Pastor offers
prayer pointers
By Paula R. Kincaid, The Layman, July 20, 2009
NEW WILMINGTON, Pa. – The Rev. John McCall, a teacher at the Taiwan Theological Seminary, spoke about prayer as part of his mission study at the 104th New Wilmington Mission Conference in New Wilmington, Pa.
He read from Matthew 6:5-8, Jesus’ instructions to the disciples on how to pray, and from that, gave pointers on how to improve prayer life.
First, McCall said to “pray regularly.” Verse 5 says “when you pray,” not “if.”
“Give your best time to Jesus,” he said. Morning people should pray in the morning. A night person should pray then. “Give God your best time, not your worst,” he said.
Second he said to “pray privately. … God is not impressed with our public displays of piety,” he said. Also, pray specifically.
McCall also stresses the need spend time listening while in prayer.
“We need to learn to be silent and listen to God,” McCall said. He compared prayer without listening to having a one-sided conversation with a friend who does all the talking and you just sit and listen.
If Christians pray, thanking God for blessings, confessing sins to God, and asking for petitions and then finish the prayer, “When does God have time to speak to us?” McCall said he thinks that “often times we fear silence with God.”
He gave some pointers to help with silent prayer:
- Start for a short period of time, and then add one minute a month.
- Think about your breathing. Breathe for a while before you start praying and concentrate on releasing the tension in your body.
- Be silent, with your eyes open. Look out the window, he said. “Ponder something in nature, a candle flame or a picture.” Don’t worship these things, he added, but let them help you focus.
- Walk and pray. The motion of walking can give you a way to center and settle down.
When prayers are not answered, McCall said it could be that God said no, the timing could be wrong, or the person praying could be in the wrong.
There are inappropriate requests, he said, when God will say no. “God loves us too much to answer inappropriate prayer.”
He listed four questions to think about when Christians ask for something in prayer:
- Will it bring glory to God?
- Will it advance the kingdom of God?
- Will it help others?
- Will it help me grow spirituall
The timing of the prayer may be wrong. “We live in an instant society where we expect everything immediately,” he said. “Be careful in insisting that you know better than God and God’s timing.”
And things can block our prayer life, if the person praying is not in the right relationship with God. Unconfessed sin “puts a block between us and God,” said McCall, as do broken relationships.
Selfishness can be another adversary in prayer life. He spoke of songs or prayers that say, “’I’, ‘I,’ ‘I’. Look at the Lord’s Prayer, it says ‘our.’”
There are times, he said, when people “don’t really pray.” In McCall’s opinion, one of the worst lies is saying, “I will pray for you, and then not do it.” He said when people ask him to pray for them, he writes it down so he won’t forget.