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An Excerpt From ... A Private House Of Prayer by Leslie D. Weatherhead
I want to suggest that, since there is no limit to our imagination, no limited quota of building material, we can have not just one room but a whole house. I will tell you about my house of prayer and offer you a. month in it, and then you can build your own and furnish it with some of the glorious truths and promises of our faith. And you can use this house of prayer whenever you have a mind to do so. It is easy to memorize the names of the rooms, and you can enter any or all of them as you sit in the corner of a railway coach, or in the bus or subway on the way to work, or between your home and the station, or even without getting out of bed. This, so far from being lazy, can be a useful place to pray because relaxation is of value, and it is easier to relax there. By this method you can give as long or as short a time as you wish to devote to prayer, but of course, a "room" suggests a place in which you tarry. Do not rush through all the rooms looking for God. He can be found in every one. Some may desire to use some rooms in the morning and leave others-particularly the sixth and seventh-for the evening. Some may have so little time that they can use only one room per day. For myself, I find half an hour before, or just after, breakfast the best time. There are seven rooms in the house, and they are all prayer rooms. Here they are then:
Room 1. This is the room in which we Affirm the Presence of God. A common objection to prayer is that it "feels like talking to nothing," or that "there is no one there." We cannot engineer feeling, but in the first room let us assert the fact that God is present. This by repeating some of the great texts of the Bible. All through the Bible, God asserts his presence with his people, and it is real prayer to remember the sentences which recall this to our mind. "Enoch walked with God." "Abraham was the friend of God. To Moses God promised his presence, and to Joshua he said, "As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee." David feels he can face the dark valley "for Thou art with me," and our Lord not only promised the "Lo I am with you always even until the end of the world," but promised the Holy Spirit "that He may be with you for ever." In this first room I repeat those great words "with you." By printing them have drawn attention to them throughout Part Three.
With such passages we "furnish" this room, and of course, we can add to them from the hymnbook and from the poets.
Room 2. When we have asserted the fact of the presence of God, we can pass into the next room in which we Praise, Thank, and Adore God. It is a good thing to imagine this room full of morning sunshine: is the room of thanksgiving. Each of us has something for which to praise and thank God. Indeed it is a revealing thing to write down a list of those things for which we should thank God. We should adore him for all he is in himself - and as we do so, we should call to mind his attributes and remember his love, his splendor, his power, his beauty, his wisdom, his holiness. Then we can thank him for the way he has led us and for all he has done for us. We are to keep our mind - in this room at least - away from our worries and fears and weaknesses and sins. We will look at them later, but, first of all, let us resolutely turn our minds away from preoccupation with them. First we will look at God in this mental room dedicated to praise, gratitude, and adoration. We can furnish this room with hymns like the Te Deum and other great hymns of praise from the hymnbook and the poets.
Room 3. Now we are ready for a room rather dim and shadowy as we enter but brighter as we move across it to the window. It is the room of Confession, Forgiveness, and Unloading. Here we confess our sin, not just in a general way but really being honest. Most of us are sometimes jealous, malicious, unkind, proud, irritable, intolerant, impure. We pull off the slick business deal and feel a little bit ashamed. We disparage another's good name. In a hundred ways we do what we know to be wrong and fail to do what the inner spirit prompts us as right. Terribly often we are indifferent to another's need. Here we recognize and. put away from us our secret resentments, our arrogant self-importance, our refusals to forgive, our jealousy and envy, our hate and malice, and that terrible desire to hit back, which, if retained, block the entry of God's peace into our hearts. Here we part with the secret fear that our self-esteem is being undermined or that we shall be found inadequate. If we really are inadequate, we must accept the fact. God understands and accepts us as we are. But, of course, we must not pretend to him or to ourselves. Nor must we try to make the world think us wiser, or cleverer, or better, or younger (or whatever it is) than we are. All deception blocks the path to God's peace.
But God is always ready and willing to forgive us. We can move toward the window, pull up the blind, and let the streaming light of loving forgiveness and acceptance flood the room. We are loved, understood, forgiven, and accepted.
In this room part of Ps. 51 would be a suitable piece of furniture -- the psalm in which David pours out his soul to God and finds pardon. Before we leave this room, too, we must make sure that we are ready to forgive others who may have sinned against us. Nothing is clearer in the New Testament than the fact that God asks as a condition of his forgiveness, not so much a penitence that is complete, as a spirit that will forgive another. "Forgive us our sins, as we forgive them that trespass against us." "If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." (Matthew 6:15.)
