Teach Us to Pray

Gordon T. Smith

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780830845217
• eBook ISBN: 9780830888467
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Logos Bookstore Association Award for Christian Living

One of the most basic and vital dimensions of the Christian life is the practice of prayer. Frequently our prayers begin with a petition or request, so the content of our prayers is informed by our circumstances. But what if the opposite were true? What if we allowed our prayers to inform our lives? What would our lives be like if prayer altered our living and began to shape the contours and content of our daily experiences?

Gordon Smith invites us to learn three movements of prayer—thanksgiving, confession, and discernment—in order to be formed and transformed by prayers that seek God's kingdom "on earth as it is in heaven." Whether you are a beginner in the life of prayer or further along, this small book is a resource for deepening your prayer practice.

PRAYER AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD

in learning how to pray, it is, of course, helpful to go to the very prayer that Jesus gave his disciples when they asked, “Teach us to pray.” He taught them to say what we know as the Lord’s Prayer, or in some Christian communities, the Our Father. The prayer is a sequence of prayers: “hallowed be thy name,” “forgive us our debts,” and “give us this day.” Yet these prayers pivot on one prayer or petition in particular: “thy kingdom come,” and its twin, “thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:9-11 KJV). Essentially, then, Jesus taught his disciples to pray for the coming of the kingdom—for coming of the reign of God. When we pray “thy kingdom come,” we are expressing the longing of our hearts and minds that the will of God would happen, on earth as it is in heaven.

It would be a profound understatement to say that this matters. For indeed nothing matters more. Nothing. The idea of the kingdom of God permeates the whole of the witness of the Old Testament; we read again and again of the longing for the future manifestation of the reign of God. From this vantage point, the prayer is a longing, in the Jewish tradition, for the coming of the Messiah. Jesus himself spoke of how he would not drink of the fruit of the vine again “until the kingdom of God comes” (Luke 22:18). And this is the prayer of the church: for the coming of the kingdom, for Christ to return and bring about the restoration and healing of the entire created order. We yearn for the consummation of the reign of Christ: that Christ—the Messiah—would be revealed, and that all creation would know the full manifestation of the healing and restorative grace of God.

Theologians therefore speak of this as an eschatological prayer—looking ahead to a day that is yet to come. That day is when the purposes of God—now very present in heaven, where God dwells—will be fully consummated on earth, where we dwell. Our great longing and prayer, in other words, is not to “go to heaven” but for heaven to come down and transform the earth and all its inhabitants and thus reveal the glory and purposes of God (see Revelation 21).

And yet when Jesus—the very one who announced that the kingdom of God is at hand (Mark 1:14-15)—offers this prayer, we have to also read it through another lens. Yes, the kingdom is future; we look forward to a day that is yet to come; we anticipate the consummation of the kingdom. But the kingdom of God is also very present. The disciples of Jesus are those who now live in him and under his authority. We have become and are becoming citizens of this kingdom, living now, in the present, in and under the reign of Christ. His disciples are those who seek his kingdom and even now, as a foretaste of what is yet to come, begin to allow the will of God—“thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven”—to be effective and expressed in every sphere and dimension of human life—indeed, of the whole cosmos. This begins in particular, of course, in our own lives. In our prayers, we learn obedience; very specifically, we learn the freedom that comes in and through obedience within the benevolent reign of Christ. In our prayers we enter into the grace of deferring to the will and authority of Christ.

This is our great longing: to enter into his kingdom. Jesus suggests that we should seek the kingdom, that this is the most important agenda in our lives. It is worth any price; it merits the full scope of our energies and desires. We are invited not only to pray the prayer but also, in praying, to enter into the kingdom—to seek it and to live in this new dimension of reality. Saint Paul urges us to set our minds on things that are above (Colossians 3:2), which means precisely the same thing—to live with our minds set on Christ, who is the ascended Lord and whose reign has come and is coming.

