Prayer is powerful.
We may not always recognize or embrace this truth but the enemy does. That is why Screwtape exhorts Wormwood on the "painful subject of prayer." He gives him three strategies for making one's prayer life frustrating, if not futile.
The first strategy is to keep us from understanding the seriousness of prayer. We think reciting basic words is sufficient and that our intelligence or posture have no bearing on the matter.
Likewise, the enemy tries to get us focused on our feelings in prayer, instead of directing our focus to God. His goal is simple.
"Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there by the action of their own will. When they meant to ask Him for charity, let them, instead, start trying to manufacture charitable feelings for themselves and not notice that this is what they are doing. When they meant to pray for courage, let them really be trying to feel brave. When they say they are praying for forgiveness, let them be trying to feel forgiveness. Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feelings; and never let them suspect how much success or failure of that kind depends on whether they are well or ill, fresh or tired, at that moment."
Finally, the tempter wants us to pray to the composite image of God in our mind derived from pictures and paintings and personal experiences, instead of praying to God in all his glory and majesty. But we must persevere to this end because the enemy knows the results of such moments.
"For if he ever comes to make the distinction, if he ever consciously directs his prayers 'Not to what I think thou art but to what thou knowest thyself to be', our situation is for the moment, desperate. Once all his thoughts and images have been flung aside or, if retained, retained with a full recognition of their merely subjective nature, and the man trusts himself to the completely real, external, invisible Presence, there with him in the room and never knowable by him as he is known by it - why, then it is that the incalculable may occur. In avoiding this situation - this real nakedness of the soul in prayer - you will be helped by the fact that the humans themselves do not desire it as much as they suppose."
This brings several thoughts to mind.
Prayer is a personal privilege that God has given to every believer. I know that I have not approached it with the reverence and regularity that it deserves.
Prayer, like faith and obedience in general, is not a pathway to warm fuzzy feelings. It is an encounter with the living, eternal God who created me for my worship and adoration.
Prayer is where I can be completely exposed before my Creator and Redeemer to discover real purpose and meaning in life.
The nakedness of the soul. I pray that our prayers will bring us to that place.
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1 comment:
That's the real problem with C. S. Lewis--he exposes so much that we know about. And prayer is where I and so many flounder.
Your title and point remind me of the story, The Emperor's New Clothes. It was so embarrasing to everyone that no one said anything until that little boy said--'he doesn't have any clothes on.' And then it was real embarrasing.
It is entirely different for us to admit we are naked before our Father. His serious and joyful acceptance is expressed in the clothing Jesus gives--which we enjoy as we realize we are naked on our own.
I hope to grow in prayer. And the Father wants that as well.
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