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From Inside or Outside the Heart?
mazing things happen when we pray. Almighty God, who made the heavens and the earth, sits at the edge of His throne ready to tear open heaven to shower down good gifts on us. He commands us to pray and He Himself has promised to hear us. It’s really unbelievable, but it is most certainly true!
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If our Heavenly Father is going to open heaven when we speak to Him, we want good words, don’t we? What makes a good prayer? The world tells us that good prayers come from inside of us and are spontaneous and genuine. We are tempted to believe that the best prayers, after all, come from our hearts (also called “ex corde” prayers from the Latin). What happens when we pray as the world tells us? Our hearts, desperate to please God, come up with a really long, religious-sounding prayer. Usually, that prayer is centered on one thing—us! That’s often my problem when I try to “wing it” with a prayer. What comes out of my mouth is what I like to call a “we-we-we prayer.”They sound like this:“Lord, WE are so glad. . . . WE just want to thank you. . . WE praise you. ” Our prayers from the heart tend to go,“wee wee wee” all the way home! Have your ex corde prayers ever sounded like that? The Lord Jesus knows better than to leave our prayers to what’s going on in our hearts. He says,“For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies” (St. Matthew 15:19). Maybe our hearts aren’t the best place for our prayers to come from. If I’m not to pray from my heart, where should my prayers come from? The best prayers come from outside of you.The Word comes to you from outside yourself; so do your prayers. Pray our Lord’s words back to Him. Pray the Psalms, the Lord’s
Prayer, and pray the Apostle’s Creed. What about those specific prayer requests? That’s what your prayer book is for. Did you know that your hymnal is your prayer book? It has the Psalms in it, has hymns, spiritual songs, the catechism, and even prayers.Your hymnal is full of the ancient prayers of the Church, prayers that have been prayed for thousands of years.These prayers begin with God and what He has done for us in Christ, then proclaim God’s promises, then make petitions clinging to those promises. What’s great about them? They are completely outside of you. Don’t have a hymnal? Ask your pastor for one.The hymnals weren’t designed to sit in the pews all week.They were made for you to have with you in your home, to use, to sing, to praise God, and especially to pray to Him all week long. The disciples asked Jesus,“Lord, teach us to pray.”They knew prayer was hard and wanted to know how to pray. What you will learn over time is that the more you pray these prayers, the more they become a part of you.Then, when find yourself – shudder the thought – hymnal-less, you’ll discover that you know them by heart.You probably already know a lot of them since you have heard your pastor praying them in church.Those prayers are already a part of you, or better, the Lord has made them a part of you, having put them into your ears from outside you. Salvation was won by grace alone on the cross, and is delivered to us freely in the Word and the Sacraments.The same is true for our prayers. God hears our prayers because He loves to hear His Son. So in His Son He loves to hear us too. It’s not that God doesn’t want to hear your prayers in your own words.The prayers that come from our heart aren’t better than those outside of us just because we are coming up with them ourselves. No, the Father loves to hear Jesus, so in Jesus He loves to hear you too. Since you have a heavenly Father who can’t get enough of you and your prayers because of the cross, pray away! Mean your prayers. Believe that God will answer your prayers. Pray with all your heart (ex corde). Pray outside of you. He’s already poised to rip the heavens open and give you gifts upon gifts because you bear His Name, delivered to you in Holy Baptism. “But because He is God, He claims the honor of giving far more abundantly and liberally than anyone can comprehend — like an eternal, inexhaustible fountain which, the more it gushes forth and overflows, the more it continues to give. He desires nothing more ardently than that we ask many and great things of Him; and on the contrary, He is angered if we do not ask and demand confidently.” (Large Catechism III, 56) Rev. George F. Borghardt III is the assistant pastor of St. Mark Lutheran Church in Conroe,Texas and a member of the editorial board of Higher Things. His email address is revborghardt@sanctus.org.
By Rev. George F. Borghardt III
Myths on Prayer
