‘Let the children come to me…’: Praying as a child does
More thoughts on prayer. How, exactly, should we approach God? And is how we “should” approach God in prayer the same as how we actually do?
We’ve been told that when Jesus taught his followers to approach God as “Our Father…,” he was using a term for God that is close, comfortable, familiar, not unlike our use of “Dad.” The disciples were surely taken aback. What Jew had ever addressed the LORD Yahweh in that manner? It speaks profoundly of how Jesus expects us to relate to God.
It’s no wonder, then, that Jesus also taught that the Kingdom of God belongs to those who approach him as children do. And that “anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it” (Mark 10: 14-15). That’s astonishing! In fact, Jesus became indignant, says Mark, at the disciples’ hindering of the children who were brought to him for a blessing. There is anger in indignation. Normally that’s sin. But Jesus’ righteous indignation should be heartening to all of us who aim to follow Jesus with childlike faith wherever he leads.
Jesus is implying: come to my Father, your Father, with intimate familiarity, in child-weakness; without guile, pretense or self-consciousness; wholly trusting that your needs – and even desires – will be satisfied. After Jesus rebuked his disciples he took those children into his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them. Picture it! When we come as children to the God who has known us from intimately eternity he, too, will “take us in his arms, place his hands on us and bless us.”
The Reformed tradition is theologically careful about prayer (and all else). That’s good. But over-emphasizing the intellect can adversely effect the way we pray: we must include the right things, avoid the wrong things, not ask for too much, not praise too little, reverence God. Indeed God is holy and wholly deserving of our awe. But just as a child’s every-day talk with her dad still respects him as her father whom she obeys, so we can both reverence God and draw close to him as our Father and friend. Jesus took on our flesh and blood and died to make it possible.
If we pray to God as our Father then we come as his weak, vulnerable children. When do you most feel God’s intrinsic presence in prayer? I pray best – feel the stirring of the Spirit, God’s intimate closeness – when I’m ill, weary, grieving, overwhelmed by some circumstance, or weighed with concern for myself, someone I love, the church, the world. That’s no accident. At such times we are most “childlike”; we lay our defenseless selves bare before God and feel his welcoming heart. As Paul Miller says in his excellent book A Praying Life: Connecting With God in a Distracting World, “Jesus doesn’t say, ‘Come to me, all you who have learned how to concentrate in prayer, whose minds no longer wander, and I will give you rest.’ No, Jesus opens his arms to his needy children and says, ‘Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.’ (Matt. 11:28). The criteria for coming to Jesus is weariness. Come overwhelmed with life. Come with your wandering mind. Come messy.” And come without a mask, spiritual or otherwise. The real you has to meet the real God, our Father.
One of my favorite poets is the 18th century Calvinist Englishman William Cowper (“God Moves in a Mysterious Way”). Cowper (pronounced Cooper) struggled with paralyzing depression, doubts about his salvation, and four times had a mental breakdown. He was assumed insane and committed to an asylum. His poems reveal his struggling heart of hearts. It is precisely his coming back to God again and again in abject weakness that leaves such a powerful impression on fellow Christians more than two centuries later.
In Cowper’s helplessness he saw himself as a child. In “A Figurative Description Of The Procedure Of Divine Love” he likens the Christian life to a sea journey fraught with fathomless depths and frightful storms, through which God as Love tries his courage (Love, with power divine supplied,/Suddenly my courage tried). In fact, God disappears, filling Cowper with terror. Cowper then thinks he must lean on his own devices. But instead, he becomes as a child; he cries out to God. He bends his own will to God’s, making the profoundly difficult confession, “All is right that thou wilt do.” Then something amazing happens:
In “Exhortation to Prayer” Cowper puts into practice that lesson learned. Oh, the comfort of drawing close to God in our weakness and feeling his blessed presence. Such childlike faith makes Satan tremble.
“Let the children come unto me, for of such is the Kingdom of heaven.”
Reformed Revelry 