Shaped for Prayer Enjoyment

By David Macmillan

Can prayer be more than routine duty or a panic button reserved for crises? Can it become a favourite enjoyment in life?

 

It's easier to get excited about praying and to grow in it when it's enjoyable. Enjoyment of prayer life is a journey we're designed for, a spiritual growth adventure that's too good to miss. Not a lifestyle reserved for a few, but a journey open to every follower of Christ. So, how does it become real?

 

In his book, Shaped for Prayer Enjoyment, David Macmillan unpacks the truths at the heart of enjoyable prayer life.

 

He gives the why and how of living in "pray continually" mode, responding to God's constant presence, praying as Christ's admirers, enjoying God's company, growing an appetite for Him, boosting corporate prayer power, praying from scripture, increasing prayer passion for Christ's mission, and more.

 

There are practical keys to grow daily prayer life, and helpful Ponder & Practise sections to encourage movement from prayer knowledge to enjoyable prayer experience.

 

This book will equip and encourage you in your prayer enjoyment journey. Used personally, or in prayer groups, it will:

• Help you grow an enjoyable prayer lifestyle
• Excite, shape and deepen your praying
• Equip you for strategic prayer
• Be a valuable prayer training resource

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wingspan STS
• Release date: Jun 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781838358402

Book preview

Table of Contents

Introduction

PART I: Prayer as Favourite Enjoyment

1 The Eternal Centre of Prayer Joy

2 A View to Fascinate the Pray-er

3 Learning to Pray with Hunger for God

4 Praying in the Frame of Constant Presence

5 Designed for House of Prayer Living

6 Growing our Agreement with God

PART II: Shaping the Way We Pray

7 Pathways for Shaping Prayer

8 Benefits of Prayer Scribble

9 Expanding Prayer Language

10 Shaping Prayer from a Bible Narrative

11 Shaping Prayer from a Bible Verse

12 Going Further in Corporate Prayer

13 Pray-ers on the Move

14 Dig Deep to Go Higher

Notes

Shaped for Prayer Enjoyment

David Macmillan

Copyright © 2017 David Macmillan

Second edition © 2021 David Macmillan

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

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Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

Published by Wingspan STS

United Kingdom

Email: [e-mail]

ISBN 9781838358402

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version© NIV© Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.TM Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Cover photograph by Bruce Rolff © 123RF Stock Photo

To the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen.

My name will be great among the nations, from where the sun rises to where it sets. In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to me, because my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord Almighty.

(Romans 16:27, Malachi 1:11)

Contents

Introduction

PART I:  Prayer as Favourite Enjoyment

1 The Eternal Centre of Prayer Joy

2 A View to Fascinate the Pray-er

3 Learning to Pray with Hunger for God

4 Praying in the Frame of Constant Presence

5 Designed for House of Prayer Living

6 Growing our Agreement with God

PART II:  Shaping the Way We Pray

7 Pathways for Shaping Prayer

8 Benefits of Prayer Scribble

9 Expanding Prayer Language

10 Shaping Prayer from a Bible Narrative

11 Shaping Prayer from a Bible Verse

12 Going Further in Corporate Prayer

13 Pray-ers on the Move

14 Dig Deep to Go Higher

Notes

Introduction

IF I HAD TO PUT A LABEL on the year 1980, it would be ‘Almost a failure’. Sandra and I had exchanged our familiar Cape Town life for an Asian world of strange smells, tastes and culture. We had been educated, trained and motivated to take the gospel to less reached people, so we arrived in Thailand excited to be in the Land of Smiles and ready for mission adventure. Or were we?

We didn’t mind our rustic new home; the ugly, old teak house perched on stilts over the pond left by monsoon rains had ‘character’. We adjusted to the relentless heat, the strange market smells, the daily war with mosquitoes and being woken before sunrise by music from the nearby Buddhist temple. We were exactly where God wanted us. Our organisation had laid out a language course for us, and my aim was to breeze through that as quickly as possible so I could start real mission work. I was in for a shock.

After six months in language school, I was ready to leave Thailand as a missionary failure. The daily language routine had started out as fun, but after months of plodding through my Grade 1 language books, there was little to laugh about. With its unfamiliar script, lines of unseparated words, five tones and an alphabet of forty-four consonants and around thirty vowel forms, the Thai language seemed impossible to learn.