Here also we confess our fears and put down our worries and our dark anxieties. They are not necessarily sins. Some of them we cannot help. But here we tell God about them and let the sunshine of his love and purpose shine upon them. Our confusion we put down here, too, our bewilderment as to what we ought to do and which way we ought to go. In this room we tell God everything that troubles us.
Room 4. is set aside for Affirmation and Reception. Cleansed by forgiveness we are ready now to receive. This prayer of positive affirmation is important. We are no longer to dwell on the depths to which we have fallen but on the heights to which God will lead us. God is waiting to give. Jesus put the matter in an unforgettable sentence: "What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." (Mark 11:24.)
So, quietly, with body and mind relaxed, I may say to myself in this room: "The peace of God is mine. God is giving me his power now. In God I am one with the spirit of love. I am caught up into his mighty purposes now. I am safe within his care. The everlasting arms are round about me and will not let me fall." Each sentence should be murmured aloud slowly again and again.
The twenty-third psalm is suitable furniture for this room. It does not ask, "0 Lord, be my Shepherd." It affirms that he is. It does not ask for guidance. It rests in the affirmation that the soul is being guided. "He is leading me in a true path for his name's sake, and he is restoring my soul." One should say the words quietly and confidently, repeating each sentence over and over. Some may wish to visit this room just before sleeping at night. I can think of no more valuable way of falling asleep than to do so repeating some great affirmation about God, such as, "I will be quiet, resting in thee, thou Spirit of peace within me." This thought will sink deep into the unconscious mind, creating and storing an inward peace upon which to draw on difficult days when the temptation is to take our reaction from the storm around us, to react in bad temper or ruffled feelings, in worry and anxiety, instead of taking our reaction from the stores of peace laid by through prayer for just such occasions.
It might help us to remember that if God were not willing to give, then we could wrest nothing out of his hands. But if he is willing give, then we have only to take. The Bible says he is more willing to give than we are to ask. How can I take? I take by affirming that his love and peace and power are at my disposal and that his peace is flooding my heart, even while I bow in this inner room.
It is important to remember that the act of affirmation must not made merely by the intellect and carried out by the will. One of the causes of spiritual inefficiency is that while mind and will concur -- the mind accepting truth and the will trying to carry out its implications -- yet the deep emotional levels are unreached.
For instance, I may know intellectually that resentment is wrong and may even make me ill. I may do my best by means of my will not be resentful. Yet the emotion remains. I feel resentful.
To alter that condition I must get the opposite, positive emotion into my deep mind, and to do that I must repeat a score of times or more some positive statement such as, "God is love, and his love fills my heart and overflows to all men, forgiving and loving all for his sake."
Someone has said that "the subconscious is an ass," and I think I know what he means. Ideas presented to it by repetition during relaxation are accepted by it almost without the intellect being consulted, and the emotional color of the deep mind is altered. Coué knew this, and I system rested on its truth. His pupils were to say the famous words over and over again: "Every day in every way I am getting better and better." "Say it parrot fashion," said Coué, and added, with unconscious humor, "Don't think about it. Say it as you say the Litany."
I myself found immense help from repeating as I sought to sleep "Through the inpouring of thy love, thou art healing me of all that is contrary to thy Spirit." I believe that the healing process goes on during sleep for "He giveth unto his beloved in sleep." (Ps. 127:2 E.R.V. margin). Did not Brother Lawrence say, "The barque of the soul goeth forward even in sleep"?
Room 5. is the place for Purified Desire and Sincere Petition. We know what our dominant desires are. In this room we purify them by looking at them again in the light of God. Maybe we shall see that in that light our prayer to become manager of the bank, or principal of the school, to make money, achieve fame, or be a social success is not so important as to be used by God in some way that helps others.
It is found that some of our thoughtless and selfish prayers that begin, "I want," die on our lips by the time we get to this room in the house of prayer. Probably by this time we want to love more deeply both God and our fellows and promote God's interests even more than our own. We stop saying, "Give me," and start saying, "Make me" and "Show me" and "Use me." This is the place where we ask for renewed trust and stronger faith and more tolerant love for those who differ from us.
