Tuesday Prayer: 46

This is my 46th 'Tuesday Prayer' post. I've been enjoying (as various people told me I would) Tim Keller's new book, on prayer, handily titled "Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God". The very subtitle echoes the thing which, early on, I have found to be so helpful in Keller here, which is the balancing between apparent poles. Intimacy and awe, for example. Keller writes, considering two kinds of prayer;

"Recent writers on prayer tend to have one of two views on the subject. Most now emphasize prayer as a means to experience God's love and to know oneness with him...

Other books, however, see the essence of prayer not as inward resting but as calling on God to bring in his kingdom. Prayer is viewed as a wrestling match, often - or perhaps ordinarily - without a clear sense of God's immediate presence."

Last week I shared something from Peter Lewis about awe when it comes to prayer. Perhaps providentially, Keller continues that question in my mind. Awe is important - but because of who God is, nothing to do with us. I often fall into the kind of trap Keller describes, seeing prayer as a wrestling match, with much riding on my ability to pray, my wordy knowledge, my knees drawing furrows on the floor. That is not what prayer is all about.

Sometimes, though, I fall for the (very attractive) half-truth that prayer is all about experiencing God's love. That may well be true - and it is certainly partly true - but it is also dangerous. A faith, even a prayer-ful faith, that is concerned solely with experiencing God's love is a sub-Christian one. Jesus calls his people to do something - to pray in ways that do implore God to act. This kind of prayer comes from intimate relationship, but also echoes the awe of the King and his Kingdom that the New Testament encourages. 

I am thoroughly enjoying Keller's new book on prayer, and wonder if this balancing of important tensions will continue throughout. I hope so. I wonder, what do you make of these two kinds of prayer? Which do you fall into?

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Don't forget to check out the previous posts in the series, featuring quotes from Tom Wright, John Wimber, Richard Foster and Don Carson, the great J. C. Ryle and theologians Alister McGrath and James K. A. Smith. Since then, I've shared quotes from Justin Welby, E.M. Bounds, Vineyard Pastor Ken Wilson, C. S. Lewis,  Norwegian O'Hallesby, Paul Miller, John Piper. Recently, we've heard Matthew Henry, Charles Finney, Andrew Murray, Tim Chester, Vaughan Roberts, Oliver O'Donovan, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and John Bunyan. Then we got rather retro, with quotes from Church Fathers John Chrysostom and Tertullian, before returning to more recent thinkers with Rowan Williams, Mike Reeves and Peter Jackson and Chris Wright and Andrew Case, R. C. Sproul, and (representing a slight change of tack) the Westminster Confession. Recently we considered Karl Barth, and Donald Macleod, Mary Prokes,  J. C. Ryle (again!), Andrew Murray,  Martyn Lloyd Jones, Hudson Taylor, recently about Ffald-y-Brenin,  some of my own words, and my friend Nick Parish, Joyce Huggett. More recently I've shared a prayer of remembrance from the C of E, some of the words of Paul, an Anglican Prayer for Advent, and most recently Peter Lewis.