C.S. Lewis once
wrote that the first phrase of every prayer
ought to be, 'May it be the real [me] who
prays, and the real You to whom I pray.'
This phrase is more important than we know.
We generally conceive of prayer as being a
vertical link from us to God, going straight
from our heart to the ears of God. But what
if we have created a few extra steps in the
process? What if it is not the real 'us' who
is praying?
Richard Foster, in his much-loved book entitled
'Prayer', says that the most basic form of
prayer is really self-centred, and needs to
be that way. We need first to understand exactly
who it is that is praying to God. We need
to ask God for the grace to know ourselves;
to know all of our true desires, our true
sins, our true dreams, our true pains and
our true joys. This is what the Psalmist is
asking for when he says, 'Search me, O God,
and know my heart; test me and know my anxious
thoughts. See if there is any offensive way
in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.'
(Psalm 139:23-24)
It is possible that we really don’t
know ourselves, and that we are afraid to
gain that self-knowledge, because we might
not like what we will find. And so, our prayers
look more like an 'L' than a straight vertical
line. Our prayers start at our lips, but need
to pass sideways through the image we have
created of ourselves first before they reach
'upwards' to God. In other words, we do not
pray to God as we are, but rather as we feel
we ought to be. We have created a middleman
that puts distance between us and God.
This is obviously a pretty major problem.
First, it tells us that we do not really trust
God to listen to us or to be merciful to the
person we really are. It’s as if we
are saying, 'God, if you really knew me, you
would not bother with my hypocritical, unworthy
prayers.' By doing this we miss out on the
true acceptance that God has for us, the true
forgiveness he wants to give us, and the true
intimacy that comes from being fully known
and fully loved. Foster and Lewis both stress
that we must take all the pain from our true
selves and give them to God in prayer, almost
as an act of worship. 'God, here is my pride.
Here is my lust. Here is my hatred, my envy,
my depression, my deception, every painful
thing that is within me. I give them to you.
Will you take them?'
The answer is yes. God is a forgiving God.
Even if we do have L shaped prayers, God is
gracious, He hears us and knows us. Psalm
139 also says: ‘Before a word is on
my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.’
But he desires for us a much greater intimacy,
a much greater reality. Let’s not hide
from ourselves or from God any longer. Let
us, with the help and grace of God, examine
daily who we really are, and allow the real
us to pray to the real God. He will accept
us for who we are, and gently show us how
to become the person he wants us to be.