In a university common room a number of lecturers were chatting together. Someone asked the question, "What do you want to be?" The others replied in turn, and the answers were not unworthy. One wanted an academic distinction, another an athletic prize, another a professor's chair. One man, shy and sensitive, said quietly, "You fellows will laugh at me, but I want to be a saint." They did not laugh at him. I know this man and can sincerely add that he is a saint and one of the most healthy influences at a large university. When we can sincerely say, "I want to be a saint," we are purifying our petitions.
Room 6. is that of Intercession for Others. It has never seemed to me practicable to spend a lot of time on each person for whom I wish to pray, and if the other rooms in the house of prayer have been conscientiously visited, it seems enough to me to say the name of the person slowly, calling him to mind in as vivid a picture as possible, and then imaginatively watching him emerging from his difficulties, being made well --if we are praying about his health -- being made confident, courageous, serene, joyous, or whatever it may be.
The words italicized are very important. Our minds at the moment of intercession can be so filled with pity, or negative sympathy, or fear, or even horror, that we cannot help and may hinder another. Miss M. V. Dunlop writes:
It is the power of our thought for ill that is so overwhelming, the knowledge that by our states of worry, despondency, fear and other forms of faithlessness we are not only laying up a more or less miserable future for ourselves, but -- far worse -- are making life harder for those we love and want to help; harder because our mental state is actually intensifying their belief in the power of illness or some misery, and so giving their condition a stronger hold over them. We do not always remember that, far from bearing another's burden, we are binding it on more firmly by much of our sympathy. If we did, we should make far more effort to conquer our own "natural" grief for someone else's affliction than is at all common. The conquest of grief lies not in suppressing it but in holding our minds still before the Lord (to use an old Quaker phrase) till we are filled with the realization of His Life and Power. Then, and only then, is our longing to help the other and lighten the burden made possible of fulfillment.
I remember a friend of mine asking me not to pray for him in church, When I asked why, he said that the feelings of horror which would be called forth when I told the congregation what had happened to him would hurt him more than the prayers would help him. His words pulled me up and made me take greater care about the way in which, I described the person for whom public prayers are offered.
My own plan in praying privately for friends is to have four lists numbered one to thirty-one and against each numeral to pencil four names. (See pages 40-41.) Then on the day of the month I am praying, I think of the four people whose names are opposite the number which represents the date. In this book a space is left at the end of each day's "Room 6" also, so that names can be penciled in. Of course, some must be mentioned daily and urgent situations will arise. But I have never felt that "God bless all my friends" is a sufficiently focused prayer, nor can I feel much reality in praying for causes. "God bless the missionary society," let alone "God bless India," would seem to me less valuable than to think of someone-if possible personally known and whose difficulties are real to one-who is working in that field. By some such plan as this one can really pray for one's friends, if it be only once a month, with some sense of sincerity and reality. Paul said he would "mention" his friends in his prayers (Rom. 1:9; Eph. 1:16). George MacDonald says, "I will not say that I will pray for you, but I shall think of God and you together."
Room 7. is a big room at the top of the house set aside for Meditation. Here we sometimes take an incident in the Gospels and try to do what Ruskin said he did, "to be present as if in the body at each recorded act in the life of the Redeemer." We might indeed work steadily through the Gospels in this way, imaginatively watching the incidents happen and especially "looking at Jesus." Some examples are given in the following pages, and our meditation should end in dedication. The will should be strengthened by all that the imagination has contemplated. Some of the meditations which follow are poems which are worth reading repeatedly and brooding upon.
This sevenfold way may not prove attractive. All that matters is that we should find some way of praying that is real, and neither dull or burdensome, nor so unarranged and desultory as to waste time and be unrewarding.
We are all troubled by "wandering thoughts." Sometimes it is a good thing to note just where they do wander, to ask why they wander there, and to pray about the situation to which they drift. Sometimes we are like A. A. Milne's Christopher Robin:
God bless Mummy. I know that's right.
Wasn't it fun in the bath to-night?
The cold's so cold, and the hot's so hot.
Oh, God bless Daddy - I quite forgot.
If I open my fingers a little bit more,
I can see Nanny's dressing-gown on the door,
It's a beautiful blue, but it hasn't a hood,
Oh! God bless Nanny and make her good.
