A Final Word About Prayer

I have been writing about prayer, but everything I have said is simply an "aid" to prayer, a way of waiting upon the Holy Spirit, Who Himself will teach us to pray.  Romans 12:1 says, "Offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God -- which is your spiritual worship. ... then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--- his good, pleasing, and perfect will." 

When we come to pray, this is what we are doing -- offering ourselves to God, who then can perfect His will in our lives.  At the well, Jesus told the Samaritan woman, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water."  When we come to pray, we are asking for living water to spring up within us, to carry us along as a bubbling brook.  Teresa of Avila instructed her sisters in prayer by telling them that at first, prayer is like drawing up and hauling water by hand to our garden, but soon it begins to be easier to draw the water from the depths of the earth, and then at last, it flows out without any effort of our own.

And her analogy exactly matches the description in Sirach 24 of "the book of the covenant of God Most High:" It sends out wisdom in full flood like the river Pishon, or like the Tigris at the time of firstfruits; it overflows like the Euphrates with understanding or like the Jordan at the season of harvest.  It pours forth instruction like the Nile, like the Gihon at the time of vintage.  No one has ever known wisdom fully and from first to last no one has fathomed her, for her thoughts are vaster than the ocean, her purpose more profound than the great abyss. 

As for me, I was like a watercourse leading from a river, like a conduit into a pleasure garden.  I said, "I will water my garden, soaking its flower bed";  all at once my watercourse became a river, and my river a sea.....Truly, I have not toiled for myself alone but for all who seek wisdom.

Jesus told us that the Father would not fail to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.  When we come to pray, we are asking for this great Gift of God -- the Holy Spirit, Who aids us in our weakness.  Indeed, He is called The Helper, the Advocate, the Paraclete for that reason.  It is He Who leads us in prayer, and when He comes, our effort ceases.  St. Augustine said, "Pray as you can, not as you can't."  Good advice, for the Spirit leads each of us according to His knowledge and wisdom, and no two of us will pray in exactly the same way. 

Prayer is worth whatever effort it takes to begin to develop the habit of what Teresa of Avila calls "a loving conversation with One Who we know loves us."  When we are engaged in conversation, whether deep or superficial, with someone who loves us, it is not an effort, and we don't worry that we are not doing it "right."  It just flows.  That is our aim in prayer -- just conversation with our Father, in the Son, through the Holy Spirit.  And the results of prayer are so worth it.  Isaiah 58:11 says, The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame.  You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.  Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

When we come to pray, if all we do at first is to stare at the above passage, I guarantee the deep waters of prayer will begin to flow within you.