”

Nevertheless, the New Testament does show that music had an important place in the early church. Paul and Silas sang through the night while in prison (Acts 16:25). John’s vision of heaven’s worship includes singing with musical instruments (Revelation 5:9; 14:2–3). John does not describe the melody, only its overall effect. He says that it was “like the roar of rushing waters and like a loud peal of thunder” (Revelation 14:2).

When we sing, we express our emotions as well as our thoughts. Furthermore, there is a physical dimension to music-making. Its sonic nature resonates with us on our deepest level in the most literal sense. “Music is a very bodily business, whether or not the human voice is used,” Jeremy Begbie explains. “Our physical, physiological, and neurological makeup shapes the making and hearing of music to a high degree.”[1] Singing enables us to pray with the whole person and not only with words.

The main thing that troubles those who are uncomfortable with memorized prayer is its liturgical nature. It bothers them that the words they pray are not their own words. Until they pray them so often that they become second nature, it feels as if they are speaking to God in someone else’s voice. But is this really such a bad thing? The fact that some forms of prayer are ritualized speech is not necessarily a condemning factor either. Dead rituals can indeed pose a danger, but in such cases, it is the deadness, not the fact that they are rituals, that poses the problem. Rituals are merely repeated actions that become meaningful to us by their repetition.

Some kind of rote praying is a feature of every Christian tradition, just as every church has its own liturgy, whether it is formal or informal. Everybody who learns to pray begins by praying words they have heard from others. In a way, none of us begins by praying in our own voice. We must first learn a vocabulary and a pattern of speech. It shows us what to ask for and how to ask. It enables us to put into words feelings and desires for which we previously had no name. Over time, what once sounded like an unfamiliar voice eventually becomes a way to find our own.

[1] Jeremy S. Begbie, Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 47.

When God is Silent-Awkward Conversation

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Some conversations are just hard: telling someone about the loss of a loved one; talking to the kids about the facts of life; informing an employee that their contract will not be renewed; making small talk with a person whom you have virtually nothing in common. But few conversations are quite as challenging as trying to talk with someone who seems to have nothing to say.

I say this to make a point about God, or to be more precise, to make a point about our experience with God. God does not seem to be much of a conversationalist. He is mostly silent when we talk to him. We know from Scripture that God has a voice. According to the book of Genesis, the first words ever spoken were God’s words: “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). Yet, the Bible also shows that God is no chatterbox. God indeed spoke to Moses “face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (Exodus 33:11). He spoke to Abraham the same way, but ordinary conversation has never been God’s primary communication mode, at least not the kind of conversations we are used to having.

God has chosen to speak through others most of the time: prophets, preachers, and occasionally angels. Even then, God has never shown himself to be what you could describe as voluble. His words have been, for the most part, relatively few and sometimes far between. Long gaps of years, decades, centuries, and even millennia separate the occasions where God speaks to his people.

We assume that it would be a comfort to hear God speak directly to us. Yet Scripture suggests that we are more likely to be unnerved by the experience. When Israel heard God’s voice, they were so put off by the experience that they begged him to stop. God came to Elijah in a gentle whisper, but on Sinai, it was with a shout and in a blaze of fire. “Go near and listen to all that the Lord our God says. Then tell us whatever the Lord our God tells you,” they begged Moses. “We will listen and obey” (Deuteronomy 5:27). It seems more likely that if God spoke directly to us, we would react as they did. Or we would put our hands over our ears in stunned silence as Job did (Job 40:3–5).

We assume it would be a comfort to hear God speak directly to us.

Taken as a whole, the Bible describes many occasions where God revealed himself to specific individuals, but very few had a face-to-face conversation with him (Exodus 33:11; Numbers 12:8). As the writer of Hebrews observes, “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe” (Hebrews 1:1–2).

Whatever prayer may be, it is not an ordinary conversation. Believers in every generation have understood prayer as one of the means by which God communicates to his people. Yet it is a conversation where we do the majority of the talking. In prayer, we approach God but do not see either face or form and do not hear his voice. Therefore it is a conversation that lacks all the normal cues we rely upon for meaning. When we talk to God, we cannot rely upon inflection, body language, or facial expression to gauge his response the way we can when conversing with others.

Prayer differs from ordinary conversation in another respect. Those who pray often talk to themselves as well as to God. The self-talk of prayer is not a pep talk or even positive thinking. When we talk to ourselves in prayer, we remind ourselves of the truth we already know. We remember God’s disposition toward us and base our expectations upon it. This kind of prayer talk amounts to a confession of faith made in the presence of God.

If prayer is not a conversation in the ordinary sense, then what is it? Prayer is a conversation that moves primarily in one direction. It moves from the believer who prays to the God who hears. God’s silence does not mean that he is unresponsive. The first assumption of faith is that we have God’s attention. 1 John 5:14-15 assures us: “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.”

