BUILDING A HOUSE OF PRAYER

When you pray enter into your inner room. —Mt. 6:6

We can take comfort in the fact that even our Lord’s disciples felt inadequate when it came to prayer, for they asked him, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Insofar as we know this was the only thing they ever asked Jesus to teach them. They did not ask him to show them how to preach or to teach or to build churches. Teach us to pray!, they asked, as if effective prayer would take care of all the rest. This request resulted in what we call the Lord’s prayer, which goes far in revealing to us the nature of prayer. And yet most of us know little about how to pray.

Is prayer to be impromptu, with little thought given to it in advance? What are we to say when we pray? Should there be a set time and place? Is there a technique to prayer, a more effective way to go about it? What are we to expect from prayer?

Among those I have consulted in a search for answers to such questions is a famous British preacher of yesteryear, Leslie Weatherhead, longtime pastor of City Temple in London. In his book, Prescription for Anxiety (1956), he recommends prayer as the most effective way to deal with anxiety, and he sees Paul saying the same thing: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Phil. 4:6). But anxious people have to learn to pray effectively if prayer is to serve as an antidote, and so in a most interesting way he proceeds to show them how to pray, a method he tested in his own life over many years. In this essay I draw upon some of his ideas.

Mr. Weatherhead, citing Jesus’ instruction to “Enter into your inner room,” conceives of building a house of prayer, one with seven rooms. Since he was talking to poor folk who had only one-room houses, Jesus was not likely suggesting that they literally had an inner room to which they could repair for prayer. Just as when he taught them not to put a lamp under a table but on a stand “so that it will give light to all in the house,” he thought in terms of one-room dwellings. So, Weatherhead supposes, when Jesus spoke of praying in one’s “inner room” he was referring to an imaginary room, the recesses of one’s own heart where God meets one in secret. Taking his cue from Jesus, he builds a seven-room prayer house, and shows one how to pray by leading him through these rooms.

Room 1: Affirm the presence of God.

Since one often feels that “there is no one there when I pray,” in this first room he should affirm the presence of God. Throughout the Bible, whether to Abraham, Moses, or David, God is always saying “I am with you.” In this room we hear our Lord saying, “I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.” In this room we repeat some of the great passages where God promises His presence, such as His assurance to Joshua: “As I was with Moses, so I will be with you.” A few moments in this first room helps us to practice the presence of God in our lives, especially in prayer. It is a satisfying way to begin prayer.

Room 2: Praise, thank, and adore God.

Once we have acknowledged His presence, we move on to the next room, which we should see enveloped with sunshine. It is the thanksgiving room where we praise and adore God for His mercy and goodness. We should remember His love, His spend or, His power, His beauty, His holiness. In thanking Him for our blessings, we should be specific by naming our blessings “one by one,” some of them at least. In praising God we can recall some of the great psalms: “O Lord, our Lord, how great is thy name in all the earth,” or we might make use of classic devotional works, such as Baillie’s A Diary of Private Prayer, where he says the likes of: “O thou whose eternal presence is hid behind the veil of nature, informs the mind of man, and was made flesh in Jesus Christ our Lord, I thank Thee that He has left me an example that I should follow in His steps.” We have much to learn from those who pray soul-lifting and God-exalting prayers, and this comes in part by reading the classics.

Room 3: Confession and forgiveness of sins.

We can see this as a darker room, but one that grows brighter as we near the windows. This is the unloading room, for it is here that we lay ourselves bare before the Father, confessing our sins. We must be careful to be specific, naming our sins in their stark and ugly reality. I am impressed with the way William Barclay spells out sins in his Prayers for the Plain Man, which Ouida and I often read together. The sins he names are the real ones: selfishness, pride, impatience, ingratitude, insensitivity, being difficult to live and work with, critical in outlook, harsh in judgment, bitterness, resentment. This is the room of the broken heart. We seek and accept God’s forgiveness, even as we forgive those who have sinned against us. We now sense the warmth of the sunshine of the windows. God loves us. He is for us. He forgives us.

Room 4: Affirmation and reception.

Now that we are made clean by God’s forgiving love, we affirm what He has done, with such prayer as: “The peace of God is mine and I am part of His great purposes. The Everlasting Arms are round about me and they will not let me fall.” Think of Psalms 23 as inscribed on the walls of this room. To ponder it quietly and confidently will make this an important room, and to remember that God is even more eager to give than we are to receive. We can freely receive, not because we are good, but because God is good.

Room 5: Purified desire and sincere petition.

It is in this room that we may learn, as we linger here through the years, to look at our heart’s desires from a new perspective, for the things we want (and often pray for) may not be as important as we think. Here we pray that our desires will be His desires for us. We will move from “Give me” to “Make me” and “Use me.” Here we pray for stronger faith and more forbearing love. What do we really want, more money, more pleasure, more fame? If we really want Christlikeness, we lay this sincere petition before the Father, and it will be so. A good test for any of our desires is Can I pray for it?

Room 6: Intercession for others.

This is a room where we can “visit” with both friends and enemies, picturing them in our minds and calling their names in prayer, which may be sufficient. In our mind’s eye we can think of a loved one recovering from an illness or emerging from a severe difficulty. We can see those who would abuse us as being more gracious for their own sake. Many effective intercessors keep notes and plan their prayers. Mr. Weatherhead would list four names for each day of the month, amending his list as seemed appropriate, and on any given day he would pray for those four people, once each month. In times of urgency he would of course pray daily for some people. Prayer should be focused, which is hardly the case when we pray, “God, bless all my friends.” Rather than pray, “Bless the missionaries in Japan,” I can call the countenances of Mark Maxey and Moto Nomuro to mind and lay their names before the Father, seeing their work as fruitful and their faith as abounding. A mother away from home can think of her children as safely tucked into bed, calling their names to God. We don’t have to say everything that is in our hearts, for God reads our hearts and some things can be better thought than said. When I am away from Ouida I like to think of the angels watching over her as I picture her in bed asleep. That too is intercessory prayer. I sometimes picture our President sitting at his desk praying in the face of a weighty decision, which is a prayer I might not be able to put into words. I see my sons dating the right kind of girls and at last proposing to one of them, which is an appropriate prayer. I can’t get them married! Try praying for someone you dislike (or who dislikes you!) that way. Call her name to the Father and then think of good things happening to her.

Room 7: Meditation.

Weatherhead suggests that we take an incident in the life of Jesus and think of ourselves as being bodily present, such as an eye witness to his baptism, his temptation in the wilderness, with his disciples on the mount of transfiguration, or even on the cross. In our mind’s eye we are there and we can see Jesus in such situations, drawing upon Scripture for the drama. We can call to mind the great promises of Scripture and the great heroes of the faith. We can imagine recent loved ones who have gone on and are now part of “the great cloud of witnesses” that encompass us. We can somehow see them watching our pilgrimage, encouraging us to be faithful as they were. This, too, is prayer.

This seven-room prayer house may be entered in part or in whole daily. We may not visit each room every day, though we will enter them all frequently. The quality of our prayers is more important than the frequency. Substance is more vital than length. One could move through all seven rooms in meaningful and exciting prayer in a matter of minutes, or on any given occasion he might linger in one or two rooms. The important thing is to realize that we cannot really live without God. Even Jesus could not. If Emerson was right that “God enters by a private door into every individual,” it is crucial that we make preparation for fellowship with him, such as an imaginative house with many doors open to Him.

The promise is ours that “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and sup with him” (Rev. 3:20). In oriental culture that was an unmistakable offer to friendship that never ends. We only need to open the door to enjoy the fellowship that He promises. —the Editor