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Thus our prayers of adoration primarily re-present our understanding of God, while our prayers of confession primarily re-present our understanding of ourselves before God, in face of God's liberating judgment against our sin. On the other hand, our prayers of thanksgiving explicitly express both – both our understanding of God as the primal source and final end of all that we are and have and our understanding of ourselves as the grateful recipients of all God's gifts – while our prayers of petition further re-present our understanding of ourselves, and our prayers of intercession re-present our understanding of our neighbors. In the second of the two evangelical commandments, you'll remember, we're charged with loving our neighbors as ourselves. Well, I hold that petitionary prayer, in the usual sense, is one of the ways we go about fulfilling the commandment to love ourselves, even as intercessory prayer which is really only petitionary prayer for others – is one of the ways we go about loving our neighbors. But how so? Why do we pray for ourselves and our neighbors? To what end do we pray? Here is where I always remember one of my favorite theologians, Martin Luther, who was the first to help me answer these questions, although I have since learned that essentially the same teaching is to be found already in Augustine (from whom Luther may very well have learned it) as well as in the sermons of the chief teacher of my own church tradition as a Methodist – John Wesley. In his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, and specifically on Mt 6:7-13, Luther writes (and I quote him at length):
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Therefore Christ says now: 'Your heavenly Father knows what you need before you ask for it' \[vs. 8\]. It is as if he would say: 'What are you up to? Do you suppose that you will talk \[God1 down with your long babbling and make him give you what you need? There is no need for you to persuade him with your words or to give him detailed instructions; for he knows beforehand what you need, even better than you do yourself.'. . |
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But you may say: 'Since \[God\] knows and sees all our needs better than we do ourselves, why does he let us bring our petitions and present our need, instead of giving it to us without our petitioning? After all, he freely gives the whole world so much good every day, like the sun, the rain, crops and money, body and life, for which no one asks him or thanks him. He knows that no one can get along for a single day without light, food, and drink. Then why does he tell us to ask for these things? |
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The reason \[God\] commands it is, of course, not in order to have us make our prayers an instruction to him as to what he ought to give us, but in order to have us acknowledge and confess that he is already bestowing many blessings upon us and that he can and will give us still more. By our praying, therefore, we are instructing ourselves more than we are him. It makes me turn around so that I do not proceed as do the ungodly, neither acknowledging this nor thanking \[God\] for it. When my heart is turned to \[God\] and awakened this way, then I praise him, thank him, take refuge with him in my need, and expect help from him. As a consequence of all this, I learn more and more to acknowledge what kind of God he is |
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You see, a prayer that acknowledges this truly pleases God. It is the truest, highest, and most precious worship which we can render to him; for it gives him the glory that is due him. . . . |
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\[A\] Christian heart is one that learns from the word of God that everything we have is from God and nothing is from ourselves. Such a heart accepts all this in faith and practices it, learning to look to \[God\] for everything and to expect it from him. In this way praying teaches us to recognize who we are |
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and who God is, and to learn what we need and where we are to look for it and find it. The result of this is an excellent, perfect, and sensible \[woman or\] man, one who can maintain the right relationship to all things. |
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"By our praying, therefore, we are instructing ourselves more than we are \[God\].... \[P\]raying teaches us to recognize who we are and who God is, and to learn what we need and where we are to look for it and find it." Or, as John Wesley puts it, H\[T\]he end of your praying is not to inform God, as though he knew not your wants already; but rather to inform yourselves.... It is not so much to move God, who is always more ready to give than you to ask, as to move yourselves, that you may be willing and ready to receive the good things he has prepared for you." |
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