Form & Freedom In Prayer

Most of us need all the help we can get when it comes to forming regular and meaningful habits of prayer. Let me tell you today about a few “disciplines of grace” that have been helpful to me.

First, though, a word about the relationship between “form” and “freedom.” I grew up in a tradition that placed a high premium on freedom. For us, worship “in Spirit and in truth” meant that most (if not all) liturgical forms were suspect. Pre-written prayers, creeds & confessions, orders of worship, responsive readings, magisterial hymns written before the late 1800s - these traditions carried the scent of death to us. The more spontaneous - and the less conventional - the better!

I still value freedom in worship. I don’t think it’s helpful to bind ourselves to structures that can never change, and I delight in “mixing things up” at the spur of the moment (as Dan Huff can gleefully testify!). More importantly, I value a conscious, explicit dependence on the Holy Spirit in prayer and in worship, and I think it’s a beautiful thing when we can engage our whole mind and emotions in our devotion to God. I’m all for expressiveness in prayer and in worship, as long as the expressiveness isn’t aimed to say, “Hey, look at me!” (That pernicious tendency to exalt “self” in worship is subtle, but always seducing us away from the Godward focus that should captivate our hearts).

But as my soul has matured (with still a long way to go), I have come to value form a lot more than I did at first. Whereas the word “liturgy” once would’ve elicited a yawn or a sneer from me, I have over time come to greatly appreciate these ancient paths on which the weary feet of God’s pilgrim people have trodden. Maybe this is because I’ve seen more of the deceptiveness and fickleness of my own emotions. Maybe it’s because I’ve found myself in seasons of spiritual dryness - or in times of such wearisome affliction that I couldn’t even find the words to pour out my heart to God. But this I know: if I leave my prayers and devotions to the spur of the moment, or the whims of my emotions, I will pray very little, and when I do, it won’t mean very much.

Quite a while back I heard John Piper reflect on the relationship between form and freedom. He says, “A river without banks is a flood, not a river. A gymnastic floor routine without a mat with borders is just exercise, and not art. Throwing balls across a plate or kicking a ball through uprights or slapping a puck into a goal is more exhilarating than throwing and kicking and slapping every which-a-way then trying to dignify it by calling it "free." The most passionate book in the Bible is Lamentations, and it is the most rigorously limited in form: three of the five chapters of gut-wrenching agony are poured into the narrow container of four acrostics, each verse beginning with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet. There is something glorious about the freedom and power of truth flowing deep, and somehow naturally, between the banks of rhyme and meter.”

I agree. And I would encourage you not to shy away from “forms” of prayer and worship, as long as you don’t rely on the forms instead of relying on the Holy Spirit. To that end, let me recommend a few “forms” that have been especially meaningful to me:

• Above all else, read and pray through the Psalms! Do this methodically. Don’t just pick out your favorite few. Read all of them - and read every verse. Read them aloud. Sing them. Don’t just read the Psalms with your own life situation in view. See these Psalms as God’s divinely inspired prayer-book for his church. Maybe you don’t have enemies breathing down your neck at the moment (although we are always wrestling with spiritual forces of darkness!), but surely you know a brother or sister in Christ who is going through an immense battle. God gave us these Psalms to teach us how to pray with a depth of wisdom & insight that we’d never learn by simply leaning on our own thoughts. I aim to read through the Psalms on a monthly basis, and this habit is the “bread & butter” of my prayer life. The following article by Tim Keller gives some wise counsel, along with a schedule from the Book of Common Prayer that will take you through an equal portion of Psalms every morning & evening: http://www.redeemer.com/connect/prayer/praying_psalms.html
• Trevin Wax has a Prayer Room online at the Gospel Coalition’s website that provides a daily liturgy for personal & corporate prayer. There are four different liturgies per day, each following a theme, and every time I use this, it jump-starts my prayers and prompts me to pray in directions that I probably wouldn’t have thought up on my own. I’d encourage you to dip-into this wonderful resource from time-to-time; use it as a tool, not as a crutch. It’s been an encouragement to me for several years: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevinwax/2007/06/10/trevins-prayer-room/
• An old devotional from the 1800s called Daily Light on the Daily Path contains readings for every morning & evening, snippets of Scripture that are compiled with a theme in mind. We often read this together as a family after our evening meal. The Scripture selections are always suggestive of rich veins of meditation, which can lead into wonderful times of prayer about aspects of God’s will that we would otherwise overlook. You can access that devotional at Crossway/Good News Publisher’s website: http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/mobile/devotions/daily.light/
• Finally, the value of The Valley of Vision, Arthur Bennett’s collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions, is attested by the fact that it has sold over 337,000 copies worldwide. You can read about it on Justin Taylor’s website here: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2013/07/11/valley-of-vision/

However you do it, and whatever tools you employ to spur you onward, let the freedom and power of God’s truth flow deep into you as you seek to be led by the Holy Spirit to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17).

Your fellow soldier in the good fight of faith,

David Sunday