Most students think prayer is about them. And it usually centers on situations they’re in. My Grandma broke her foot. My coach is a jerk. Exams are coming up. I’m like, so busy. Listening to prayer requests within a small group can often give new definition to narcissism. Does God care about the daily drama of our lives? You bet. Were you drawn into the depth and character of God by listening to the list above? Ummmmm…
Where’d students learn to pray like this? Ok, let’s not answer that question.
The Puritans used to have a saying, ‘pray until you pray’. Why? Because all of us struggle with the ability to get beyond ourselves when we enter prayer. The presenting issues of our lives vie for attention like kindergartners eager to answer a question.
The best way to get beyond our small stories (while in prayer) is to enter God’s story. See if any of the following can lend a new twist to your sequence in prayer:
-Praying through redemptive history
1. Creation – our insatiable longing for life to work finds its origin in God’s perfect beginning. Seeing Him as the author and match for such longing is to right-size ourselves. All things were made by him and for him.
2. Fall – admitting the alienation within all relationships (with God, with others, with creation). Seeing your personal culpability in broken humanity.
3. Redemption – this becomes the daily, incomprehensible truth that God loves us because of what he finds in himself, that his act of love and forgiveness is not based on our performance or achievement (flying fully in the face of American achievement and ascent). Ironically, this frees us from a fixation on ourselves in the growing ability to love like he loves
4. Restoration – when God will make all things right, matching forever our longings with his presence.
-Using scripture to re-tell God’s story
5. Praying through the sequence of God’s story and how he used individuals. This form of praying takes key individuals throughout the bible and uses their life lessons to develop our God-focus in prayer
6. Using key verses in the Bible from memory. This approach to prayer helps build a repeating vocabulary of a) who God is and b) what he’s doing
7. Lining up character qualities of God. I like using the alphabet to describe the depth and breadth of God (Almighty, Benevolent, Caring, Dependable, Excellent, Faithful…..). The second step includes matching each quality with a verse.
The result of our deepening prayer life is two-fold: 1) we mature because we’re immersed in God’s large story and 2) we model to students how to get off the ‘small life’