Three Books on Prayer

What is prayer? What is the right context within which to think about prayer? And what difference does prayer make, if anything?

These three questions summarize effectively the different concerns of three recent books on prayer. To be sure, while each book addresses each question, the authors’ specific aims are nevertheless reflected in what ones assumes is their ‘organizational priority’. In conversing with ‘their question’, I not only hope to give you a reasonable (albeit brief!) taste of each book, I also wish to pause and reflect further on some issues arising from them. Above all, I hope this article stirs you to pray.

What is prayer?

Prayer and the Voice of God

Phillip Jensen and Tony Payne

Matthias Media, Sydney 2006, 200pp.

I’m really not a fan of news reports about television shows which just so happen to be premiering on their channel later that night; it’s advertising dressed up as journalism and it gets my goat! So when I was asked to review Prayer and the Voice of God, as much as I respect Phillip Jensen and Tony Payne, I felt compelled to go for the razor rather than the pen.

The problem with this, however, is that Prayer and the Voice of God is actually really impressive. You can’t help but like those rare books where the author(s) manage to anticipate your thinking with freakish consistency. (Its margins are now filled with questions I jotted down as I read, only to find the answer inevitably given within the next couple of pages.) And it’s short!

But the real blessing of the book is in its astoundingly succinct, easy-to-understand presentation of the theology of prayer. What is prayer? It is simply this: “asking God for things” (p. 13). It sounds almost too simple, pared back and demystified. But, as the authors go on to show, this definition’s theological underpinning, though still ‘simple’, is based on an understanding which is, nonetheless, majestic and far from prosaic. Although Prayer and the Voice of God originally presents this definition in light of a word study of ‘prayer’ in the Bible (p. 13—which is valid enough, as far as it goes), the major theme of the book is that prayer is defined by, shaped by, entered into and made possible by the nature of the God we pray to: “Prayer is determined to a very large extent by the kind of God you pray to” (p. 20) and “Prayer is not defined by a dictionary so much as by God himself” (p. 37).

Fundamental to prayer is the fact that God is relational—in both himself and in his relationship with us. God is a personal speaking God who, by his grace in Christ, invites us into a personal speaking relationship with himself (p. 20). Although book reviews are known for simplifying things somewhat drastically, and though Prayer and the Voice of Godaddresses many issues along the way, in my view, the shape of the book is largely driven by the answer to “What is prayer” (which is “Who is God?”).

Is the definition “asking God for things” too simple? Clearly this is a ‘yes’ for many. As Prayer and the Voice of Godpoints out, as simple as this is in the Bible, it is amazing how many different places people run to in their practice of prayer. One of the book’s great aims is to demystify prayer—to lift leaden yokes from our backs—and it does this graciously and non-polemically by pointing us to hear God talk about himself and prayer, and by drawing our attention to the majestic realities that this presents to us.

I’d recommend this book to everyone. For new Christians especially, and for any Christian confused about what prayer is, what prayer isn’t and how to go about it, this small book will be a great blessing. For everyone else, it is a good reminder to make sure our priorities and practice match God’s intentions for us.

What is the right context within which to think about prayer?

Praying: Finding our way from duty to delight

J I Packer and Carolyn Nystrom

InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove 2006, 320pp.

Packer and Nystrom’s Praying: Finding our way from duty to delight picks up where Prayer and the Voice of God leaves off. It is built entirely on the same foundations: prayer is fundamentally a ‘who to’ rather than a ‘how to’. This in turn shapes the basic nature of prayer: that of verbal dependence upon God (p. 32). Given its length, however, it has the luxury of being able to flesh out these basic theological foundations of prayer.

Having said this, the driving concern of the book is broader—of which a right understanding of God is but one half. Packer and Nystrom come at the issue of prayer with what is in many ways an exposition of Peter’s exhortation in 1 Peter 4:7b: “[T]herefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers”. Our prayer life is not independent of either our minds or our actions. Rather, it is entirely dependent upon them: “Authentic prayer … issues from the authentically Christian heart of a born-again believer leading the authentic Christian life” (p. 47). So the right context of prayer is the Christian who is thinking about God rightly (loving God with the whole heart, mind and soul—virtual synonyms for Packer and Nystrom) and living life repentantly.

The chapters in Praying reflect this valuable insight, and most of them have to do with the right contextualization of prayer (our knowledge of God, reflection on Scripture, thanksgiving and wholehearted living). This is so much so that they write,

[O]ur readers may by now be wondering whether their authors have gone off track. But no; what we have been trying to do is to prepare our readers to get the message on our topic at the proper deep level. (p. 251)

Therefore, as mentioned in the postscript, prayerlessness may, in all likelihood, be a symptom of wrong living or thinking before God rather than a problem in itself (though it may be this).

