The Pleasure of Prayer
Prayer is often against our own nature. So here is frustrating experience. This frustration has very little to do with the prayer itself and lot to do with a question: If prayer is so frustrating why keep trying? A couple of answers spring to mind.
- One reason we may keep trying to pray is because we see it as our duty.
This isn’t wrong—of course it is our duty. But if this is the only reason it seems hard to see how prayer ever becomes anything but drudgery.
- Another reason we might continue to pray might be simple self-interest.
We have real needs and we want them met. So, what happens if we don’t happen to need anything at the moment?
- There is a third reason: we simply want to be with the Lord.
William Carey helps us catch a glimpse of how this might motivate our prayers. Carey often expressed frustration with this prayer life, but not every entry in his journal speaks of dry prayers. For example, he writes at one point, “I have this day had more enjoyment of God than for many days past. I trust that the reading of the Bible has been truly useful to my soul. Had some affecting views of the value of Christ, and grace, (…) Felt enlarged in prayer, and thankful for the many mercies which I daily receive from God; but my unprofitableness has been a source of humiliation to me.”
“I have this day had more enjoyment of God than for many days past.”
William Carey
I have experienced moments that I could describe as “enjoyment of God”. They haven’t come as often as I might like. And I am not sure that they can be generated at will. But there have been enough to make me want more.
My wife and I have been grandparents for four years. We now have four grandchildren. That seems like a pretty good pace to me. We recently visited the home of our oldest grandson. He told us he wanted to show us a picture in his room. It was a picture of my wife and I. Of course we were ecstatic that he had this in his room because we want him to remember us. Maybe you can imagine what we felt when, as we stood there with our grandson, we heard him say softly as if to himself, I miss them. We miss him too.
We enjoy being with our grandchildren. Assuming that the kids are behaving (and that grandpa is behaving—in both cases the standards are pretty lax), I can’t think of anything I would like more then to spend the day with our grandchildren.
In one sense the entire history of redemption is about God’s plan to restore fellowship between him and us. Adam used to walk with God in the garden. I wonder what that was like? I am sure it was even better than an outing with the grandchildren.
Prayer is part of the process by which God fits us for heaven. There are moments when the Lord feels very close. When we read his word and our heart burns within us, we can almost hear his voice. In those moments the tightness of our heart begins to loosen and we can pour out our souls in prayer. Those are good moments. I want more.
It is our hope & prayer that the students of Seminario Bíblico William Carey would simply want to be with the Lord. That as they are being taught and trained to take the Gospel to their cities and neighborhoods, they would also have more and more the “enjoyment of God.”
Would you pray with us?