The key to understanding John’s bold and frequently misunderstood promise is to note that to “hear,” in this sense, means something more than to take notice of something. To hear as John uses the term is to grasp the full implications of something. God knows both our desire and our true need. He also knows how our request fits into his plan.

It might help if we thought of prayer as communion instead of conversation. The essence of communion is shared experience. The mistake we make is to interpret God’s silence as absence or disinterest. In true conversation, listening is interaction as much as speech. Listening may even be more of an exchange than words because, to really listen, we must enter into someone’s experience.

Sometimes when we pray, we feel like we need to do something to attract God’s attention. We are like a person on the ground waving their hands at a plane passing high overhead, hoping that someone up there will see us. God does not have to come down from on high to take note of us. We do not need to arrest his attention. Although we often talk about “coming” into God’s presence, the truth is that we are already there.

We are not trying to capture God’s attention but responding to an overture that he has already made. Not only was God the first to speak, he spoke to us long before we ever uttered a word to him. He has revealed himself in creation and by his written word. We do not need to feel God’s presence to know that he is present when we pray. Psalm 139 assures us that wherever we are, God is already there. “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” the psalmist says. “If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there” (Psalm 139:7–8).

The awkwardness of prayer should not put us off. It does not originate with God but with us. We have felt uncomfortable with other conversations we have had and have pushed through the discomfort to say what needed to be said. How much more should this be true when it comes to God? “You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways,” the psalmist declares. “Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely” (Psalm 139:3–4). We do not need to feel that God is near to be in his presence. We do not need to be comfortable to pray. We do not need to speak nicely to be heard. Before we have even uttered a word, God knows our minds and hearts completely.

People of Prayer-Today in the Word Interview

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I am a little late with this. I should have posted it January 1. I am this month’s devotional writer for Today in the Word and the topic is People of Prayer. You can watch my interview about it below with my friend and colleague Jamie Janosz, who is Today in the Word’s managing editor. If you would like to read the devotions, you can find them here. The devotions are short, so if you want to catch up, it should be pretty easy. I also write the monthly “Practical Theology column for Today in the Word and you can find it by clicking on the tab at the top of my web page. Speaking of prayer, I am thrilled to be writing a monthly column on the subject for Mature Living during 2023.

All of this might give the impression that I am an expert on the subject of praying. Well, I suppose that as a preacher, former pastor and Bible college professor, I am a professional. That is to say, I know how to pray out loud in a group. But I’ve never felt like an expert. My personal prayers have always seemed like a bit of a train wreck to me. Or rather, as I often like to refer to them, “awkward conversations with God.” That’s why my January column on the subject in Mature Living was entitled “Prayer for Amateurs.” On the one hand, when it comes to prayer, we are all experts in the sense that most of us have cried out to God in one form or another. Yet most of us feel that we aren’t very good at it. Go ahead and pray anyway. The secret to praying is not in the way we frame our requests but our confidence in the fact that God hears (1 John 5:14).

I am excited about the upcoming release of my latest book, entitled When God is Silent: Let the Bible Teach You to Pray. It should be coming out in August from Lexham Press but you can preorder your copy now at Amazon. I’ll be talking more about in in the coming days in my posts.

When the Prayer Matters to Us More Than God

July 16, 2010 ~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

In his little book entitled Beginning to Pray, Anthony Bloom writes: “…it is very important to remember that prayer is an encounter and a relationship, a relationship which is deep, and this relationship cannot be forced either on us or on God.” Bloom warns that one of the great dangers we face in this area is the temptation to take an impersonal approach to prayer.

There are many times when we are ready to pray but we are not ready to receive God. “We want something from Him but Him not at all” Bloom warns. This can be true even of passionate prayer. Bloom asks us to think of those times when our prayers are marked by warmth and intensity. Times when the prayer concerns someone we love or something that matters to us. “Then your heart is open all inner self is recollected in the prayer” Bloom writes. “Does it mean that God matters to you? No, it does not. It simply means that the subject matters of your prayer matters to you.”

My problem when it comes to prayer isn’t that I have been using the wrong posture or language. It is my angle of vision. I know cognitively that God is one who knows me deeply and personally. He is a God who is acquainted with my thoughts. A God who speaks my language and anticipates my words. This is a God who knows me better than I know myself. And no wonder. This is a God who became flesh and dwelt among us: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin” (Hebrews 4:12).

But as long as the prayer matters more to me than God does, it will be a failure. I do not necessarily mean that it will go unanswered. I may receive the thing I request. But in the process I may miss what I need the most. When it comes to prayer we are, as one writer puts it, like children who receive pennies from a father’s hand. Often more interested in the pennies than the hand that offers them.