My frustration peaked one sweltering afternoon after a particularly uphill language lesson. I threw my books down and walked through the small town until I reached the Ping River. I was alone with the sound of the slow-moving water – no sensible person wanders along a central Thailand riverbank in the midday heat. I was there to complain and was glad I could do it without an audience. Sandra and I had left everything to run this race. We wanted to make a difference to Thai lives, but my feet were stuck in the starting blocks. I could barely recite a simple Bible verse without making a fool of myself. No matter how much I tried bobbing my head up and down to force the right tones into the proper places, the words came out wrong. Pressing on seemed pointless, so I told the Lord I saw no other option but to pack our bags and leave Thailand.

I felt miserable. I listened to the sound of the river for a while, and then turned to head back to the hot little house on stilts. That’s when I heard God speak, and what he said rescued my future. He didn’t shout, but the inner voice was unmistakably clear, as if the Speaker was directly in front of me. He spoke one word: "Immanuel".¹

In that riverside sanctuary the Lord began to unpack truths from his name. He wasn’t a distant observer of my language struggles. He wasn’t even a front-row spectator. He was God-with-me in my unfamiliar Asian world, in my tonal struggles and in my frustration at being in ministry limbo. But his agenda was different to mine. My aim was to get the language; his was to use the language to get more of me. I had come to change Thailand; God’s plan was to use Thailand to change me. Blessing the Thai people was in the plan, but it would happen as an overflow of him at work in me.

I had always thought of the bit where the Lord says, I am with you, as an add-on promise to reassure people who go and make disciples of all nations,² and who need the encouragement. But I had missed the very heart of the apostolic commission. He never intended the promise of his presence to be just an afterthought to remove fear or insecurity from his witnesses. The Lord is on a mission to rescue nations and spread his fame, and he calls us to move with him. So we disperse into the world of needy people, each day a fresh opportunity for learning to live and work with Immanuel. God-with-us fills even the routine and mundane activities of daily life with extraordinary significance and mystery, including Thai language classes.

My riverside encounter with the Lord stopped me from making a U-turn in missions, and broke my Thai language impasse. But it did more than that. It awakened me to life in the company of Immanuel. If God’s presence is constant then my enjoyment of him should top my priority list. I sensed that this journey was going to reshape me as a pray-er, but had no idea of how deeply it would change me and redefine my ministry. Now, thirty years later, I still feel like a novice voyager, but it’s the truths learned in the journey that I want to share in these chapters.

Christians believe in the value of prayer but many struggle to grow as pray-ers. Why? I’ve asked this question repeatedly during prayer growth seminars. Busyness, tiredness and discouragement are all given as answers, but many admit to an underlying problem: they don’t enjoy praying. It’s good and necessary, yes, but not a favourite enjoyment.

God invites our requests and loves to give answers to prayer. But the celebration of answers is just one part of prayer joy. And there are times when that part seems quite small: when answers are slow in coming, or are not the ones we hoped for. Enjoyable prayer is much, much bigger than the celebration of answers. Shaped for Prayer Enjoyment will take the reader on a journey in the enjoyable prayer life we were designed for. But not without cost – this is an adventure into selflessness and change.

Over a decade ago, the Bible teaching and prayer training Sandra and I were involved in developed into a ministry called Wingspan Prayer.³ The logo, an eagle in flight, includes the words, Shaped to soar. The wingspan of the bald eagle can reach up to eight feet (2.4 metres). The huge wings are light but have muscle power to lift the eagle high; they are designed to soar on nature’s air currents and are shaped for high-speed manoeuvrability in dives and turns. The eagle’s wings are an engineering marvel with a powerful spiritual parallel. The Creator has designed us, his image bearers, with an amazing prayer capacity to soar on wings like eagles⁴ and enjoy him in an endless upward journey. The Designer has empowered us for the adventure, but our flight upward and forward requires that we work with him in shaping the desire, will and practices that help us spread our wings in enjoyable prayer.

Part 1 of the book explains the values that define a journey in enjoyable prayer. Dutiful obedience is important, but it’s not enough to lift us off the ground as pray-ers. We want the freedom of a raised heart, the wonder of God’s company, the expectation of encounter, the spark of response, the thrill of intimacy, the excitement of seeing him and the adventure of learning to agree with him. When given heart-space, the values become a Spirit-managed shaping force that changes us as pray-ers and deepens our experience of enjoyable prayer. Each chapter ends with a ‘Ponder and Practise’ section to encourage engagement with key truths.

Part II gives the how-to of breaking new ground in enjoyable prayer. The Lord is the first Speaker in the prayer relationship and learning to shape our praying as a response that agrees with him is a mix of desire and discipline. The four pathways for using Scripture to shape prayer have helped many in the journey. It’s true that our responses to the Lord can become dull and tired unless we stretch our prayer language to give the heart a bigger expression. The section on visual language explains how. Corporate prayer, managed by the Spirit, can be a powerful, top-tier enjoyment, but agreement must characterize the praying. Chapter twelve gives essential agreement-building keys. The book ends with a challenge to missional prayer adventure: a call to make a difference by living as a ‘pray-er on the move’.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since my Ping River encounter. My journey as a learner of enjoyable prayer is ongoing. But it’s my hope that the lessons shared from an incomplete journey will be used by the Spirit to strengthen, stretch and shape the prayer enjoyment of every reader.

