Making the Ask

As I enter this time of prayer, I repeat the words of Psalm 62:5–6, slowly, several times, making them my prayer to God:

‘For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him.

He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken’ (NRSV).

Pause and repeat

‘The great theologian Karl Barth said that true prayer is primarily very simple. “In the first instance, it is an asking.”* This is reassuring for those of us who struggle to issue anything more than six-year-old “Dear God” type requests when we are under intense pressure’.** Maybe our simplest prayers are enough.

Pause to read the passage Matthew 6:7-8

When my simple ‘Dear God’ prayers don’t work, what ‘formulas and programs and … techniques’ do I tend to try ‘for getting what [I] want from God’? Jesus tells us to remember the Father’s love when we pray. Could there be a link between getting overcomplicated in prayer and forgetting the simplicity and immediacy of His love?

Pause and reflect

I take a little time now to ‘pray very simply,’ laying my requests before You once again, telling You how I’m feeling, and remembering as I do so that You are not scowling but smiling with an expression of tender affection.

Pause and pray

As I bring this time with God to a close, I pray the words of a well-loved hymn of surrender by Judson W. Van DeVenter:

All to Jesus I surrender

All to Him I freely give

I will ever love and trust Him

In His presence daily live

I surrender all, I surrender all

All to Thee, my blessed Saviour I surrender all.

Amen.

* Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 3, part 3, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 1960), 268.

** Pete Greig, God on Mute, David C Cook, (Colorado Springs, 2020), p44