A Canaanite woman from that area came to him, crying out, ‘Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me, for my daughter suffers terribly from demon-possession.’ But Jesus did not answer a word.

Mat. 15:22-23

To paraphrase the author of John’s Gospel, “If all the things that people have said about prayer were written down, I suppose that all the books in the world would not be enough to hold them all.” That we haven’t filled all the world’s books with ideas, thoughts, testimonies, and questions about prayer is not due to a lack of trying.

To read Scripture – to encounter any religious or spiritual tradition – is to confront the looming mountain that is the accumulated history of humanity’s attempt to understand what it means to interact and converse with God: what it means to pray.

And what does the topography of that mountain reveal to us about prayer? Is there a biblical foundation from which we can start, or a basic definition that we can rely on to guide us through the climb? So much of the church’s struggle with the idea and practice of prayer involves dramatic contortions and almost seismic shifts in meaning.

There are real theological issues here that lead to everything from the notion that prayer is not really a necessary part of the Christian life (since God already knows what is going to happen) to prayer being primarily a means of getting things from the Lord so that we can boast in some kind of special standing or faith. And although these extreme positions do not represent the majority of believers, we do still end up wondering what really is going on when we pray and what it even means to be a praying person.

C.S. Lewis famously answered someone who asked him why he prayed for his dying wife, “I pray because need flows out of me.” If I understand Lewis correctly, he is saying what I have come to believe: Prayer is the expression of hunger and thirst after God, the confession of our Spirit-inspired desire for intimacy and for ultimate meaning in our lives. A biblical hierarchy of needs would echo Psalm 73:28: To be near God is my happiness.

True prayer desires God above all – desires him as an answer to all desires. It’s not that we don’t ask for other things, but that even what is otherwise important (the welfare of my family, salvation for those who don’t know him, healing, finances, etc.) are not my ultimate hope. Even our praying “according to his will” has its grounding in knowing him intimately, affectionately, trustingly.

My experience is that much of what I have been writing about these last few posts (e.g. suffering) finds resolution and meaning through a prayer life that is a profoundly focussed, desperate kind of worship. In circumstances of trial, disappointment, spiritual opposition, or conflict we become psalmists, composing our own laments. And like the biblical poets, it takes us more than a bit of wrestling before we arrive at the conclusion that being near the Lord truly is our happiness. Through that struggle, the Spirit opens our eyes to the reality of who God is and what he is done so that our psalmody takes on the nature of remembering and proclaiming his greatness, glory, and worth. Desperation becomes declaration.

It’s not just in the “dark night” situations that we come to discover that God is our “exceedingly great reward” (Gen. 15:1). But somehow the challenging moments produce a kind of nakedness; there seems to be nothing between us and him, and what we are praying “for” thins out and loses prominence to the one we are praying to.

When this happens and we are crying out – but now for God, like Jacob grappling with the Angel of the Lord – and surrendering ourselves and our smaller needs to him, prayer begins to take on new characteristics. We begin to have a different perspective on the people and situations for which we are concerned. In the Father’s presence, seeking him for himself, the Spirit shows us that we, and our concerns, are in his hands. He loves and cares far more than we do. We can listen to what he has to say to us, not what we want to hear.

I can recall several times in my life when I felt like all was pretty much falling apart and full of unanswered prayers. Through the prompting of grace, I found the claim of Psalm 73 to be true: Entering the holy place caused a correction to my distorted vision and I saw that a world seemingly out of control was actually entirely under God’s sovereign and loving provision. It was then that I could pray, “Your will be done” because, although I didn’t know the outcome, I knew that it did not diminish his goodness. I was beginning to touch God’s reality and to leave behind my perilous fantasies.

These were moments of intimate faith, where prayer became less anxious and fretful, less focussed on myself. In such times, we can sense that we are not only nearer to the Lord, but even to those for whom we are interceding. As we open our hearts to him, he opens his to us. We grow in compassion, filled with rest and hope, not with impatience or fear.

Cleaving to the Lord as our greatest need and desire delivers us from making idols of our smaller needs. It frees us from putting faith in our prayers, in our works, in our faith. And it allows us to accept, honor, and rightly fear the mystery, sovereignty, and holiness of God. We often take lightly, and even live in contradiction to the truth that his ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts than our thoughts.

Without intimate faith, we can fall into looking for the Lord to please us and to order our world according to what we purpose and plan (those fantasies, again). The result is a feeling that things aren’t going our way, that our lives are dry and not quite fulfilled, that prayers are not being answered, at least not to our satisfaction.

But my suspicion is that the more we walk and trust and subsist on the manna of intimate faith, the more it will become clear that there is no such animal as an unanswered prayer.

I think we should at least give it a try.