PART I

Prayer as Favourite Enjoyment

Chapter 1

The Eternal Centre of Prayer Joy

GOD HAS A PERFECTLY joyful nature and gives us participation rights. Romans 14:17 tells us that the kingdom of God is a matter of righteousness, peace and joy. By transferring us into his kingdom, the Lord has moved us into the realm of his eternal joy. We read in Galatians 5:22 that the fruit of the Spirit includes joy, meaning that the indwelling Spirit has come to make that joy a current experience for us. Because prayer is at the core of the God-us relationship, it becomes the main highway for our journey of experiencing the joy of the Lord.

We generally score high marks in belief about prayer but don’t do very well in practising it as a lifestyle. We blame busyness, tiredness and life’s distractions, but perhaps the root of a neglected or inconsistent prayer life goes deeper. We tend to sideline what we don’t enjoy, including prayer. We marginalize it but keep it conveniently close in our belief system in case of emergencies. Enthusiasm, hype, a sense of duty and crises may trigger bursts of prayer, but if a prayer life is to be sustained and consistent it must be a favourite enjoyment.

God designed us to enjoy prayer and promised that his people would live as a joyful prayer community. In fact, he is the Guarantor of enjoyable prayer.¹ Yes, there are times when we pray with heaviness or lament, and become acutely aware of spiritual warfare. But all prayer is intended to enhance our experience of God’s joy, not to rob us of it. Joy is resilient because it’s rooted in the nature of God. It doesn’t need a trouble-free zone to survive. Sorrow is not the enemy of joy and can be present without diminishing it. Joy in prayer grows as we learn to enjoy God. Our prayer experience, no matter how dutiful, won’t rise beyond our heart’s enjoyment of him. The most urgent call to the church today is not to try to pray more, but to make the Lord our highest joy. Enjoyable praying will generate more prayer. The question worth asking is: What is the core of enjoyable prayer?

Beyond the Gladness of Answers

Praying for something without wanting an answer doesn’t make sense. We all love getting answers to prayer, especially quick ones. They bring gladness. We might not all spin around in joyful dance like King David when getting an answer to prayer,² but answers from God are intended to boost the joy of his praying people. Jesus said, Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.³ Imagine if God announced that he is no longer in the business of answering prayer requests. In that scenario, ask yourself the question: Faced with zero hope of getting answers from God, would I still pray?

We know, without doubt, that God answers prayer. But when we don’t receive an answer, or perhaps we get one that doesn’t match up with the one we wanted, does that affect our enjoyment of prayer? In other words, is there more to enjoyable praying than the celebration of answers? There is. Let’s look at that deeper level of prayer joy.

Beyond the Celebration in Asking

Our asking honours the Father. Each time we talk to him about a need, we exalt him as our hope. Supplication is an admission of trust and dependency on him. But our celebration in asking goes deeper than that:

Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the LORD and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles. The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the LORD scoffs at them. He rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying, I have installed my King on Zion, my holy mountain. I will proclaim the LORD’S decree: He said to me, You are my son; today I have become your father. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.

(Psalm 2:1-8)

That picture in Psalm 2 has a double layer. On the surface, King David’s song was about the nations gathered against him, probably after he had evicted the Jebusites from Jerusalem and made it his capital city. But the song’s deeper layer was about the Messiah to come and the opposition he would face, climaxing with his death on a cross. The apostles, replaying that song in Acts chapter 4, named two of the rulers who conspired against the LORD and against his anointed, namely Herod and Pontius Pilate.⁴ But see how, in verse 4, the psalmist’s prophetic ear picks up the Father’s response to the violent plot: he bursts into laughter! The One enthroned in heaven laughs. We can’t imagine the sound of the Father’s laughter but it must be the purest, loudest, most contagious expression of holy joy, beyond anything we’re familiar with. He also expresses a terrifying anger, yet it’s not a divine mood switch. In God’s nature, holy anger and joy are not in conflict. He can fully express both at the same time. The reason for the Father’s eruption of laughter is simple: he knows what comes next because he wrote the script. The Cross leads to a triumphant resurrection!

At this point in the song, the psalmist takes on the voice of Christ anticipating his own resurrection day. He sings the words he expects