In this series, Ken Chitwood explores classic spiritual disciplines, taking up a new practice each month and sharing his experiences with the Thred community. Read more here.
I just didn’t have the words.
My mother was wasting away in front of me, suffering the ill effects of acute renal failure, stroke, and diabetes. As I looked upon her increasingly frail form, I met the limits of my locution.
In my calling(s) as writer, speaker and pastor, I’d spoken on stages with thousands in the crowd; I’d published innumerable words in blogs and books; I’d led worship in four languages across six continents; I’d prayed for and comforted the sick and dying at hospital bedsides in Texas and New Zealand, South Africa and Arizona.
But this was my mom.
And suddenly, there were no words to comfort, to console, to cry out in prayer. I couldn’t even manage a mumble.
That’s when I pulled out the prayer book in my pocket.
In the midst of a month dedicated to the practice of prayer, I was carrying a 1951 copy of the Lutheran Book of Prayer around with me everywhere I went.
Prayer is a powerful spiritual discipline. In a world of blood and glitter, bad and good, benediction and agony, prayer promises that God is big enough to receive it all – muddled and messy as we are and the world around us may be.
And so, each morning and evening, I open my prayer book to recite its twice-daily invocations. I used it to pray on particular holidays and during mundane life moments like travel and daily meals.
That day with my mom, I turned to page 150 and prayed these words:
We have no other refuge in a time like this. Gracious Lord, you can heal. Your grace can restore to health and give us strength to carry on. We know that you are merciful and gracious…you will not forsake us in this hour of suffering and pain.
Even though it was written over seven decades ago, these words rang true in the midst of personal pain and sadness. That day, it was the only prayer I could muster. And though it had been sitting there in a dusty book for years, it brought me immediate comfort in a time of need.
For those who aren’t so good at prayer
If you were raised in the evangelical milieu of American Christianity, you were probably called on to pray at some point in time — during a Bible study, a small group, or even at the family dinner table. Maybe you deferred, maybe you took up the challenge, maybe you Jesus-Lord-justed your way through it, maybe you simply squeezed the hand of whomever was next to you in that day’s prayer circle.
I feel your pain.
Throughout my life, it feels I have always been called on to pray. It started when I was seen as a leader among my peers and later a student of theology training for full-time ministry. People just kind of expected me to be able to pray it outloud, right on the spot.
The only problem: I’ve never been all that good at it.
That’s why I’ve long turned to prayer books and other forms of structured prayer in my devotional life and my work as minister, teacher and spiritual guide.
An individual’s preference for either spontaneous or formal prayers is often deeply intertwined with the worship tradition in which they were raised. Most American evangelical churches, for example, emphasize and appreciate spontaneity. More traditional, or liturgical, communities might value structured supplications — whether they be handed down across the centuries or composed by a committee for the purposes of worship.
I’m not here to suggest one way or the other (and the Bible seems to affirm both, with admonitions for order in 1 Corinthians 14 and moments of spontaneous solicitation in Acts 4:23-31).
But if you’re anything like me, prayer aids, pre-written prayers, and prayer books can be life savers when you’re called on in a group setting. They can also be helpful guides for developing a personal discipline of regular prayer.
That’s because structured and written prayers are not meant to stifle more natural prayers, but augment and aid them. In the preface to that prayer book I turned to at my mom’s bedside, the authors wrote:
…this collection of prayers is not published with the design of curtailing [prayer…but] to stimulate and aid such praying and to assist the believer in making [their] whole life one of communion with our Father in heaven.
If you are trying to develop a more regular habit of devotional prayer, or you find yourself in a difficult or dreadful situation where you cannot summon the supplications the moment requires, written, memorized or structured prayers can prove particularly beneficial.
Prayers to turn to
In the end, prayer is grace. We will never be pure enough, good enough, or know enough to pray perfectly. But God hears us anyway.
To help us get a start on bringing ourselves to God just as we are, there are plenty of great prayer books out there to help pick up a discipline of prayer or to assist in tricky situations or times of trial and trouble.
If you’d rather keep it simple, the Lord’s Prayer offers a potent baseline for structured prayer. The rebel-monk-turned-church-reformer Martin Luther said it was unequaled — the sublimest and noblest prayer ever uttered. The philosopher Simone Weil not only said that “we cannot conceive of any prayer not already contained in it,” but that its very repetition produces change — perhaps infinitesimal, but always real — in the soul.
When you’re tired in the morning and staring into your cup of coffee, when bobbing back and forth between those riding with you on the subway on your morning commute or about to crawl into bed after a long day at work, a written prayer gives you something specific to say, making you more likely to follow through and pray more often than you might otherwise.
Or, when the car has broken down in the middle of the desert on your cross-country road trip, the promotion went to that person in your office or when you’re at your mother’s bedside in the hospital, they provide words when you have nothing else to say (or would rather not speak at all).
Whatever your situation or practice of choice, structured and pre-written prayers can prove prompts to powerful prayer.
