Understanding God’s Story changes our prayer; prayer changes our understanding of God’s Story.
I wrote this sentence two days ago as part of a lesson on Praying Story. I wish I had more time to take you through this, but I am thinking the brief outline I sketched and the exercise that follows might be helpful. Read through this, and if you have time, do the exercise and tell me what would make it better.
1. It tells us there is a bigger story. If life is only about the here and now, our little story, if there’s nothing more beyond what I can touch and see or you can touch and see, why would anyone pray? It would be instead, what someone told me they did after Hurricane Opal – “I stayed inside and thought happy thoughts.”
It’s odd to me – why would anyone pray if they didn’t think there was a bigger story? But the fact is, people do, all the time.
2. It shows us how to pray by revealing the contours of the bigger story: What should we pray for?
Relationships (Lord, help that woman! Genesis). Confess sin [Gen. 3). Yell complaints [Psalms, Job] Pray for redemption (New Testament). Jesus to come back. (Revelation).
3. It gives us a basis for praying. Pray for restoration of broken things. Not broadly. Right here, right now. Lord, restore my dog because you are a restorer of broken things.
4. It gives us specific stories that inform our stories and show us how to pray – “Lord, don’t let me be like Sarah and be a cynic when I’m believing you won’t show up in this situation!”
Exercise 1
Let’s try it out.
Take 5 minutes. Write down a situation in your life or the life of someone you know, perhaps something you’ve been praying for.
Connect it to the Big Story of Scripture. Here are some sample questions you can ask to do this:
Where do you see the image of God? Is there any shalom?
What brokenness exists?
Is there a movement toward another god to make life work?
What redemption has taken place? What redemption are you praying for?
Are there prayers based on the ‘one-day’ of the new heavens, new earth life?
What prayer forms as you think of this?
Here’s what I came up with:
My shoulder to heal. God is a god of restoration. God did not remove Paul’s thorn in the flesh. God uses all to redeem hearts.
Lord, I want my shoulder to be pain-free and move well. I ask you to do that for me because you are a merciful God. If you don’t choose to answer the prayer that way, help me to hang in there, to believe. “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.”
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