Prayer is a key practice of our Christian faith. Daily prayer can be a meaningful and life-changing for our lives.In this article, I will summarize some thoughts on prayer to guide you as you try to practice daily prayer.
Recently in a junior sermon, I brought my magic magnet that drew all of the spilled carpet tacks into its field of force and picked them all up so quickly. I am always full of wonder when I see a magnet go to work. As it moved among the spilled carpet tacks, it brought each one into its field of force. Immediately they all turned so they were pointing towards the magnet, and slowly they were drawn to it. We know from our physics classes that the force emanating from the magnet flows through the tacks and relates in a positive way to the forces within the tacks themselves. The magnet does not do all the work in picking up the tacks. Instead it joins with the power already in the carpet tacks, and the combined forces attract the tacks to the magnet. When there are a number of tacks, the field of force flows through the community of tacks, so the power of the magnet and the power of each tack working in community with other tacks enhances the power. If you leave the magnet long enough, the tacks become magnetized and they too will now have the power to pull other tacks to themselves.
Prayer is the means by which individual persons can bring themselves into the force-field of God. God is the great magnet that draws all of us to himself. In communal prayer, as we pray together, we are not only drawn by the power of God but we are also drawn by the power of each other. If we stay in the field of force of the eternal magnet for a while, we too can become magnets who have an enhanced field of force with which we can relate to the power in others. Personal prayer brings us into the presence of God and the power that emanates from him. Communal prayer not only relates us to God and his power but it brings us into the power-field of our brothers and sisters who pray with us.
The second thing I would like to say about the power of prayer is that it is most effective when it is released into our lives in an even flow, a little at a time. When a doctor prescribes a hundred pills that he thinks will help cure the ailment that is troubling you, he seldom tells you to take all one hundred pills at once. Normally he tells you to take one every four or six hours. Pills are most effective when their power is released into our life stream in a constant flow, a little at a time. Paul exhorts us to “pray without stopping”. He tells us this because prayer is most effective when it releases the power of God and the community of faith into our lives in a constant healing flow.
One of the things that effective and constant prayer can do is to open up our lives to the healing flow. Karl Menninger has pointed out that we are truly whole or well when we are experiencing the “vital balance” in our total organism. This “vital balance” is experienced when all of the forces in our body are in balance and working in harmony within our total life space. Normally if this “vital balance” is disturbed by stress or sickness or for any other reason, the balance is disturbed throughout our whole organism. Immediately, the forces within our body begin to focus their strength on restoring the “vital balance” once again. In physiology, this is called the restoring of the “homeostatic balance” in the organism. For example, if you perform vigorous exercise your heart rate immediately rises dramatically. When you stop the exercising and rest, the whole body works towards bringing the heartbeat back to normal.
It is important to note that the “life forces” within us are released from different levels of our psyche. There are four identifiable levels from which these forces can come, namely, the physical, physiological, psychological, and spiritual. Healing and renewal takes place best when all of these life forces work in harmony in a life-changing way. In this, our bodies are very much like our automobiles, which work best when all four cylinders are firing and each doing their part to drive the camshaft.
Healing and renewal can sometimes take place when only one of these levels is working towards restoring wholeness or the homeostatic balance. Pills that release physical energy can sometimes bring the renewal or healing on their own. When the physiological and psychological forces are also mobilized in the healing process, the possibilities for change and healing and renewal are certainly enhanced. Too often we tend to bypass the spiritual level. A number of studies seem to indicate that spiritual forces released into the life of the patient can often be the dimension that turns the tide towards renewal. When our lives are brought into the field of healing force of the Eternal Magnet, miracles can happen.
Sometimes all of these forces are not sufficient to bring healing. At that moment God does not abandon the sufferer. The community of faith need not abandon the sufferer either. Jesus said to his disciples: “Lo! I am with you always.” The God of the Hebrews said through Isaiah: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.” When we are called to pass through the deep experience of life, and when these are not changed, then we are surrounded and sustained by the same life-forces of God and the community of faith, which gives us strength to carry the load or the burden. Jesus prayed that he might be spared the ordeal of crucifixion. God responded by walking by his side to sustain him as he went to the cross. In the end, the cross proved to be right for Jesus in that it was the great redemptive act that changed the world. This too is healing and renewal.
— Reverend Arthur Schwabe
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