Prayer and Personal Religion

by John B. Coburn, Richard H. Schmidt (Revised by)

Overview

The purpose of this volume says John Coburn is to help you pray and grow in your personal religious life. It is a book about your inner life and your relationship with God. Although this relationship is unique for each person, there is a general way in which God deals with us and through which we respond. This book is concerned with this general pattern.

Chapters include:

• Prayer is Response to God
• Be Yourself and Begin with Where You Are
• Clearing the Ground: When, Where, and How to Pray
• The Foundation Stones of Prayer: Adoration, Thanksgiving, Confession, Intercession, Petition
• The House that Prayer Builds: Prayers that You Think, that You Feel, that You Will
• Progress in Prayer: Practicing the Presence of God; Reading, Prayer Groups, Retreats; a Rule of Life; On Beginning Again
• Mature Personal Religion: Action and Worship
• On Suffering and Joy

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780819227140
Publisher:	Morehouse Publishing
Publication date:	03/01/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	100
File size:	355 KB

About the Author

John B. Coburn was rector of St. James Church in New York City from 1969 to 1975 – particularly tumultuous times for the city and the Church. From 1967 to 1976, he also served as president of the Episcopal House of Deputies, during which the church adopted a new Book of Common Prayer, plus began ordaining women, unofficially in 1974, and formally two years later. The Rev. Coburn was dean of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from 1957 to 1968, and was a founder of the Boston Theological Institute, a consortium of Protestant and Roman Catholic seminaries. He also helped found the Chapel of St. James the Fisherman in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. He died in 2009 at age 94.

Richard H. Schmidt has served as a parish priest in four Episcopal dioceses. He retired recently after serving as editor and director of Forward Movement and is now a popular retreat and workshop leader. He is the author of five other books. He lives in Fairhope, Alabama.

Read an Excerpt

Prayer and Personal Religion

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By John B. Coburn

Morehouse Publishing

Copyright © 2009 John B. Coburn and Richard H. Schmidt
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8192-2358-6

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Chapter One

Prayer Is Response to God

The purpose of this volume is to help you pray and grow in your personal religious life. It is a book about your inner life and your relationship with God. Although this relationship is unique for each person, there is a general way in which God deals with us and through which we respond. This book is concerned with this general pattern. I hope that as you read it you will come to understand how God is already dealing with you personally and therefore respond more fully to him. This is how most of us come finally to discover that it is God himself who teaches us best to pray.

Prayer is response to God. The first step is God's. He begins the relationship with us, and when we pray, we make our response. If you have ever prayed, you have already responded to God. Indeed, if you have even wanted to pray, you have responded. In either case it is a sign that God has already touched you. And if you have never prayed, it may be because you have not recognized God's touch.

Look for a moment at some of the ways God touches people. You may recognize some of these experiences as your own. God may already have done more in your life than you suspect.

Have you, for example, ever stood outdoors at night looking up into the heavens? It is a brilliantly clear night and the stars stand out so distinctly that you feel you could almost reach up and touch one. Gazing at this canopy, you are overwhelmed by the immensity and greatness and mysterious order of the universe, and with your own tiny insignicance in contrast. If you have had this experience, both exalting you and humbling you at the same time, God may have touched you, for this is one of the ways God breaks in on people. A similar experience is described by a young college graduate: "In recent years," he writes, "I have been struck by my inability to direct my life according to my own best intentions. I find myself caught in patterns of behavior I had firmly resolved to avoid. I discover a weakness within myself which I had not been aware of. At the same time, when I go on long walks in the country, which has always been a pleasure of mine, I have a vague, uneasy sense that something else or someone else is trying to communicate with me. So I ask, 'What goes on here?'" If you have ever felt confronted by some such sense of "otherness," which is frequently mysterious and awesome and perhaps even frightening, you have experienced one of the ways God breaks through to a person's consciousness.

Some people recognize God first simply through a sense of duty. One man, explaining how he coped with the loss of his wife and two of his children, said, "At that time I discovered life was spelling out for me a four-letter word, d-u-t-y. So I have tried ever since to do my duty to my colleagues, my family, and my community." Eventually he came to relate these duties to God. So wherever there is an "ought" in your life, when you have nothing to go on except what you know is "right," God is touching you.

Again, if you have ever suspected that the only problem you really have is yourself—not somebody or something else—that may be God trying to get your attention. It is called guilt. You may not know just what you're guilty of or who is judging you, but you have a persistent gnawing, uneasy feeling. God may be responsible for that feeling; it is an opening though which you can turn to him.

Or take a different kind of experience. You may have been taken quite out of yourself and been "transported into another world." This happens in all parts of the world, to both religious and secular-minded people. It can happen when someone is confronted by sheer beauty—a sunset or a work of art or a beautiful woman—or when someone is "carried away" by great music or "lost" in contemplating a magnificent idea. Men and women are "inspired" to become more than they normally are when brought face to face with saints, or when they fall in love. There is often a sense of yearning or longing for something the world cannot give. These experiences come from God. If you have had such an "inspiration," you have been touched by him.

