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    How To Be With God: a Primer on Christian Prayer
    How To Be With God: a Primer on Christian Prayer
    How To Be With God: a Primer on Christian Prayer
    Ebook140 pages2 hours

    How To Be With God: a Primer on Christian Prayer

    By Dr. David McDonald

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    About this ebook

    This book is designed to help you feel empowered and inspired to pray. I want you to enjoy prayer, on your own terms, without any need to justify how or when or why you pray. Because, once you begin, it’s wonderful. It’s easy. Like being with an old friend. Like catching up. Like getting advice from someone you admire.

    This isn’t a book for people who already know how prayer is supposed to be. This is for everyone who wants to know if prayer can be anything other than a prison sentence, or if prayer still counts when you muff it up.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDr. David McDonald
    Release dateJun 1, 2017
    ISBN9781370528196
    How To Be With God: a Primer on Christian Prayer
    Author

    Dr. David McDonald

    Dr. David McDonald is a pastor, teacher, and lecturer in colleges and seminaries all over the world. His work with Westwinds Community Church has been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Time magazine. David was recently appointed to the first-ever post-doctoral fellowship at George Fox Evangelical Seminary, and continues to integrate spiritual truth with sharp social analysis in his private work as a speculative theologian. David lives with his life, Carmel, and their two children in Jackson, Michigan.

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      Book preview

      How To Be With God - Dr. David McDonald

      How to be with God: a Primer on Christian Prayer

      by Dr. David McDonald

      Smashwords edition.

      Copyright © 2017 by Dr. David McDonald. All rights reserved.

      The author retains sole copyright to the materials.

      Published in association with Westwinds Community Church, 1000 Robinson Road, Jackson, MI 49203. http://www.westwinds.org.

      Find more by David McDonald at www.fossores.com.

      Edited by Amy Gafkjen.

      ***

      HOW TO BE WITH GOD: A PRIMER ON CHRISTIAN PRAYER

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Introduction: God likes my jokes

      1. We learn to pray by praying

      2. Prayer makes us saints

      3. Prayer is not automatic, but it can be ordinary

      4. The most common cause of unanswered prayer

      5. Why prayer doesn’t work

      6. Strange and Uncomfortable

      7. Why we’re still so bad at prayer

      8. We become the answer to our prayers

      9. The Faith Web

      10. What we’re allowed to pray for

      Conclusion: Developing a Rule of Life

      Endnotes

      Bibliography

      About the Author

      ***

      For my father, Gordon Arthur McDonald.

      Thank you for showing me God is good, and that I can be, too.

      ***

      GOD LIKES MY JOKES

      I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened …

      - St. Paul, Letter to the Church in Ephesus

      I feel the same way about people who love prayer as I do about people who love conversation: they’re missing the point. I only enjoy some conversation, like with people I appreciate or might begin to love. Other conversations can be dreadful.

      Prayer is a thing I don’t like. But God? Him, I love.

      I do not want you to love prayer, since, as Abraham Heschel said, The issue of prayer is not prayer; the issue of prayer is God.¹ I want you to experience the slow burn of God’s love as it intensifies over time; but, in order for you to better experience God’s love, you’re probably going to have to pray.

      Unfortunately, it’s tough to pray when you feel like trash. Or worse. And the very fact that we’re not praying more makes most of us feel terrible. Our guilt about not praying keeps us from prayer, and the cycle perpetuates.

      This book is designed to help you feel empowered and inspired to pray. I want you to enjoy prayer, on your own terms, without any need to justify how or when or why you pray. Because, once you begin, it’s wonderful. It’s easy. Like being with an old friend. Like catching up. Like getting advice from someone you admire.

      I often laugh while praying because I think God likes my jokes. I imagine he’s excited when I call because he enjoys the spin I put on my stories. He knows the punchlines, of course, but the greatness of a story is in the telling. He’s a brilliant audience. He hangs on every word. After, he’s always got feedback for me—on the performance, on the set-up, the writing, and the issues backstage. His critiques are spot on, and I’m glad whenever I make the recommended change.

      Have I gone too far afield? Does this no longer sound like prayer?

      Good. Because this isn’t a book for people who already know how prayer is supposed to be. This is for everyone who wants to know if prayer can be anything other than a prison sentence, or if prayer still counts when you muff it up.

      I’ll teach you how to pray, but it’ll have to be you that does the praying. My prayers out of your mouth are going to feel angular, so you’ll have to hum the tune until you write new words.

      Prayer is the most honest thing about us. We only really pray when we’ve got nowhere else to aim our anger or chuck our tears or shout our frustration. Prayer is the only place we are truly loved.

