The basis of Christian prayer (III)

This is the third and final part of the series on the fundamentals of Christian Prayer. We concluded last week’s discourse with a consideration of one of the elements of true Christian prayer namely, dialogue. We said that prayer is essential dialogue with God. It is a two-way communication between human beings and God. But […]

This is the third and final part of the series on the fundamentals of Christian Prayer. We concluded last week’s discourse with a consideration of one of the elements of true Christian prayer namely, dialogue. We said that prayer is essential dialogue with God. It is a two-way communication between human beings and God. But prayer is more than communication with God. It is more of communion with God, in which we live in the awareness of God’s presence in our lives. This communion means that God lives in us and we live in God, and that God’s presence within us influences our daily choices: our words, thoughts and actions. That is what prayer is. To pray is to constantly live in God’s presence. It is on account of this that Father George Ehusani says that, “If we are truly praying, then the more we pray, the more we look like God.”

You cannot come out of a garden of rose flowers with your hands smelling excreta. The longer you stay in the rose flower garden, the more you should scent the sweet fragrance of rose. In other words, we cannot say we are praying constantly to God when it is not reflected in our way of life. The more we draw close to God, the more we should be like God, imbibing Godly values and virtues. Sadly today, much of our Christian prayer in Nigeria is not prayer at all because it does not bring about transformation in our lives. We pray and fast and perform all sorts of external religious rituals, but often our hearts are far from God. We have become more or less like the Pharisees of old – hypocrites – whom Jesus, reiterating the words of the Prophet Isaiah, accused thus: “These people approach me in words; they honour me with lip-service, while their hearts are far from me. The worship they offer me is useless…” (Is. 29:13; Mt 15:7).

A blunt way to put it is to say that Nigeria is a deeply religious but godless nation. We pray like the world is going to come to an end today, but we also steal, lie and defraud. We fast but we also fornicate. We offer sacrifices in the Temple of God, but we also consult herbalists, diviners and sorcerers for protection. We attend all manner of vigils, crusades and revivals, but we seem to fear the devil more than we fear God. We jump from the mountain to the valley, but nothing changes in their lives. That shows that much of Christian prayer in Nigeria is simply a jamboree. When people are sincerely praying to God, you can see the effect of their prayer in their lives. We saw it in the lives of Jesus and his disciples. We saw it in the lives of the early Christians. We saw it in the lives of the saints and martyrs, holy men and women. If we say we are praying, and our prayer is not drawing us close to God, then we are simply not praying. Our prayer should influence our way of life, and vice versa.

The anthropology of Christian prayer teaches us that we are what we pray. It is who we are or what we are that we bring into our prayer. When Christians are praying today and are asking God to destroy their enemies, it means that these Christians lack the virtue of forgiveness. Jesus did not teach us to pray in this way. He taught us to “love your enemies and do good to those who persecute you” (Mt 5:44; Lk 6:27). In the Beatitudes, Jesus also proclaims a blessing on those who suffer on account of his name: “Blessed are you when people abuse you and persecute you and speak all kinds of calumny against you on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven” (Mt 5:11). While hanging on the cross, Jesus prayed for forgiveness for those who killed him, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34). 

This means that forgiveness is a central pillar of Christian prayer. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus himself taught us to say, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” (Mt 6:12). If we say we are praying and our prayer does not conform to the pattern of prayer taught us by the Lord, then we are not praying. Nowhere in the Bible did Jesus tell us to pray to God to destroy our enemies. Do not forget that whomever you call your enemy is also a child of God. Imagine that those who consider you their enemy keep praying to God every day to destroy you. If God were to act on their prayer (God forbid!), will you survive it? This shows that any prayer that is focused on invoking God’s wrath on our perceived enemies is no prayer at all. It is an abomination in the sight of God to ask God to destroy one of his children. Rather pray to God to change the person and transform the person into good.

Again, when Christians are praying and are obsessed with binding and casting the devil more than they worship, thank and praise God, then it means that their allegiance is not to God but to the devil. We need to speak about this phenomenon of obsession with the devil, which has almost become a canon of prayer in Nigeria. There are many Christians who feel that they have not prayed if they do not call the devil out for binding and casting. They argue that God has given them power to trample upon serpents. They also say that the kingdom of God suffers violence and that the violent take it by force. The reference to these biblical passages is misleading, because the original interpretation of those biblical texts has nothing to do with making warfare with the devil in our prayer. 

When you are praying for five minutes, and for four of those five minutes you are calling the devil, and then you give only one minute of your prayer to God, your allegiance lies not with God but with the devil. It therefore seems true today that many Christians fear the devil more than they fear God. This is not to deny the existence of the devil. The devil exists. The devil is real. Even St Paul says that, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph 6:12). But I have always strongly argued that anyone who believes in Jesus Christ and who makes effort to live a godly life has nothing to fear. Even the devil fears them. St Paul went further to advise us how to withstand the wiles of the devil. He says, “Therefore, put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand” (Eph 6:13). 

What does it mean to put on the armour of God in the battle against evil? It means wearing a godly life. That is our best protection against the evil one. In the Lord’s Prayer, the only time we hear Jesus mentioning the evil one is in the last petition: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Mt 6:13). When we pray for forgiveness, it means we will be ready to forgive. When we pray for peace, it means we are ready to work for peace in our families, work and communities. What we are is essentially what we bring into our prayer. People who are obsessed with the devil in their prayer display a fundamental lack of trust in the power of God. In other words, we are what we pray. For a Christian, prayer should help us grow in our knowledge and love of God in such a way that we reach a point where prayer unites with life; and where what we believe and how we live go together.

Father Ojeifo is a priest of the Catholic Archdiocese of Abuja.