Abba pambo asked Abba Anthony: “What ought I to do?” and the old man said to him: “Do not trust in your own rightoeusness, do not worry about the past, but control your tongue and your stomach.

“Let your heart be silent, then God will speak.”    St. Anthony

When Abba Anthony thought about the depth of the judgements of God, he asked: “Lord, how is it that some die when they are young, while others drag on to extreme old age? Why are there those who are poor and those who are rich? Why do wicked men prosper and why are the just in need?” He heard a voice answering him. “Anthony, keep your attention on yourself; these things are according to the judgements of God, and it is not to your advantage to know anything about them.”
From the Holy Mountain: Dalrymple

“In the teaching of the Orthodox Faith, salvation is never limited to a point in time. Salvation is not a one-dimentional event, a past tense occurence, with merely philosophical or “positional” implications for the present. Rather…salvation is perceived to be a lifetime experience - a journey not measured by the hours our our watch or the days  of the calendar, for it is a journey out of time into eternity”
Kalistos Ware: The Orthodox Way

One of the best known of the Desert Fathers of 4th century Egypt, Saint Sarapion the Sidionite, travelled once on a pilgrimage to Rome. Here he was told of a celebrated recluse, a woman who lived always in one small room, never going out. Skeptical about her way of life - for he himself was a great wanderer - Sarapion called on her and asked: Why are you sitting here?” To this she replied: “I am not sitting, I am on a journey.”                                                                                                                                        (Kallistos Ware: The Orthodox Way)

I try and start each day with prayer because I know that if I put it off until later I won’t do it. So even if it is a simple prayer, I feel much better. A good prayer to use is the following:

My God, I give you this day.
I offer You, now, all of the good
that I shall do and I promise to accept,
for love of You,
all of the difficulty that I shall meet.
Help me to conduct myself during this day
in a manner pleasing to You. Amen.
St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622)

Pascal is said to have been involved in an accident at the Neuilly-sur-Seine bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet and the carriage nearly followed them. Fortunately, the reins broke and the coach hung halfway over the edge. Pascal and his friends emerged unscathed, but the sensitive philosopher, terrified by the nearness of death, fainted away and remained unconscious for some time. Upon recovering fifteen days later, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: “Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars…” and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: “I will not forget thy word. Amen.” He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. Here is the quote in full:

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and savants.
Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
God of Jesus Christ.
My God and thy God
‘Thy God shall be my God’
Forgetfulness of the world and of everything except God.
He is to be found only in the ways taught in the Gospel.
Grandeur of the human soul.
Righteous Father, the world hath not known Thee, but I have known Thee.
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy. I have fallen from Him.
‘They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters
‘My God wilt Thou forsake me?’
May I not fall from Him for ever.
This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God,
and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.
Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ
I have fallen away: I have fled from Him, denied Him, crucified Him.
May I not fall from Him for ever.
We hold Him only by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Renunciation, total and sweet
Total submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.
Eternally in joy for a day’s exercise on earth.
I will not forget thy word. Amen.

O Lord my God,
I believe in you,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…
Insofar as I can,
Insofar as you have given me the power,
I have sought you.
I became weary and I laboured.
O Lord my God,
My sole hope,
help me to believe
And never to cease seeking you.
Grant that I may always and ardently
Seek out your countenance.
Give me the strength to seek you,
For you help me to find you
And you have more and more given me
the hope of finding you.
Here I am before you
With my firmness and my infirmity.
Preserve the first and heal the second..
Here I am before you
With my strength and my ignorance.
Where you have opened the door to me,
Welcome me at the entrance;
Where you have closed the door to me,
Open to my cry;
Enable me to remember you,
To understand you,
And to love you.
Amen.

O Lord, grant us that love which can never die,
which will enkindle our lamps
but not extinguish them,
so that they may shine in us
and bring light to others.
Most dear Saviour,
enkindle our lamps that they may shine
forever in your temple.
May we receive unquenchable light
from you so that our darkness
will be illuminated
and the darkness of the world
will be made less.
Amen.

One way of measuring the spiritual health of any church is not to count the number of people in the pews, but the number of people on their knees. How many pray and pray daily for the needs of the kingdom? That is the question. I came across this very challenging quote by Bishop R.C.Ryle a nineteenth century anglican Bishop from England: “Tell me what a man’s prayers are, and i will soon tell you the state of his soul. Prayer is the spiritual pulse. By this the spiritual health may be tested. Oh let us keep an eye continually upon our private devotions.”

The so-called ‘Lord’s Prayer’ is, if you think about it, the only prayer God has directly given us to pray. When Jesus was asked by his disciples “Lord, teach us to pray..” his response was: “When you pray, say…” and then gave them the words of the prayer. Because it’s the only instance in the Bible I can think of (I am ready to be corrected) where God has actually given us such a prayer then that surely invests it with much greater significance than we perhaps imagined. It also elevates it above mere repetition because it reveals within it the kind of priorities that marked Jesus’ prayer life. We often read of Jesus going off into some lonely place to pray, whether a mountain or a grove of olive trees. But what, we sometimes ask, did he pray about and for? Here is the answer. In this special prayer, this gift from God to us, Jesus outlines the things on his heart (and therefore God’s) and passes them on to us. Just think for a moment of the kind of things it contains:
He asks us to address God as our Father in heaven. That is how Jesus knew him. “And i will ask the Father, and he will give you another counsellor..” (John 14:16). In fact, as he tells the disciples earlier, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9) He tells the disciples to “hallow” His name. In John 17:1 Jesus prays: “Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.” He tells them to pray that his Kingdom will come and his will be done: From the start of his ministry Jesus preached that the Kingdom of heaven was at hand (Matthew 4:17). And in the Garden of Gethsemane he put his own immediate needs second to God’s when he prayed: “Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39) As you follow through the prayer line by line you can see instances in Jesus’ life where all the petitions reflect the kinds of prayers and priorities he made in his life and now passes on to us, as his disciples -Christ-bearers - to pray and make our own.

I have read many a book on prayer both to help boost my own prayer-life and help those who come to me and ask me how to pray. I have used many different patterns and ‘methods’ of praying which have been useful over the years. But none of them has been as all-encompassing and comprehensive as the Lord’s Prayer. And no wonder, as it contains all the things we should pray and which jesus prayed himself. It’s his gift to us, and one of his most precious, because it gives us a glimpse into the prayer-life of Jesus himself, the master of prayer.

How important is prayer? Is it something we need to do for our own salvation or for the benefit of our relationship with God? Does God in any way need our prayers? Here is something written by Dr E. Stanley-Jones (1884-1973) a Methodist missionary and theologian which I find very thought-provoking and encouraging:

“In prayer you align yourselves to the purpose and power of God, and He is able to do things through you that He couldn’t do otherwise. For this is an open universe, where some things are left open, contingent upon our doing them. If we do not do them, they will never be done. For God has left certain things open to prayer - things which will never be done except as we pray.”

Stanley-Jones’ words are worth pondering, especially if prayer - intercessory prayer - is low down on your list of priorities. If what he says is true then why isn’t prayer at the top rather than the bottom of our church agendas? Why isn’t prayer something WE do more as Christ-followers?