How to pray ?
A correction of pride
My father once taught me how to pray : “Ask God to do as He wills.” I didn’t understand it.
Shouldn’t you ask God for things ? If it is all about God doing His will, what place is left for my own ? God does not need my approval to carry out His will, does He ? Isn’t that a form of fatalism ?
It was too hard for me to accept placing God’s will above my own. To sincerely ask God to do as He wills is hard to do without a deep faith. So I kept my father’s advice somewhere in the back of my mind, without ever really applying it. I did pray, but I was asking for my own will to be done, hoping God would approve of it. In fact, I did so because deep down, I believed my aspirations were best for me.
Later, I realized life is full of reversals. Many times, what initially seems like terrible news makes way for unexpectedly good things. As Chaplin said : “Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long shot”. Slowly, I came to see that I was not always the best judge of what was best for me.
But this still did not explain what prayer was for, if God would make the best decision for me anyway. I remained unable to understand it until I came across a passage in the gospels. Hours before His arrest and passion, Jesus prays in the garden of Gethsemane :
“My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me ; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”
The cup refers to the suffering that awaits Him.
In this episode, which reveals Christ’s deeply human nature, He clearly expresses His will : He does not want to be crucified. There is no stoic pose here, no theatrical detachment, no pretence of fearlessness. Yet He still places God’s will above His own.
That prayer of Christ encapsulates the essence of Christian prayer :
We pray by expressing our will AND submitting it to God’s. His will does not suppress ours. When we say “Thy will be done”, we don’t say it to remind God to do what He would otherwise forget to do. We say it to place ourselves in harmony with Him.
We say : “Here is what I want, but I trust Your wisdom more than my own”.
Unlike what I once believed, this has nothing to do with resignation. The fatalist believes his will changes nothing. The Christian chooses and acts fully, while accepting that he is not sovereign.
Prayer does not replace action. It places action in the right order. And in the end, I came to realize that the real purpose of prayer is not to inform God. It is to transform the one who prays.
Paul
la prière n'est pas d'informer Dieu, mais de transformer celui qui prie, c'est exactement la phase dont je passe en ce moment , je sens que je suis transformée vers une version plus calme, apaisée,
Agree, and if I may add, prayer is the continuum of one's own personal communication with God.