If you have to have a formula for prayer — and I’m not suggesting you do — I have a suggestion, at least for the beginning. Consider this….

“Dear Lord,

In the wondrous name of Jesus,

Through the precious blood of Jesus,

For the glorious sake of Jesus,

I come to Thee….”

The first — the name of Jesus — is about Christ. Who He is and by implication, who we are.

The second — the blood of Jesus — is about the cross. What He did and thus how we got here.

The last — the sake of Jesus — is about the cause. What He wants and why we’re here.

The first, the Name, is about the audacity of praying in the first place, our right be here. We enter the Holy of Holies through the Name that is above all other names. “For there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). “And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” (John 14:13)

The second, the blood, is about the authority with which we enter this most sacred place in the universe. “We come boldly unto the throne of grace.” “With His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:12). “…how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (9:14)

The third, the sake, is about the authenticity with which we pray. This is not about us. It is “for thy sake.” “Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” “Have thine own way, Lord.” “I delight to do thy will.” “What would you have me to do?”

Now, by contrast….

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In high school, J. L. Rice and I were the two first boys to ever take shorthand. We took it for two full years, thinking we would need it in college. We didn’t, but for me, it was a wise choice since it paid my way through school and supported my family the first two years of marriage. (I worked as a secretary for a railroad company during college and for a cast iron pipe company for two years afterward.)

In Old Testament days, in the courts of kings like David and Solomon, among the officials serving the rulers was one called a “recorder.” The Hebrew word is MAZKIR. It’s a fascinating word.

Bear in mind that the consonants in Hebrew carry the freight. The ZKR–pronounced zah-kar–is the word for “remember.” You will recall what a popular theme that was for prophets who brought sermons to God’s people. “Remember, O Israel,” they would begin. A friend of mine did his doctoral thesis on the use of “zakar” in the Old Testament. He had plenty of material to work with.

The word MZKR or MAZKIR adds a new dimension to “remember,” and makes it “to cause to remember.” That is, to remind.

A MAZKIR or court recorder was a person with an interesting assignment: he took notes (shorthand?) on what the king did in negotiations with other rulers or while issuing verdicts in court and he kept that information on file. The next time the king met with the other rulers or held court again, he called in his “mazkir” and asked him to bring him up to date, to remind him of what they did the last time. Kings need people to help them remember.

Okay, still with me here? This is where it gets good.

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I saw a man jogging on the levee beside the Mississippi River this morning. As he approached, he seemed to be tilted slightly, running just a tad off balance. Then I realized one sleeve was hanging limply at his side. The absence of his left arm threw his body off balance.

Veteran Bible teacher Warren Wiersbe says there ought to be one more beatitude: “Blessed are the balanced.”

When Rick Warren of Saddleback Church said the key issue of the 21st century church would be not church growth but church health, someone asked for his secret of church health. “In a word, balance,” he said.

Rick Warren explained, “Your body has nine different systems (circulatory, respiratory, digestive, skeletal, etc). When these systems are all in balance, it produces health. But when your body gets out of balance, we call that ‘disease.'”

He added, “Likewise when the body of Christ becomes unbalanced, disease occurs. Health and growth can only occur when everything is brought into balance.”

In Matthew 6, our Lord showed His concern that the disciples find proper balance in their spiritual lives. On the one hand, they should not follow the example of religious hypocrites and theological play-actors who pray and give and fast in order to impress other people. On the other hand, they should avoid the practice of the pagans who pray for hours using chants and meaningless repetition in an attempt to impress God. Both are ditches to be avoided. In between these two extremes lies the “road,” the path of balance.

In what we call “The Lord’s Prayer” and our Catholic friends refer to as “The Our Father,” Jesus gives a wonderful pattern for balance in the prayers of His people.

1. A balance between intimacy and community. “Our Father.”

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It would appear from the stories our Lord gave in Scripture that a good way to teach prayer is by negative examples, that is, “how not to do it.” Jesus told of prideful Pharisees bragging on themselves in prayer, mean-spirited tyrants asking for forgiveness but unwilling to forgive others, and a powerless widow hounding a merciless judge until he caved in and gave her what she wanted.

All illustrate wrongs way to pray.

I’ve previously mentioned in this website Lehman Strauss’ book “Sense and Nonsense About Prayer.” Well, after owning the book for three decades–it was first published in 1974–and frequently citing its lessons, I decided the time had arrived to go back and re-read it. I did that Monday.

The twelve chapters that deal with our subject–Strauss has a section at the end on the Lord’s prayer and the prayer life of Jesus–are worthy of your consideration and study. At the end of these chapters, he invites the reader to agree or disagree with him at any point, but in love. I found myself disagreeing with facets of one or two principles in this list, but overall, the list is excellent and I commend it to you.

At the end, we’ll include three of his non-sensical stories on how not to pray.

1) It does not make sense to pray if there is unconfessed sin in the heart. Psalm 66:18

However, it makes sense to confess our sins if we expect God to hear us.

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In the 1987 meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, the report of the Foreign Mission Board contained a telephone hook-up with Frances Fuller, one of our missionaries to Lebanon. A few days earlier, President Reagon had ordered Americans out of that war-torn country, and had warned any who insisted on staying they would lose their passports. Our missionaries had been evacuated to Cyprus, from where Mrs. Fuller was placing her call.

“You have failed your missionaries by your prayers,” Mrs. Fuller told the thousands of messengers at the convention. With that, she had our undivided attention.

“All the people I talk to back in the States tell me, ‘We’re praying for your safety,’ or ‘We’re praying for you to get out of that country.'”