It isn't only the child Christopher Robin who experiences this difficulty. Listen to Benjamin Jowett, a famous master of Balliol College, Oxford:
Nothing makes one more conscious of poverty and shallowness of character than difficulty in praying or attending to prayer. Any thoughts about self, thoughts of evil, day dreams, love fancies, easily find an abode in the mind. But the thought of God and of right and truth will not stay there, except with a very few persons. I fail to understand my own nature in this particular. There is nothing which at a distance I seem to desire more than the knowledge of God, the ideal, the universal; and yet for two minutes I cannot keep my mind upon them. But I read a great work of fiction, and can hardly take my mind from it. If I had any real love of God, would not my mind dwell upon Him?
The scheme I have devised offers help to wandering minds like my own.
One could, of course, fill the scheme out to last an hour or more, or shorten it to a few minutes. It is really rather fun to gather passages from the Bible, the hymnbook, the poets and the essayists and biographers, to make more pictures and furniture for each room. One could in time change the pictures and the furniture in every room.
At any rate, I pass on the scheme for what it is worth. We need God. The masters of prayer teach us that all the factors I have mentioned such as adoration, thanksgiving, confession, petition, intercession, and meditation have their place, and yet some of their books are so advanced that they frighten beginners like me.
The order seems important to me. I want to assert first the Divine Presence and realize the fact, if not the feeling, that there is "Someone there." Then I can adore, worship, praise, and thank him. To do that makes me terribly conscious of my own unworthiness, so I turn then to forgiveness and the unburdening of my heart. Having, as it were, emptied my heart, I want to fill it with what God will give me if I take it by the method of repeated affirmation. By this time I have passed what I want through the sieve of his will, "through Jesus Christ our Lord," if I may so put it. I ask in a different way and for different things than would have fled my lips if I had burst into his presence with my petitions at the beginning. Some may think it odd to put intercessions or others so late, but it is when I have myself got nearest to God and asked him in petition to do things for me and in me that I can be of maximum help to others. Then last of all, I want to meditate by "looking at Jesus" or contemplating some great truth which has come to me from him. In this way imaginative communion with him can have -- as nearly as possible -- the results of being with him in Galilee. That communion is surely the strongest transforming power in the world. What it did for Peter and John, it can do for me.
We must each find the way. "God," said Emerson, "enters by a, private door into every individual." "Come down Thine own secret stair,"' cries George MacDonald. But we can help by making an imaginative house with many doors and stairways and open them all to him. He will come in his own way and by his own route. As long as God comes, it does not matter how, but we must give him a chance. "Behold," he says, "I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him and will sup with him, and he with me" (Rev. 3:20)-in the East an unmistakable offer of friendship from which there will never be any turning back.
I have always found prayer difficult. So often it seems like a fruitless game of hide and seek in which we seek and God hides. I know God is very patient with me. Without that patience I should be lost. But frankly I have to be patient with him. With no other friend would I go on seeking with such scant, conscious response. Yet I cannot leave prayer alone for long. My need drives me to him. And I have a feeling that he has his own reasons for hiding himself, and that finally all my seeking will prove infinitely worth while. And I am not sure what I mean by "finding." Some days my very seeking seems a kind of "finding." And of course, if "finding" meant the end of "seeking," it were better to go on seeking. I suppose no one ever finds all there is to find or can rest satisfied as if he had arrived at a journey's end. I long for more satisfaction, but I cannot cease from questing. Jesus sometimes found prayer difficult. Some of his most agonized prayers were not answered. But he did not give up his praying. I frankly have little to show for all my, prayers, but I cannot give up, for "my soul longeth for God," and know that outside God there is nothing at all but death.
Let us then make a house of prayer and, if possible, open the door every morning, for to commune with him may well be the cause for which we were created. It is a very private house. We will not open the rooms to another unless he or she is closely allied in desire. There is One who "seeth in secret."
"When thou prayest," said Jesus, "enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." A reward, surely, which shall be a new quality of life, full of serenity and joy and love, a worthy reaction to all life's demands, and in the end, a communion with God worth all our present disappointments, a communion which shall be a tiny part of his own glory and the whole of our bliss. An Excerpt From ... A Private House Of Prayer by Leslie D. Weatherhead