      Prayer is like children’s artwork on God’s fridge. Prayer is the poem you wrote when you proposed, the tender intricacy of a long and healthy romance. Prayer is the first time you made someone proud, and the moment you forgave an old wound.

      It is as though God has a favorite food. When we pray, he smells the aroma from the kitchen as you prepare his special dish. When God hungers for some special satisfaction he seeks out a prayer to answer. Our prayer is the sweet aroma from the kitchen ascending up into the King’s chambers making him hungry for the meal. But the actual enjoyment of the meal is his own glorious work in answering our prayers.

      - John Piper, The Pleasures of God²

      Though I’m reluctant to categorize, it is fair to say there are two broad kinds of spiritual people: actives and contemplatives. Most people think the contemplatives are the spiritual ones (they like silence and solitude and vigils and saints). But being spiritual is an abstract concept. The Bible speaks far more about being healthy than it does about being transcendent, so our goal ought to be purity rather than profundity.

      A perfectly healthy bear will never be tender like a perfectly healthy kitten. God made you to be perfectly you. So don’t stress about being spiritual. Be you, purified—the best possible version of you for the glory of God. If you’re contemplative, be purely contemplative. But if you’re active, be perfectly active. Roam. Romp. Bellow. Rant. Roar.

      God wants lions as much as lambs.

      Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered.

      - Leonard Cohen³

      This book is divided into ten chapters, each addressing a common concern about prayer. Don’t worry. I’ll still answer the big one: Why won’t God do what I want? And its cousins: Is God even listening? and What’s the point?

      I’ve included several exercises at the end of each chapter, along with a short introduction to famous pray-ers and a suggestion on how to pray like them. I’ve included these exercises to help you know what to say when you can’t figure out what to say on your own. Having a format to guide us through prayer is an easy way to avoid being dumbstruck when we spend focused time with God.

      The best understanding of prayer is constant conversation with God throughout the day. Properly understood, and when consciously wrangled toward heaven, even our thoughts are prayers. This isn’t automatically the case, but with practice it is possible to be continuously in prayer (see 1 Thessalonians 5.16-18). Nevertheless, it is still important to set aside time exclusively for prayer. To distinguish between the constant prayers of faithful Christians and exclusively-prayer times, I will refer to the latter as focused time with God. Focused time with God is when you’re by yourself, with no distractions, earnestly seeking Christ.

      I’ve also taken to using the term pray-ers in reference to those that pray. Of course Christians would suffice, but many Christians don’t consider themselves competent pray-ers, and the simple adaptation of this otherwise normal term slows us down and helps us consider how God might be maturing us through conversation with him.

      Also, I imagine the two kinds of pray-ers will each need suggestions about how to move forward, so I’ve provided exercises for actives and contemplatives at the end of each chapter. Feel free to change them, adapt them, or ignore them. Likewise, I’ve given a HACK for how to pray along a certain style. Whereas the exercises are kinesthetic activities, the HACKS are mental rubrics for guiding what you say or think.

      One essential skill I’d like to highlight here is learning to pray the Bible. I suggest you read passages from God’s Word and make them your own, repurposed as prayer. It makes for good conversation and provides the added bonus of ensuring your thinking is sound.

      Every book has goals. Mine are simple. I want you to experience more of God and less of your guilt; greater comfort and less condemnation; so prayer becomes a way of life, rather than a departure from it.

      I want you to live comfortably with God.

      Let’s begin to learn how …

      Introduction Endnotes

      Back to top

      ***

      WE LEARN TO PRAY BY PRAYING

      Prayer cannot be taught; it can only be done.

      - A.W. Tozer⁴

      Prayer is like falling off a bike. Everyone teases that we’ll get it right eventually, but in the moment prayer is an invitation to scrape your knees and ugly-cry.

      I’ve read so much about prayer. I’ve tried every kind of praying imaginable, and I’ve come to hate everything about prayer except praying. And just like no one can teach you how to be in love, no one can teach you how to be in prayer.

      We learn to pray by praying.

      Ronald Rolheiser, my favorite contemporary spiritual writer, advises us to show up for prayer, and show up regularly.⁵ Take the leap. Dip your toe. Close your eyes. Hold your breath. In so doing, we educate our intuitions concerning how we best experience God’s presence.

      Everyone prays differently. When they don’t, it’s probably not their prayer they’re praying. They’re aping someone else. That’s ok. There’s no copyright on piety. But I don’t want you to feel like you’re doing it wrong.

      I confess, I pray like I do everything else—I wing it.

      Other people have always made me feel guilty about prayer. Sometimes intentionally, but mostly I felt guilty because they were better at it than I was. Or enjoyed it

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