As an aside, though an important consideration: all of this is a reminder that the gospel necessarily includes the reality that Christ is the ascended Lord. For too many Christians the gospel speaks merely of the cross of Christ and the forgiveness that is found in and through the cross. This is gospel, of course, but is it the whole of the gospel? Surely the proclamation of the gospel also presumes the declaration that Jesus Christ is Lord and that, in the words of Jesus, “the kingdom of God has come near” (Mark 1:15). When we yearn for the salvation of God, we long for women and men to know forgiveness—of course. But we also long that the kingdom of God would come, that God’s will would be done on earth. That is, in the language of Philippians 2:10-11, we look forward to the day when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. And what that means is the healing and restoration of the creation and the triumph of justice, so that all things come under the benevolent authority of Christ.

Prayer and Participation

When Jesus teaches his disciples to pray he invites them to seek the kingdom and to pray that the will of God, the reign of Christ, would be expressed in every sphere of their lives. This is our prayer. This is the deep longing, the yearning of the human soul and of all of humanity: we pray that all would be restored, redeemed, and healed. But it also makes full sense that we would pray this not only in a general sense but also with regard to the specifics of our lives. We truly pray this prayer only when our praying actually draws us into the reign of Christ—that is, into the very thing for which we are praying. The prayer is not passive but active; it is a prayer that alters our lives. We pray “thy kingdom come” even as we seek the kingdom and long to enter more fully into Christ and allow the reign of Christ to inform and transform our lives.

We pray “thy kingdom come” in the particulars of our individual lives—our families, our workplaces, our neighborhoods. And we pray it for our cities, our country, and our world. We pray it for the church. And we long for God to act—mercifully and graciously. Our very praying reflects a confidence that God will act. But even as we pray, in our praying, we are changed. Our prayer is answered very specifically in our own lives as God grants us the grace of living in the kingdom. In other words, it is surely fine to pray for specific things: I need a job, a home for my family, healing for a loved one—indeed, all the things for which we might pray. But while prayer for what we need and what we long for is without doubt appropriate, we must remember that there is more to prayer than petition. In our praying not only are we asking God to change things, but we are being changed. More specifically, if and as we learn to pray, we become women and men who live in and under the reign of Christ.

So easily prayer becomes little more than asking God to act, asking God to do what only God can do, asking God to intervene and through mercy bring about God’s purposes in the particulars of our lives. But we are not mere observers of what God is doing in bringing about the kingdom. We are participants. Or as Darrell Johnson puts it, in this prayer we “participate in heaven’s invasion of the earth”1 and thus experience more and more what it means to see and live within the reign of Christ, here on earth.

I serve as the president of a university that, like most of our peer institutions, has a dynamic and exciting athletic program. When our volleyball team is on the court facing a visiting team, especially from a school with which we have a bit of a rivalry, it can be quite intense—not only on the court but also in the stands. And of course I cheer eagerly for the young women and men who wear our university colors with a hope to win a championship and have a banner hung from the rafters. I always like it when we win, of course; and I particularly like it when we beat the sister institution with which we have a focused and historic rivalry.

But imagine that we are losing—it is a very close game, but we are losing. In moments like that we wonder what small but significant factor could change the outcome. I notice that the coach calls a time-out; surely he recognizes that he needs to make a strategic adjustment so that this close game shifts in our favor. But imagine that I do not wait patiently through the time-out, but rather conclude that as the president of the university I need to do my part. So I leave the stands, head to the huddle on the side of the court, and interrupt the time-out to advise the coach that I am available and willing to do my part. What’s more, I think my contribution could make a difference—perhaps the difference that will let us ultimately win the match. I urge him to put me into the game.

Well, of course the coach will patiently ask the president to return to the stands and will assure me that at this point I am only an observer, not a participant! I can only serve well by not getting in the way. I need to head back to the stands.

But it is not so with the kingdom of God. When we pray “thy kingdom come” we are not mere observers in the stands, watching God do God’s work and, so to speak, cheering God on. Rather, what is clear from the Scriptures is that while we are observers, we not only observers. We are also participants.

We are players in the work of God in our world; we are actors on the stage. We are not lead actors; we are not the ones who ultimately make it happen. But we are on the stage; we are players in the drama of God’s redemptive purposes in the world. Our lives and our work matter and make a difference.

And so we need an approach to prayer that reflects this reality: that in our prayers we are not only saying the words “thy kingdom come” but also actually entering into the kingdom, knowing—without doubt in small incremental steps, but still knowing more and more—what it means to live in the grace of the kingdom, the freedom that comes in living under the reign of Christ.

