Developing our prayer lives

Recently, I walked down into our village to visit our local café. Living in the Peak District of Derbyshire, I was not surprised to encounter a party of teenagers, fervently studying a map of the  area, and falling out amongst themselves about which direction to take. I offered to help, and was soon  giving an impromptu map reading lesson.

They knew the map symbols and had located their position from road signs and a satnav app on a smart-phone. To my alarm, they intended to go up Kinder Scout, our local mountain, where signals are weak and unreliable. One of them had a compass but little idea how to use it.  So I showed them how to orientate the map, using the compass and then to interpret it using its symbols to locate landmarks and set a course to follow. Finally, I talked them through a safe route up.

They all returned safely later that day, but I suspect had little idea of the dangers they could have been be in.

Reflecting on this experience, I was reminded of advice I was once given about prayer and discipleship - understood as finding my way through life with God as my companion. I was advised to think of the Bible as a map, learn its symbolism and use it to identify landmarks in my life  and to plot a course to find safe routes through. In short, I needed to learn how to orientate it to the landscape of my life. That is, I needed a spiritual compass to work with my  Bible. I discovered that my prayers, under the guidance of  the Holy Spirit, can act as that compass.

In the particular evangelical fellowship to which I belonged, Bible study – was indeed just that  i.e. “study” ,and prayers were largely verbal praising and pleadings. I am profoundly grateful for all that fellowship gave me and I recognise that this was considerable, but am left wondering about how my discipleship might  have developed if I had not previously developed study skills, and was not reasonably articulate.

What was needed was both advice about, and practise in, the day to day, moment to moment, listening to and communicating with God, This is not to decry study for that is needed too, preferably before we get into a difficult  situation.  Faced with a young girl contemplating an abortion, for instance, is no time to embark on a series of studies to try to find what advice, if any, to give. For some purposes, we really do need to address issues in advance. But study has limitations.

What I had to learn was how to use silence and imagination in my prayer life, in a reflective, meditative contemplative sort of way. I suspect that there are many other  Christians  who need need help to do this, and as the Methodist Church becomes a discipleship movement then  we need to seek to grow in our prayer life. One way of doing this is to re-examine and, in some cases rediscover, the many different ways of praying that have come down to us through the centuries, and to try them out in our daily lives.

This involved, in my case, to learn to trust my imagination  and use it in a disciplined and prayerful way. I was greatly helped in this by the realisation that  it was only through imagination that we have “Pilgrims Progress” , “The Shack” and Screwtape's letters. But most of all, I found myself constantly reminded by the scriptures that our Lord was constantly story telling and inviting us, to  be inspired by the characters and their actions by imagining ourselves into the situations described in the stories.

I was particularly moved by Jesus words in Matthew 6:28 “Consider the lilies of the field...” where he  is inviting us to imaginatively observe its beauty, and the carefree way in which it grows - and to learn from what we see and  apply it to our lives.

From here I used other objects to start my imagining off, usually guided by relevant verses or passages. Here are a few of them. 

• A lighted candle. - John 8:12, Matthew 5:14, Job 18:18
• Water – Psalm 1:3, Psalm 42:1, John 2:9, John 4;13, Rev 21:6
• A stone. Gen 31:16, 1 Sam 17:40, Is 60:17, Hos 10:2, Matt 4:3, Luke 19.40.
• Wood.
• A Wine.
• Bread.