Some people are also drawn to God through religion, the persistent appeal of the Bible and the church. Even those who have turned away from organized religion sometimes feel an inner restlessness that causes them to look wistfully at the Christian faith and things that represent God. They may read the Bible off and on for years or occasionally attend a worship service. You may have known this peculiar fascination with either the Bible or the church. It is one of the ways God touches people.

* * *

Who is God?

These, then, are some of the human experiences through which God breaks into people's lives. If you have ever experienced these things and have prayed, or even wanted to pray, you have been touched by God and responded to him. You may not have known it then. You may have difficulty believing it now. But this is the starting place: prayer is response to God. Prayer is always the second step, our response to the initiative taken by God.

Who is this God to whom we respond? How do you picture God—as a policeman, or a judge, or a kindly old grandfather, or a remote First Cause? These are common ideas of God—and they are all wrong. Such false ideas of God cause havoc in people's lives. If you begin with a wrong idea of God, then you get the wrong idea of yourself and of other people and of the relation of God to them—and you are in trouble.

Here is another picture of God. It is not entirely accurate, of course, because human words can never describe God perfectly. It is a rough picture, a simple one, only approximately true, but it fits with Christian understandings. Think of God in some such way as this. It may take some believing at the outset, but remember that you can never get into trouble by thinking thoughts of God that are too great.

God is a Person. He is in infinitely more than this, but he is at least this. That is where to begin, for if you think of God as a Person, when you speak to him you can say "you" and "I." When God addresses you, he in turn speaks to a person and also says "you." Thus a two-way personal conversation is begun, set in a personal relationship. This personal conversation is the essence of prayer.

God is a Person who thinks and acts. His thoughts and actions are perfect. He always "does the truth" and his works are without fail beautiful and good. God is responsible for joy and peace in our hearts. His actions in and through people and nature always have such characteristics as these.

Best of all, however, God is a loving Person. Love is the reason God founded the world and created everything in it. He loves everybody everywhere all the time. God created you because he loves you. Think of God as loving you as though you are the only person in the world. That is how much God loves you, and what he wants above all else is for you to love him in return. You know from your experience of human love that that is what a lover always wants: for the beloved to respond with love.

God has been trying, in all the experiences of your life, so to touch you that you will turn to him and love him. He has been striving to break through not only in the out-of-the-ordinary experiences mentioned above, but in all the events and relationships of your life—of love and peace, sorrow and death, guilt and sin, beauty and joy. Everything you have ever experienced has been God trying to communicate with you. God is doing everything possible to bridge what separates you from him. As we shall see, God will stop at nothing that is not contrary to his nature—not even the death of his Son—so that you and he may come together and converse with each other, saying "I" and "you," that you may know God as your lover and yourself as his beloved.

If you can get this kind of picture of God, you have enough to begin. There are experiences in your life that can best be understood as God trying to touch you. They begin to make sense because now, perhaps for the first time, you see God in them. Through them he has found you. Indeed, you would not have read this page if God had not already found you.

* * *

You may conclude this chapter with an experiment to see for yourself what God has already done in your life. The experiment has two steps:

1. Take this present moment and ask yourself: What are the good things in my life for which I am not responsible? Make a list: your life itself, someone who loves you and trusts you, your intelligence, your parents and family background, work to do, friends—what else? Make your list. Now say:

Everything good in my life that I am not responsible for, God is responsible for.

2. Now write down all the things in your life you consider evil. What are they? Sickness, failures, death of loved ones, misunderstandings, hopes broken, your sins (do not slide over these; be specific)—what else? Make your list. Now say:

Everything in my life that I consider evil, God permits.

What are your findings? Can you point to any good in your life that God is responsible for? Can you see any evil that God permits for a special purpose? If you answer yes to either question, that is where God is touching you now. From this place you can turn to him in response to his initiative. This is the beginning of a personal relationship which is started by God and continues as you come to know and love and serve him.

Your prayer is your response. It is the second step. The first step was God's and has already been taken.

The way to begin is to say at this moment, "O God, you...." Once you have said "God, you," and not "God, he," you have begun to pray. This is your response to God. Prayer is always response to God. You can take this second step now.

"O God, I have this to say to you.... What have you to say to me?"

Chapter Two

Be Yourself and Begin Where You Are

It seems strange, but God does not mind being our last choice. We dislike even being second choice, like in a pick-up ballgame or on a guest list for dinner. But God is content to be last choice.

This chapter is for people who make God their last choice. If you have tried other ways of living, apart from God, and found them wanting, this chapter is for you. Suppose you have made the experiment at the end of the previous chapter and now decide to respond to God. There are two simple rules to follow at the beginning. The first one is: Be yourself.

Be natural before God. Do not pretend to be what you are not or to feel emotions you do not feel. Tell God what is really on your heart, with whatever words are most natural to you. You don't have to use "religious" language or speak of "spiritual" matters only. We shall see how the great prayers of the ages, clothed in majestic language, can help us, but when you begin, speak naturally and easily, as you would to a friend, since God is just that. Be yourself.