Prayer as Formation

Prayer has a formative impact on our lives—the manner or form of our prayers actually shapes the contours and character of our lives. So frequently, it would seem, our prayers begin with our experience: something in our lives occasions a particular prayer, typically a petition or request. And thus the content of our prayers is determined by what is happening in our lives.

But perhaps the reverse should actually be the norm. Without doubt, the circumstances of our lives will inform our prayers. But perhaps what should be happening is that our prayers would inform our lives, that our praying would alter our living, that our prayers would shape the contours and content of our daily experience.

In this way of living and praying, we would allow our deepest convictions—our faith and our theological vision of God, ourselves, and our world—to inform our prayers and be the means by which we know the transforming power of grace in our lives. More particularly, we would choose that the reign of Christ—the kingdom of God—would increasingly be that which defines our lives, our ways of being, living, and responding to our world. We would find that the salvation of God is not merely something that God has done for us—in Christ, on the cross—but also something that God is doing in us.

To this end, our prayers play a crucial role. Indeed, if transformation does not happen through our prayers, it likely does not happen. This is why it is so crucial that we teach new Christians how to pray and that in our patterns and approaches to congregational life we are consistently coming back to the fundamentals of prayer. And this is why all of us, older and newer Christians alike, are always coming back to the basics of the form and structure of formative prayer.

When we pray “thy kingdom come,” should not our prayer be an act of recalibration? Could our praying be an act of intentional alignment and realignment? That is, in our prayer our vision of the kingdom purposes of God will be deepened and broadened; we will be drawn into the reality of Christ risen and now on the throne of the universe. And thus through our prayers we not only pray for the kingdom but also come to increasingly live within the kingdom, under the reign of Christ.

This last point is crucial. So frequently we pray as though God is passive and we are trying to get God to act. But could it be that God is always active? And that in our praying we are aware of how God is actually always at work, bringing his kingdom into effect, and we are seeing and responding to the kingdom even as we pray “thy kingdom come”? In the process, we are increasingly more aligned and in tune with the kingdom, more and more living our lives, individually and in community, in a manner that consistently reflects, in word and deed, the coming kingdom of God.

Three Movements in Our Prayers

Can we do this? Certainly, but only if we are intentional. We need to consider the merits of a very focused and purposeful approach to our prayers. Yes, there is a place for spontaneity. And most certainly there is a place for freeform prayers where we express to God our immediate thoughts and feelings. But when we speak of our formation in Christ and our participation in the kingdom—where the kingdom of God increasingly defines us more than anything else—we should perhaps be focused and purposeful. We can consider the value of consistency and even routine, an approach to prayer that has an order to it. We can even speak of a liturgy, meaning that our prayers have a regular pattern to them so that over time our hearts and minds and lives are increasingly conformed to the very thing for which we are praying.

In this kind of intentionality it is very helpful to think in terms of three movements in our prayers, three forms of prayer by which we respond to and learn to live in the reality that Christ is risen and active in our world—that in and through Christ the reign of God is coming. Three movements, with an intentional sequence.

First, we give thanks. We see and respond with gratitude to the ways in which God is already at work in our world and in our lives. We begin here. We begin by seeing the evidence of the reign of Christ—the ways that God is already at work in our lives and in our world. And we give thanks. We pray “thy kingdom come” in a way that not only acknowledges that God is already at work but celebrates and gives thanks for this work. We cannot pray “thy kingdom come” if we are not grateful for how the kingdom has come and is coming. Thanksgiving is foundational to the Christian life and thus foundational to prayer.

Second, we make confession—the essential realignment of those who long to live under the reign of Christ. We pray “thy kingdom come,” and very soon we also pray—if we follow the sequence of the Lord’s Prayer—“forg...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Preface: Practicing Prayer
• 1 Prayer and the Kingdom of God
• 2 Praying in the Spirit
• 3 The Prayer of Thanksgiving
• 4 The Prayer of Confession
• 5 The Prayer of Discernment
• 6 Prayer as Spiritual Practice
• Afterword: Prayer as Petition
• Notes
• Books by Gordon T. Smith
• Praise for Teach Us to Pray
• About the Author
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright