P.R.A.Y.: Pause

Matthew 6:5-8

January 24, 2021 • Mount Pleasant UMC

I heard someone say the other day that, after only a couple of weeks, 2021 doesn’t so much feel like a new year as much as it does “2020+.” As I hinted when we began the new year, the turn of the calendar page doesn’t seem to have actually resulted in much change. If anything, it seems like a lot of the emotions and feelings and inclinations that were simmering in 2020 have come to boil, even boiled over in 2021. And, as we’ve talked about the last few weeks, there seems to still be much to fear in this new year. So at the very beginning of the year, we attempted to tackle some of the sources of that fear, and now for the next few weeks, I want to turn toward the Source that will help us conquer those fears and help us live through them. We’re going to spend the next four weeks looking at the topic of prayer, or as I’ve sort of subtitled this series: prayer for “normal people.”

I want to start this morning with a description of prayer from one of today’s best theologians, N. T. Wright, because I think he nails it and says it far better than I can. (Which is why he’s a famous theologian and I’m not.) Anyway, Wright says this:

Prayer is one of life’s great mysteries. Most people pray at least sometimes; some people, in many different religious traditions, pray a great deal. At its lowest, prayer is shouting into a void on the off-chance there may be someone out there listening. At its highest, prayer merges into love, as the presence of God becomes so real that we pass beyond words and into a sense of his reality, generosity, delight and grace. For most Christians, most of the time, it takes place somewhere in between those two extremes. To be frank, for many people it is not just a mystery but a puzzle. They know they ought to do it but they aren’t quite sure how (Wright, Matthew for Everyone—Part One, pgs. 57-58).

Can anyone else say “amen” to that? Honestly, I have struggled with prayer for most of my life, certainly all of my Christian life. I never feel like I do it “right” or do it “enough” or that I ask for the right things or ask for what I ask for in the right way. Yes, even pastors struggle with prayer, believe it or not. (Don’t tell anyone.)

Add to that the pressure that comes from our culture, the voices that say prayer is not enough or prayer is not effective or even that prayer is a waste of time. It’s become fashionable during times of stress or loss or devastation for people (particularly on social media) to say something along the lines of, “Don’t bother saying you’re praying for this. Do something instead.” The world, which generally believes prayer has no power, says, “We don’t want your ‘thoughts and prayers.’” Well, the truth is prayer doesn’t have any power in and of itself. The only “power” in prayer is found and rooted in the One to whom prayer is addressed. If all we’re doing is “thinking good thoughts,” that doesn’t do anything. There are no magical healing or helping thoughts. But if we go to God in prayer and ask him to work, well that has the potential to change the world. The power is not in our prayer; the power is in the God to whom we pray. So while prayer is not the only thing we can do in the midst of stress or division or devastation or loss, as people of faith it ought to be the first thing we do. And yet, bowing to the pressure of the world, it’s become easy to skip prayer, especially because we somehow feel better about ourselves if we “do” something than to pray. Or maybe we skip prayer because we don’t know what to say or how to go about it.

But we’re in good company because the disciples of Jesus struggled with prayer as well. I’m not just talking about the night they fell asleep while Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane (cf. Matthew 26:36-46); I’m thinking about much earlier in their time with Jesus. As Luke tells it, the disciples had seen Jesus praying one day, and there must have been something in the way he prayed that intrigued them. It was different from the way they had been brought up, different from the prayers they had learned in the synagogue. I remember being in a church at a place in Israel called Emmaus-Nicopolis, and we had been walking around the site of one possible location of the first-century village of Emmaus. Just before we left, we went into this beautiful little chapel, and as we turned to go, I noticed a young woman in the back. She was praying, so intent on her savior that she had no idea we were anywhere around. That was twenty years ago, and I’ve forgotten a lot of things since then, but I still remember her in that space, in deep communion with Jesus. I should have gone up to her like the disciples did to Jesus and said, “Teach me to pray.” That’s what Luke says happened. After Jesus finishes praying, they go to him and says, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples” (Luke 11:1). I don’t think it was because they knew nothing about prayer; I think it was because there was a quality, a depth in Jesus’ prayer that they could see even from a distance, and that was something they wanted in their own lives of prayer.

What Jesus teaches the disciples in Luke 11 is essentially the same prayer he taught to the crowd in Matthew 6 as part of the Sermon on the Mount. But in Matthew, before he gives an actual prayer, or guidelines for prayer, he gives some guidance for the life of prayer. Over the next four weeks, we’re going to walk through this prayer of Jesus using the acronym P.R.A.Y. As you’ve seen in the video, those letters stand for Pause, Rejoice, Ask and Yield, so we’ve already given you the outline for the next four weeks and we’ll look at each one of them in turn, but this morning, we’re going to start with P: Pause, because how we prepare to pray is every bit as important as the prayer itself.

To be completely honest, this may be the part of prayer I have the hardest time with. Pause. In our hurry and hustle world, it’s hard to pause. Most days, we are so driven that to pause, to stop and take intentional time to prepare to pray seems like—well, let’s tell the truth. It seems like a waste of time, doesn’t it? Even with prayer, we’re driven to want to get in there, get it done, and move on with our day. But what does Jesus say? Let’s hear verse 6 again: “When you pray…” Notice, “when” not “if.” He assumes we will be people who pray. So, “when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen” (6:6). What Jesus is describing here is an intentional breaking from the regular routine, from the day, from our life as it is normally lived—getting away to focus on the heavenly Father. Jesus himself did this; there are multiple times in the Gospels when we are told Jesus went away early in the morning, or he went to a secluded place, or up into the hills. Jesus broke away from the world around him, stepped away from his busy schedule and prayed. He didn’t just pray as he was on his way somewhere else; I know I do that, using the time in the car going from here to there to pray, and I congratulate myself on my efficient use of time. And it’s not that there’s anything wrong with that, but are we really focusing on the Father at that time, or is (hopefully at least) half of our attention on the road? Jesus models for us an intentional time away, a time when we close the door (close off the world) and spend purposeful (and hopefully uninterrupted) time in the Father’s presence. Eugene Peterson once said that “life’s basic decision is rarely, if ever, whether to believe in God or not, but whether to worship or compete with him” (qtd. in Greig, How to Pray, pg. 38). When we press “pause,” it’s like we sign a “non-compete” contract with God. We settle into his presence, worship him. Jesus calls us to pause.

So this morning I want to give you two ancient practices you can start doing today to help you pause, and the first of these is called “centering.” If you’ve read the psalms very much, and you have if you follow the daily readings we post because they pop up quite frequently, but in that reading you may have noticed a little word that’s usually in italics at the end of a verse of a phrase. The word is selah, and it appears seventy-one times throughout the psalms. No one is quite sure what it means. Some scholars think it might have been a technical or a musical notation, since the psalms were originally sung in worship. One of my professors at Asbury said he translated it as, “Help, Lord, my guitar string broke.” But the best guess today is that selah is “an instruction to pause and an invitation to weigh the meaning of the words we are praying” (Greig 39). So in musical terms, it was probably an indication for the musicians to play an interlude, sort of like how we usually have soft piano music playing while we pray. It’s very possible selah means “pause” or “center yourself on God.”

So how do we do that? The psalmist, centuries ago, gives us a clue. In Psalm 131, David writes, “I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content” (131:2). We have to get still, which is hard in a noisy world. Pastor Rick mentioned last week the average person has about 6,000 thoughts a day (See? I was listening), so getting quiet is a challenge at best. Finding contentment is hard with so many thoughts pulling for our attention. But Scripture also reminds us that God most often speaks in a “still, small voice” (KJV) or “a gentle whisper” (NIV) and he waits for us to get quiet so we can hear him (cf. 1 Kings 19:12). Because God made us whole people—body, mind and spirit—we first have to find a way that works for us to quiet the whole person. God wants and deserves our whole attention. So the first thing we need to do is to find a place that is our place for prayer, a place where we can be comfortable, where other distractions are absent. The other piece to this is finding a time when you can quiet the voices and thoughts that pull at you. For me, that’s first thing in the morning, and usually before I get out of bed. When the alarm goes off, my heart and mind move toward prayer. I try to spend some time in silence, but I also admit that I talk a lot to God rather than waiting to hear from God. I want to get better at that. After a time, I get out of bed and I move to a place in our house that is quiet, set apart, and generally free from distractions, to read Scripture and some devotional material and again to listen to God. At that time in the morning, there is very little that distracts me but I know once I get moving, once I shower and get dressed, the day begins pulling at me, texts start coming in, and the thoughts ramp up. For me, having that specific time early in the morning and that specific space in our home helps me to pause and center my day on God.

The second ancient practice I commend to you is what is called a breath prayer, and it’s called that because it’s a prayer you can say in a single breath. Oftentimes it’s a prayer you can repeat over and over as you breathe in and out; for some, it’s a prayer that becomes calming. If you’re in the midst of a stressful situation, you turn to this prayer and begin to repeat it over and over. The prayer and the repetition helps you again focus on Jesus, center on God, and find perspective to the stress. So a breath prayer might be a verse from Scripture, maybe a favorite promise that you have memorized. I might turn to Psalm 27:1: “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?” And I would say that as I breathe out, then picture myself surrounded by the presence of God as I breathe in. Another prayer many have turned to through the centuries is what is commonly called the “Jesus prayer.” It dates back to the fifth century, though no one’s quite sure who or where it came from, but it goes like this: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Sometimes I’ll just pray the first three words: “Lord Jesus Christ!” Jesus knows that’s a prayer, a cry, for help. Or I might simply pray the names of the Trinity: “Loving Father, Lord Jesus, Holy Spirit.” You could also use the very beginning of what we call the Lord’s Prayer as a breath prayer. When you breathe in, pray, “Our Father who art in heaven,” and then as you breathe out, pray the second part, “Hallowed be thy name.” Another one I’ve prayed, honestly, a lot more in the last year, is one Greek word, one that echoes throughout the New Testament: maranatha, which simply means, “Come, Lord Jesus.” Sometimes I even add, “Right now.” Any of these breath prayers and a whole lot of others help us pause and re-focus, re-center our life in the one who gave us life (cf. Greig 41-42). I urge you this week to come up with a verse or a phrase that you could use as a breath prayer, one that would help you pause and call you back to your creator, to your Father in heaven.

  I think a lot about that praying woman at Emmaus-Nicopolis. As I mentioned a few moments ago, one of the images that sticks with me after all these years is how, even in the midst of the hubbub and the murmuring of Holy Land tourists, she was undeterred. She was solely focused on her savior in prayer, and I want to have that kind of focus. I am far too easily distracted; if you hear me saying this morning that I’m always able to focus on Jesus, then I’m not saying it right. Early in the morning is what works for me because there are fewer distractions, but then a car goes by outside, or a bird starts to sing, or even worse, the technology goes off. I love the ease of having the Bible on my phone and iPad, and I love the resources I can access through these tools, but there are also a thousand ways I can get distracted by the tech. I’ll begin to pray about something and then wonder how that person is doing. Well, you know what, I can check on them through the power of social media, so I open up Facebook because I’m just going to check on them and then, oh look, there’s that other person I haven’t heard from in a while, and look there’s that book I’ve been looking for and it’s on sale and before you know it, I’m down a rabbit hole called social media and my pausing has become playing. Again, is this just me, or are there things that distract you, too? Let me say this from fifty-three years of experience: it does no good to beat yourself up for being distracted in the midst of the time you intended to devote to God. That actually just becomes another distraction! The better choice is to come back to a breath prayer, ask Jesus to refocus you, and start again. God knows how we are made—he made us, after all! He knows we live in an age of distraction, where everyone and everything calls for our attention. And he knows the intent of your heart. Close the iPad, quiet your heart and start again. Do not let distractions drag you away from the divine.

This idea of pausing before prayer is so important that I even do it often when I pray out loud or with groups. Just take a moment and pause. Spend a moment in quiet. It doesn’t have to take long or get awkward, but it allows us to remember who it is we’re talking to and with. It quiets our hearts and our minds and allows us to center our spirits on God. I don’t know if you notice, but a lot of our modern prayers doesn’t sound like we’re talking to God so much as we’re talking to the people around us. Preachers are especially bad about this; we pray things we think people need to hear. “Lord, you know those people over there are terrible rotten sinners.” Well, if God knows it, why are you telling him? “God, you know how in the Bible it says this and that.” Yeah, he knows. He sort of wrote the book. When we pause, we remember who we are supposed to be praying to and spending time with.