Being yourself goes deeper than language. It probes the depths of your feelings about God and the circumstances of your life. You don't have to feel "pious" or "holy" or "spiritual." Just be honest. Let God hear what you are really feeling. If you are resentful because someone you love has died, do not say with your lips, "O God, thy will be done," when in your heart you are saying, "You have done a terrible thing and what an awful God you are!" Dishonesty sets up smoldering resentment and will break out destructively sooner or later.

The important thing is to tell God exactly how you do feel: "O God, I hate you for this! You are so unjust, so heartless! If this is what you are really like, I'm through with you before we begin!" The Book of Psalms is the Bible's prayer book, and many of the psalms ooze with anger, bitterness, confusion, despair, doubt, and meanspiritedness. God has heard it all before and he can take it.

You cannot cover up before God. Express yourself just as you are—not as you imagine God (or somebody else) says you ought to be. Honesty at the outset is required if you are to go on to a creative, free, and mature relationship with God.

A young father sat grim-faced through the funeral of his four-year-old son. As he listened to the opening words, "I know that my Redeemer lives," he kept murmuring under his breath: "God, I'll get back at you for this! I'll get back at you for this!"

This was the first honest conversation he had ever had with God. Later he commented: "That was a foolish thing to say, I suppose. How could I ever get back at God? Yet it was honest and it kept the relationship with God open. That was how I felt and it cleared the air to get it off my chest. When I gradually came to myself, I saw that death has to go into some final framework and only God can absorb it. I read and reread all those experiences of people suffering before God, especially Job, and in time his sentiments became mine, or almost mine. I know now that my Redeemer does live. And I don't think I would know it, deep down inside, if I hadn't been mad at my Redeemer once—and said so."

So be yourself; do not pretend. That is the only way to respond to God. Anyhow, to try to hide anything from God is a waste of time. He already knows what is in your heart. God knows who you truly are, so be who you truly are. In the words of an ancient prayer, God is the one "unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid." That means your heart, your desires, your secrets.

The second rule is this: Begin where you are. Look at what you need to have a completely fulfilled life. Most people begin to pray because they need:

* peace of mind

* power for living

* to be forgiven.

Let's take a brief look at each of these. You may want peace of mind so that you can accept life. You need to learn to take all that life does to you. You search for an inner composure and calm, for a basic stability when the storms blow and sickness, sufferings, sorrow, defeats, and failures descend. You long for a peace that overcomes your fears and anxieties.

This search for peace of mind seldom arises from material needs or wants. Often the outwardly prosperous are the most fearful. A young insurance man, the most successful agent in a large company, in a burst of confidence, said, "I am a fear-ridden man. I am afraid I shall be an utter failure. I fear I shall get no prospects; when I do, I'm afraid I shall lose them. Once they are signed, I'm afraid they won't pass their physical examinations or pay their premiums. No big fears—I'm just riddled with little fears." He concluded: "If anybody ever needed religion, believe me, I'm the fellow. Nobody else seems able to help me; maybe God can."

You may be one of those who turn to God out of your need for peace of mind. If so, begin by telling God of your need and ask frankly and deliberately for help.

Or you may be looking for power for living. Your life has gone along so far and then you have run out of gas. The tasks of living seem too great for you, the demands too much. The ball comes over the plate too fast. Some will say, "I can't seem to get my feet off the ground," and others, "I always seem to be up in the air." They both mean the same thing: the sense of purposefulness in life is gone; there is no power.

This is a problem of middle age more than any other. The physical satisfactions have begun to dwindle. You realize that you will not solve all the problems of human existence. Your enthusiasm wanes. You have long since compromised earlier ideals and abandoned youthful hopes. You begin to settle down to mediocrity and life "as it really is."

Boredom sets in, coupled with restlessness. You find yourself on a treadmill and realize you have been there for a long time—too much rushing for commuter trains, too many harried business conferences, too many lost golf balls, too many martinis, too much television (anything to relieve the boredom), too many divorces. The kicks are gone. (Continues...)

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Excerpted from Prayer and Personal Religion by John B. Coburn Copyright © 2009 by John B. Coburn and Richard H. Schmidt. Excerpted by permission of Morehouse Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Foreword vii

Preface ix

1 Prayer Is Response to God 1

Who Is God?

2 Be Yourself and Begin Where You Are 9

The First Three Prayers

3 Clearing the Ground 17

When to Pray

Where to Pray

How to Pray

4 The Foundation Stones of Prayer 23

The Prayer of Adoration

The Prayer of Thanksgiving

The Prayer of Confession

The Prayer of Intercession

The Prayer of Petition

5 The House That Prayer Builds 43

Prayers That You Think

Prayers That You Feel

Prayers That You Will

6 Progress in Prayer 59

Practicing the Presence of God

Reading, Prayer Groups, and Retreats

A Rule of Life

7 Mature Personal Religion: Action and Worship 79

Guides for Action

Worship as the Central Act

8 On Suffering and Joy 87

Discussion Questions 95