She continued, “You should have prayed that God would keep us safely in this country in order that we might bear fruit for Him. Consequently, we have been exiled from a country of great need where we should not have left.”

She concluded, “Give us back to Lebanon in your prayers.”

No one who sat in the huge auditorium that night will ever forget her plea.

In the New Testament epistle of James, we read, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives….” (4:3) Another translation has it read, “You ask amiss.”

Lehman Strauss wrote a powerful book on prayer a generation ago, with the intriguing title, “Sense and Nonsense About Prayer.” I confess to buying it for the title. I knew there was a lot of nonsense about prayer out there, and was glad to hear someone in a leadership position admit it.

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(A prayer for my grandchildren)

“Heavenly Father,

You have showered Heaven’s blessings on me in ten thousand ways–with life and salvation, with health and friends, with family and church. But no gift from Thy hand has filled me with deeper joy and purer pleasure than the children of my children.

I thank Thee for my grandchildren.

And I pray for them.

I pray that they shall know

–enough of sin to drive them to the Savior, to make them understanding toward others, and to keep them humble.

–enough of failure to turn them to the overcoming Lord and make them wise and strong and smart.

–enough of heartache to appreciate the comfort of the Holy Spirit and to fill them with kindness.

–enough of betrayal to appreciate Thy faithfulness and make them loyal.

–enough of struggle and hardships to find strength in Thee and make them faithful.

–enough of bruises in life to toughen them and make them gentle.

–enough of disappointments to open their eyes about people and give them discernment and judgment.

–enough of ugliness to appreciate the beauty always found in the heart of God and in Thy creation.

Enough–but no more than that, please.

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“Father, hear my prayer. There is a need in my heart from the soil in my soul. Please cleanse me of all my sin.

Take away everything in me that does not confess Thee as my Lord, tha does not have Thy name on it, that is resistant to Thy Spirit, and unworthy of Thee.

Remove from me all attitudes and opinions and convictions that do not originate from Thee and conform to Thy will and every desire and motive and ambition in conflict with Thy purpose. Take away anything that runs and hides when You enter, that laughs when I believe, that squirms when I pray, and fears when I trust.

Whatever in me that does not give Thee joy, make Thee proud, or honor Thy name, I hereby give my permission for it to be gone.

Anything that holds me back, weights me down, cheapens my praise, dampens Thy fire within me, and threatens my future effectiveness, please remove.

By the precious blood of Jesus, purge my iniquity.

In the matchless name of Jesus, make me clean.

For the wonderful sake of Jesus, draw me to Thee.

Make me whole and holy and wholesome.

Make me right and upright and righteous.

Give me a heart that wants only to do Thy will, that answers only to Thy call, and serves only to hear Thy ‘well done, good and faithful servant.’

Amen.”

“We do not know how to pray as we should,” admitted the great Apostle Paul. We may say with confidence that if he didn’t, it’s a sure bet that the rest of us don’t either. And yet prayer to the Savior is our lifeline in this dangerous world. As the Apostle Peter watched the multitudes drifting away from Jesus because of His tough teachings, he confessed, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.”

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Disclaimer: I’m still a learner, and most definitely not an expert on praying.

1. The only real mistake we can make in prayer is in not praying.

If we pray earnestly, almost anything we do is better than not praying. After all, no father rejects the child’s plea because she did not use the right words or form. He welcomes his child into his arms.

Someone has said, “Nothing never happens when we pray.”

2. No matter how much you pray, you will never be completely satisfied with your prayer life.

You will always feel the goal is out there beyond you somewhere. We must work against perfectionism, that mental disease that convinces us because we’re not doing something perfectly, that we should stop it altogether. No matter how ineffective you think your prayers are, believe that they matter to God and keep on praying.

3. The Holy Spirit helps us in our prayer.

Romans 8:26 assures us “He helps us in our weakness because we do not know how to pray.” The Greek word translated “helps” is a compound Greek verb “synantilambanomai.” The “syn” means “together, with us.” The “anti” means “opposite to, in front of.” And the “lambanomai” is a form of the verb “to lift.” Together they tell us the Holy Spirit gets on the other end of our task, opposite to us, and together with us lifts the burden. He does not do this in our place, but works with us.

4. Keep on praying.

Persistence in prayer is taught so many times in Scripture. My favorite is blind Bartimaeus in Luke 18. Let nothing stop you from praying. Not your own inadequacy (of which there is much), your own needs (which can be overwhelming), not your fears (which never tire of assaulting you), and most definitely not other people (discouragement is all around us). Just keep at it.

5. Our emotions and feelings are irrelevant to effective praying.

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I threw this question out to members of the last church I pastored and quickly wrote down their answers. Aside from an entire discussion on why in the world would anyone get bored visiting with the Ruler of the Universe, which is a great question and one that deserves its own treatment, here are their answers.

50. Repent of it. Praying boring prayers is an insult to Almighty God.

49. Determine to start believing in God. You’re already saved but you need to start taking the Lord seriously and His promises at face value.

48. Sing a hymn prayerfully.

47. Be thankful for your blessings.

46. Pray for others: friends, family, those in need.

45. Get a prayer partner, especially someone experienced in real prayer.

44. Keep a prayer journal. Write your prayer list, insights God gives you, Scriptures that help you, answers to prayers, etc.

43. Find new things to pray for.

42. Pray a complete prayer–praise, thanksgiving, for God’s will, supplication, and forgiveness.

41. Study the promises of God and claim them in prayer. Begin expecting.

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