Almost every book on prayer will mention guilt within the first few pages, and these three books are no exception. No-one wants to feel guilty about praying; everyone wants to be inspired to pray. But reading a book on prayer won’t make you pray, and Praying doesn’t pretend to try. In fact, it was as I was reading this book that I really started feeling guilty about prayer. At first I was annoyed: I want to be inspired, not made to feel guilty! But as I read on, Praying taught me a very useful point: maybe I am guilty, so feeling guilty is merely fitting the emotion with the crime. Prayerlessness is a moral issue, so whatever place being inspired to pray might have, repentance needs to fit in somewhere.

If you read the book straight through, you may find Praying cumbersome and repetitive; the book emerged from recordings of a series of talks that Packer gave. It is best read one reflective chapter at a time. Like Prayer and the Voice of God, Praying also has a very helpful discussion and reflection guide for each chapter. Praying is well worth reading yourself, and recommending to someone—not, perhaps, a new Christian, but a Christian who needs to think about prayer’s relationship to the rest of the Christian life more deeply.

Prayer and knowing God better

Before we turn to consider Philip Yancey’s book, it is worth pausing to reflect on what may feel like a disparity between our experience of prayer and the nature of prayer that has been articulated thus far. Christians long to hear God speak to them: one of the primary characteristics of Jesus’ sheep is that “they will listen to [his] voice” (John 10:16). When we pray, sometimes in our experience of prayer it seems as if God is speaking to us. This has led many Christians to see prayer as a dialogue with God, and our task is not so much to talk as to listen. Yet both Prayer and the Voice of God and Praying are explicit in limiting prayer to talking to—not with—God. It’s verbal communication from us to him, and it is particularly concerned with asking for help.

Now I think both of these books are right to disavow the ‘prayer-as-dialogue’ understanding of prayer. Exegetically, it simply doesn’t hold. But what about the experience? Do I know God better when I pray? Does God reveal himself to me when I pray? Each of us can probably testify to times when our experience would suggest affirmative answers to these questions, yet, in both of the books reviewed so far, their concern to say this is not prayer leaves us wondering, “What isthis thing I sometimes experience when I pray?”.

On the one hand, if prayer is simply “asking God for things”, the answer to the question, “Do I know God better in prayer?” must be ‘No’. It would be nonsensical to think that my brother reveals himself to me in the act of me asking him for something. It’s the same when we ask God for things. As both books emphatically argue, prayer needs to be set within the context of listening to God, but listening to God where he promises to be found: his word incarnate, clothed in his word inscripturate. Prayer is our response to God’s revelation of himself, not revelation itself.

But on the other hand, the answer must also be ‘Yes’ since “prayer is audible faith” (Prayer and the Voice of God, p. 35). In order for our knowledge of God to be true knowledge of God, it cannot simply be knowledge about God; it must be knowing God—that is, relational or personal knowledge which always has as its basis faith or trust in what is revealed. Therefore, there is a sense in which I do know God better when I pray, because in prayer I respond in faith to what God has revealed of himself.

But let’s take this a step further. What happens when we consider prayer in the context of both the power and efficacy of God’s word, and the Spirit of God who works through his word? God’s word is unfailingly effective, achieving the purposes for which he sends it out (Isa 55:10-11). So, then, as I read the Bible and reflect (meditate) upon what God has said, I can expect his word to work powerfully within me, bringing me into deeper knowledge of him. But as I pray in response to hearing him, echoing his words, do I not also in this process (as a consequence of praying, not the reason for which I pray) preach God’s revealed truth to myself? In the very act of speaking God’s thoughts after him, I continue to teach my soul.

In addition, the Holy Spirit works through this very Word. Jesus didn’t promise an idle spirit but one who would “convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (John 16:8; read verses 8-11 for the full sense of what he means). As we hear God speak, we should expect that, by God’s grace, his Spirit will convict us by that Word. So we should not be surprised when, as we pray to God, echoing his word, his Spirit convicts us by that Word with very clear implications for our lives.

So, yes, we can have an experience of knowing God better and being convicted by his word as we pray. But this is not a Word separate to what he has already spoken in Christ and in the Bible. Rightly understood, this experience continues to be a ministry of the Word and Spirit, not prayer; prayer is simply the medium in which we believe the Word and, consequentially, preach the Word to ourselves. In this, God’s word and his Spirit work, as always, with breathtaking effectiveness.

This may go some way to ‘meshing’ the nature of prayer rightly described in these two books, and our sometime experience in prayer. It is not that either book has no place for this in their theology or practice (Praying does hint at it on pages 90-91); it’s just that, strictly speaking, it isn’t prayer.

