In my last post, I quoted a prayer by Karl Rahner. Christians of one stripe may think that composed prayers are not beneficial.
I think it all depends on how one uses them. If one mumbles through them—heartless and half-awake—then sure. Any text, including Scripture, would be useless in that case, not because of the text but because of the user. There is nothing that stipulates one employ or engage with composed prayers in this manner. Besides, reading may certainly be included in the act of prayer, but by itself it is not prayer. I take it to be indisputable that prayer is more than reading, i.e., saying words—there must be things like intention, devotion, sincerity, communion with God, etc. Fire, not just form.
However, just because the words of a prayer are offered for your use by someone else, doesn’t mean one cannot pray with them.
To reject composed prayers altogether would be like rejecting the Lord’s Prayer because the Lord himself supplied the words. Watchman Nee considered the Lord’s prayer to be “a model prayer” and “a revelation of God’s heart.”1 Witness Lee considered that this prayer was categorically “all-inclusive.”2 If we take these descriptions to heart—model, revelation, all-inclusive—it seems like we would be drawn even more to this prayer, would relish in its formulation, would familiarize our self with its contours and internalize its rhythms. But none of this means that you can’t simply use these very words as your own prayer, granted that you PRAY them. That’s because the words themselves, while welcoming expansion, are good, sufficient, and exemplary.
Lee was not against repeating prayers, which would certainly entail repeating the wording or at least form of words of a prayer. He says that Lord’s warning against “babbling empty words” or trusting in a “multiplicity of words” in Matthew 6:7
does not mean that we should not repeat our prayer. The Lord repeated His prayer three times in Gethsemane (26:44), the apostle Paul prayed the same prayer three times (2 Cor. 12:8), and the great multitude in heaven praised God repeatedly with hallelujahs (Rev. 19:1-6). It means that we should not repeat empty words, words spoken in vain.3
I take it as axiomatic that the words the Lord would offer as a model prayer for us are not “empty.” I also take it on empirical evidence that this prayer doesn’t fall under the label “multiplicity” (65 words in Greek).
In another place Lee says,
Every time we drive to a gas station to fill up, we repeat the same action, because getting gas is always the same. Likewise, we should not be afraid to repeat our prayers.4
Repeating our prayers often simply means repeating our words. And when the words are good and the heart is game, there is nothing wrong with repetition. In fact, it seems like the Lord offers this model prayer precisely as one that avoids the “babbling” and “multiplicity” that he calls out just before this.
Lee, in fact, recommended praying the prayers of Ephesians 1 or 3 frequently, enjoining others to repeat them 10 times a day for 10 days or for 30 days straight.5 If this is so, why not then the prayer of Matthew 6?
None of this negates the fact that the Lord’s Prayer is a template that welcomes expansion. It is not a bone to thoughtlessly gnaw on, but ingredients in a recipe that can be cooked in many ways. And even when you don’t want to modify the basic recipe—or can’t because of time or mood—it always tastes good and is nutritious, provided you savor it. A good prayer repeated when you’re out of it or out of time is certainly better than no prayer. And a good prayer internalized is formative and allows for easy expansion at a later time. This “model prayer” aims at expansion. It should serve to educate one how to pray, ie what to pray for. In other words the more you repeat this prayer itself, the more you should learn how to expand on it. If after years of saying this prayer, you can’t or won’t follow the Spirit to expand on it, you probably have not learned to pray from it.
Numerous commentators make this point. For instance, the Anchor Bible Commentary on Matthew says,
“Pray like this.” I.e., “in this way,” not “in these words.” The constant repetition of the Lord’s prayer in public worship has steadily eroded the eschatological urgency of the words almost to the vanishing point. To compound this misunderstanding, we have also forgotten that the clauses of the prayer are in a very real sense “headlines,” which would have suggested other thoughts, allied considerations.6
Ulrich Luz, in like manner, says:
It is the openness of the Lord’s Prayer that is its real strength… Many people can find themselves in its formulations, because it does not prescribe to praying people what wishes, hopes, or views they must have.7
Luther also critiqued those who abused the Lord’s Prayer—meaning those who merely mumbled their way through it—but this doesn’t mean that he rejected employing this prayer and these words—that would be unthinkable to him. He said, “To this day I suckle at the Lord’s Prayer like a child, and as an old man eat and drink from it and never get my fill. It is the very best prayer.”8 Luther, as it turns out though, is a master of using this prayer as a categorical (‘categories’ as an adjective) template for expansion, as can be seen in his wonderful Large Catechism.
By means of all prayer
All this leads me to the point I really began this post for, which is that prayer comes in many different modes. And to be a good pray-er is to be adept in all the different ways of prayer and not be stuck to a form, which, in Lee’s terminology, would then precisely become an ordinance (see Eph 2:15).
Ephesians 6:18 says,
By means of all [πᾶς] prayer and petition, praying at every [πᾶς] time in spirit and watching unto this in all [πᾶς] perseverance and petition concerning all [πᾶς] the saints.
Markus Barth offers these comments:
The word “all” is repeated no fewer than four times in the Greek text. In each case it expresses a manifold universal concern:
- For man’s whole lifetime, in all its years, days, hours and minutes
- For the whole range and all forms of public and private prayer, including the desperate cry, “Help!”
- For the whole mental, emotional, and physical range of personal existence, and the energies present or to be received and used in the head, the heart, and the limbs
- For the whole community of the church, particularly its weakest members
Nothing less is suggested than that the life and strife of the saints be one great prayer to God, that this prayer be offered in ever new forms however good or bad the circumstances, and that this prayer not be self-centered but express the need and hope of all the saints.9
All prayer encompasses scripted prayer and spontaneous prayer, formal prayer and conversational prayer, loud prayer and soft prayer, articulate prayer and groaned prayer (Rom. 8:23-26). The Christian who is comfortable with only one of these forms may be missing dimensions of prayer that Scripture itself commends.
With this in view a few questions come to my mind:
How much does my prayer encompass all these “alls”?
How often do I fall into the rut of one kind of prayer?
How often do I reduce my prayers to my pet concerns and routine expressions?
How many prejudices do I harbor against modes of prayer that I don’t frequently employ?
How can I enrich my prayer life through familiarity with the practice of others?
- Nee, CWWN 40:138. See also, R. T. France, Matthew, NICNT (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2007), 241: “we are offered a model of how to pray in the form of the Lord’s Prayer.” See also, p. 242: The church has always found the prayer “to be suitable either for simple repetition or as a template for more extended prayer or a basis for thinking (and teaching) about prayer and its priorities. The fact that the early church seems to have been content for the prayer to be preserved in different forms does, however, suggest that it was more concerned with the content of the prayer than with its exact form.” ↩︎
- Lee, Life-study of Matthew, 267. ↩︎
- Lee, RcV, Matthew 6:7, note 1. ↩︎
- Lee, CWWL 1986, 3:307. ↩︎
- Lee, Life-study of Ephesians, 152; CWWL 1975-1976, 2:344. ↩︎
- W. F. Albright and C. S. Mann, Matthew, AB 26, (Doubleday & Company, 1971), 75. ↩︎
- Luz, Matthew 1-7, Hermeneia (2007), 314, 325. ↩︎
- Martin Luther, LW 43:200. ↩︎
- Markus Barth, Ephesians 4-6, AB (1974), 778. ↩︎
conversant faith 