Now, I know I’ve talked a lot this morning about getting still and sitting in a place where you can pray, and for me, as an introvert at heart, that is what works. That’s what I need. It also works because our kids are grown and the house is pretty quiet especially in the morning. It did not work when our kids were little, when they got up in the mornings and, let’s be honest, created chaos. When they were school-aged, it was a triumph just to get them out the door in time to get to the bus. So quiet may not work in your situation, especially if you have kids or grandkids or others who share your home around. There are also some of you who find you don’t sit well. You have to be up and moving around. Carolyn Weber, a Canadian author and mother of four, talks in her book Holy Is the Day, about having to learn a rhythm that worked for her in the midst of the craziness of their lives. For her, it was getting out of the house for walks around her neighborhood, and as she did that she began to notice God speaking to her through nature (the deer who gathered in a field nearby), through the weather (including a single cloud in the sky shaped like an exclamation point), through so many “ordinary” things. She began to value the walks as a time of pausing, of learning to refocus on the God she loves. She found herself better able to handle the stress of her life at home when she paused and allowed God to minister to her soul during those walks. So, for some of you, getting up and moving around might be the best way to pause. I picture Jesus climbing the hills around the Sea of Galilee, as the Gospels tell us he did, and I doubt he waited until he got to the top of those hills before he was praying. I imagine the walk provided the time Jesus needed to quiet his soul, to pause, and to be ready to pray when he arrived. And, as those hills around Galilee are beautiful as well, I imagine he, like Carolyn Weber, found peace coming to his soul through the creation. No matter how God has wired your personality, you can find a way to pause.

Before he gives us the model prayer, Jesus says one other thing, something we often forget: there is no magic to prayer. To hear some people pray, you’d think that the more words you use the better chances you have of getting your prayer answered the way you want it to be. To hear preachers pray sometimes, you’d think we get paid by the word! But Jesus says exactly the opposite is true. He puts it this way: “When you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them” (6:7-8). Okay, let’s be sure: what did Jesus say there? “Do not be like them.” Do. Not. Be like them. Here’s how Eugene Peterson put it in The Message: “The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They’re full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don’t fall for that nonsense” (pg. 1754). Being long-winded does not mean God will listen to you more or grant your request quickly. It just means you’re long-winded. The simple prayer, Jesus says, is the one that reaches the heart of God “for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (6:8; cf. Card, Matthew: The Gospel of Identity, pg. 63).

There’s one other thing Jesus doesn’t address specifically, but I believe it’s important to mention. Pastor Rick may wish I hadn’t said it, but I’m going to let you in on a secret this morning: pastors don’t have a special, better connection to God than you do. Pastors are not like a cell phone tower, where the closer you are, the better reception you have and your call has a stronger connection. While we are happy to pray with you anytime, there is no magic in our prayers, either. Several years ago, I checked with a member of our church as to how her husband was healing. He had been very ill and in the hospital—this was back in the days when you could visit in the hospital—and I had been praying for him though I hadn’t been able yet to go see him. In her response to me, she let me know in no uncertain terms that since I hadn’t prayed for him in just the right way, it was on my head if he died. I wasn’t sure how to respond. Early on in my ministry, I served as an associate pastor and was visiting in the hospital with a church member. I prayed for her and after I said, “Amen,” she smiled and said, “That was very nice. Now, when is the real pastor coming by?” I mean, I know I was young, but still! Friends, we love to pray for you, but there is no magic in prayer and there is no special power that either Rick or I have. We have the same power in prayer that each and every one of you have—and that power is in Christ Jesus. The power is not in the prayer or the words spoken. The power is in God alone and in the ways he chooses to answer our prayers, the ways he chooses to respond to his children. When we practice the discipline of “pausing,” we’ll be reminded of that truth and begin to build a strong life of prayer.

So “P” stands for “pause.” We will launch into the other three pieces of the acronym over the next three weeks, so this week, here’s what I encourage you to do. Don’t focus so much on the content of your prayers but instead be determined to focus on the context of your prayers, the one to whom you are praying. Take some time to pause, and don’t worry so much about the words as spending time in his presence. The point of prayer, after all, is to be with God and he wants to be with you. I mean, think about the person you are closest to on this earth, whether that’s your spouse or a very dear friend or other family member. What would it be like if every time I saw Cathy, I said to her, “I’d like this and this and this and this and can you get those things right now, thank you, so be it”? What if she did the same thing every time she saw me? What kind of a relationship would we have? Is the point of the relationship to get stuff? No, of course not. Nor is it the purpose of prayer, or the purpose of our relationship with Jesus. The purpose is to draw near, to be close, to get to know him. When we pause, we acknowledge that and we remember who he is and who we are. Pause; it will do your heart and soul a world of good. So, we’re going to pray, but before we do that, let’s pause. Let’s have a moment of silence as we focus on him.