Given the concern of Prayer and the Voice of God and, to a lesser extent, Praying, to demystify prayer, it is not surprising that this nuance of prayer is left out. However, given the prevalence of this type of thinking (to which, for many, the title, Prayer and the Voice of God would directly appeal), it is disappointing that they fail to address theologically what we sometimes experience existentially when we pray. Until we address this lack, ‘dialogue’ definitions of prayer will continue to be more appealing because they have greater explanatory power over our experience, even if they are wrong.

What difference does prayer make?

Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?

Philip Yancey

Zondervan, Grand Rapids 2006, 352pp.

Philip Yancey’s Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? begins with the same basic outlook as the other two books: prayer must acknowledge who God is first, and who we are before him next. There is much in this book that is helpful and commendable, especially the fourth part which deals with unanswered prayer and prayers for healing. Yancey is a storyteller, and his anecdotal style is very engaging (and it makes me want to get out more; how many stories can one man have?).

But for all its warmth and beneficial insights, when placed within the context of the other two books and the thoughts I outlined in the previous section, Prayer becomes fundamentally problematic. In it, Yancey writes as someone who has moved from an ‘asking’ view of prayer to a ‘dialogue’ view: “My own emphasis in prayer has moved from petition to companionship” (p. 208) and “Prayer is not a monologue but a true dialogue in which both parties accommodate each other” (p. 143; see also page 54-56).

It is extraordinarily difficult to piece together Yancey’s theology. The anecdotal style of the book and his insistence on including personal testimonies on prayer from remarkably varied people without assessment, though warming, makes it very hard to present a coherent account. But I suspect that what has led him along this path is his answer to the main concern and subtitle of his book: “Does [prayer] make any difference?”.

Yancey insists that he “believe[s] in prayer and its power to change both people and events” (p. 212), and he has little time for those who reduce prayer to what is effectively a self-help exercise (p. 48). He includes many stories in his book which illustrate this well, which is admirable because we need to keep affirming these truths. However, the pervading themes of the book head elsewhere. Human freedom is a dominant motif, and is often the reason he gives as to why God chooses not to answer our prayers the way we’d like. This is not the place to discuss the (in)appropriateness of this perspective. The point is this: Yancey believes in the great power of prayer because he believes the God of the Bible, but he also believes that God doesn’t want to tread on our freedom. So this leads him to look for the benefits of prayer primarily in the internal effect it has upon us, rather than in the external ‘results’ of God answering.

But keep in mind Yancey’s insistence that prayer is truly effective and not merely self-help. Inevitably this leads him to the most obvious place where he sees God change people in prayer—namely, the consequential benefits of prayer as described above. Consider some of the reasons Yancey gives for praying: it corrects our vision to God’s perspective; it makes us see the world the way God does; it makes us see ourselves the way God does; it makes us know God; it aligns our desires with God’s; and in praying for other people, we become aware of how we can help them.

It is tempting to let this wrong understanding of prayer slide. So long as he and others keep praying in the context of meditation upon Scripture, they aren’t going to go too far wrong. But this isn’t the context within which he sets prayer. Instead, the theme of prayer as listening to God becomes all-pervading. Repeatedly, the verbal aspect of prayer is relegated to a preference for silence so that we can ‘hear’ God speak (e.g. pp. 17, 22 and 97). Despite the fact that meditating and listening to God is continually emphasized, only once does Yancey mention that he sometimes does this by reading the Bible. And tellingly, when talking about when God is sometimes ‘silent’ for a while, Yancey writes,

Instead of looking for a new revelation of God’s presence, perhaps I should focus instead on the revelation God has already given: in creation, in Jesus, in the church. (p. 195)

‘Hearing God’ is what Yancey is looking for in prayer, and Scripture has only a secondary position in this—if at all.

In other words, Yancey makes prayer do double-duty, taking the place of the Bible. But more than this, he lets this second ‘duty’ overtake the first. He looks for the benefits promised in Scripture in silence, not in Scripture. In this light, ‘prayer-as-dialogue’ and ‘prayer-as-silence’ become not just the preferred definition, but a necessary one.

I hesitate to say this, for no-one wants to speak against a book which is still near the top of the bestseller charts. But because Prayer is still up there, it needs to be said. For all the good points Prayer makes, it is a very dangerous book. I would even go as far as recommending that you go buy copies of the other two books so that you can let people ‘trade in’ their copy of Yancey’s.

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Hopefully these brief ruminations have given you a taste for these three recent books on prayer, and stimulated your thinking. We must continue to develop appropriate ways to not just describe the relationship between reading God’s word and praying, but also the relationship between God’s written word and prayeras we pray. Furthermore, we need to spend more time thinking about the related idea of the presence of God: what is it and where is he found? Without more thinking on these areas, my fear is that we run the risk of other definitions of prayer holding greater explanatory power for people when it comes to their experience of prayer. The trajectory of that path is mysticism.

This article was originally published in The Briefing (346-347).