Perhaps this is the day.

When the "Sheepfold" class at Salem Alliance Church asked me for an eight-week class for the fall of 2002, I didn't have to look very far. I learn best when I study for a purpose, and there's no better purpose than teaching. Actually, "teaching" isn't appropriate for these comments. They are more personal study notes than formal lessons. So join me on this journey into the mystical, indeed, mysterious link with God called prayer.

Since you may not be part of our class, I'll try to quickly set the "theological" context of these notes. I am an evangelical Christian who strongly believes that -

1. The Bible is the inspired Word of God.
   
   
2. Jesus the man was born of the virgin Mary, lived a sinless life, died on the cross, and was physically resurrected from the dead.
   
   
3. Jesus is also the divine Son of God, as much God as the Father himself.
   
   
4. Because he was sinless, the results of his death satisfy God's demands against us for our willful disobedience to His commands.
   
   
5. If we accept this by faith God forgives our sins and brings us into a new relationship with Himself that will continue beyond our physical death into eternity.

No, this isn't the place to justify each of these or argue their validity. This is my "confession of faith" and the basis of my life and these lessons. If you want to know more about forgiveness, holler! I've lots of experience in that area.

I also avoid, more or less consistently, using capital letters for pronouns referring to God. This is not out of disrespect to him, but an honest effort to reflect how the Bible refers to him in the original languages. Nowhere in the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts are special pronouns (thou, thee) or special artifacts (capital letters) used to refer to God.

Let's start by setting aside the word "prayer." I think it can get in our way because it

1. Implies a limited type of communication - asking, petitioning, pleading, etc.
   
   
2. Comes with a ton of emotional content for just about everyone who has been connected with religion.

I'll try to use "communication," a term that, for me at least, is devoid of the emotional entanglements of "prayer" and definitely more general. As we'll see, verbal communication with God involves far more than asking.

A couple of other introductory comments -

• It's hard to proofread your own stuff, so I invite all editors to let me know what spelling, grammar and content errors they find. Click here to contact me and Email away!
  
  
• The scriptural quotes usually come from the New International Version or the New American Standard Bible - not because they're better than any other, but because they're the ones I have on my desk!

And finally -

Sometimes this little girl pops up to tell us something unusual, suprising, or funny. I don't know where she gets this stuff, but I sure like it!

In the Garden with Adam and Eve

Whatever you think the video tape - I mean, DVD - of the first few chapters of Genesis will show, it's clear that they lay the foundation for the Biblical world view. Believe it or not, this includes prayer!

So Where Do We Start?

Let's begin with the fact that all major Bible characters prayed, i.e. talked to God. Some of them even encouraged others to do the same. Jesus, for example, taught his disciples to pray and gave them a model prayer which we know as "The Lord's Prayer."

Paul commanded the early church to "Pray continually" (1 Thessalonians 5:17). A teacher of mine once said, "We should pray if for no other reason than we are commanded to do so."

In fact, it's hard to read the Bible without encountering people, men and women, who talked to God. Sometimes the answers they got were astounding. James (5:16-18) says "The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much." He then describes how Elijah prayed and God caused a major drought in Israel. He prayed again, and the rains returned.

Shall I start with a confession? It's hard for me to write this, for I realize how unlike these people I am, how disobedient I am to these commands. That's why I chose to do these lessons and write these notes. It's probably why you're reading them.

Now a question - do we want to change? Do we want to become more like these people and more obedient to these commands? If you answer "Yes," keep reading. If "No," click here to go back to our site's home page and check out our latest trips.

Otherwise - here we go!

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The Communicating God

We'll start "In the beginning" - the first mention of baseball in the Bible. OK - bad pun, but good starting point. The Genesis creation account, as with the rest of the Bible, portrays a speaking, i.e. communicating God. God "spoke" creation into existence.

"Let us make man in our image." The persons of the trinity deliberated among themselves about the creation of mankind in God's image. Yes, the doctrine of the trinity is worth discussing. No, we're not going there!

So Adam enters creation as a being in God's image, as a communicating being. He names the animals and identifies the unique nature of Eve (2:23). Eve, in turn, communicates with the "Serpent," however that happened. Following the fall God seeks and talks with Adam.

The Rabbis say the Eve was not taken from Adam's foot for him to walk on, nor from his head to rule him. She was taken from his side to stand alongside as his equal, his partner. Sharp people, these Rabbis!

In fact, virtually the entire Bible is a record of God's many and varied communications efforts to reach humanity. The final effort, according to Hebrews 1:1-2 is Jesus, His Son. John makes this same point in the first chapter of his Gospel, referring to Jesus as the "Word" of God.

The basis of verbal communication with the Creator is that He is a verbally communicating God and we are in His image.

No one has given a universally accepted explaination of the "Image of God." I describe it as "everything that distinguishes us from the rest of creation. Surely our ability to verbally communicate, to discuss abstract concepts, hypothetical situations, and all kinds of "what if" stuff. is part of that difference.

So far as we know, no other species engages in verbal communication like we do. Many other creatures communicate, but all they seem to do is "talk shop." I'm not sure everything we talk about is worthwhile, but talk we do! Speech in this sense is uniquely human.

True, the relationship between God and mankind has been drastically altered because of sin. I have, however, found no indication that the basis of communication has changed. We talk with each other, and we have the ability to talk to God because we are still in His image.

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Communicating People

Learning Communication Skills

Remember learning to talk? Neither do I! Yet we all learned to do it. No, we didn't sit in our cribs with pencil and notebook. We learned to talk by observation and imitation. Somehow or other, we humans come equipped with an innate capacity to observe language, synthesize its rules, and make it our own. We do this by observation and imitation.

We learn communication skills the same way. We also learn what, how, and when to speak by observation. We observe our parents communicating and grow up imitating them. If they were verbal, we'll likely be. If they communicated with violence, we will also be prone to violence as a communication tool.

So, if I'm going to learn to talk to God more effectively I need to "observe" it on a regular basis. I need to listen in on people talking to God and imitate them. Now where can I do that?

Church comes to mind! Even the formal prayers, read from worship manuals or rehearsed in advanced, can be instructive. But this is only once a week for most of us. I need more contact than that.

Written prayers whether from the Bible or other books are also a wonderful start, but just a start. Reading the Gettysburg Address, for example, shows me how to use language. When I know the historical context, the words multi-dimensional. I will understand why Lincoln used the words he did when I have entered into his experiences..

So here is where we begin - eavesdropping on a few Biblical characters as they talk to God. We'll listen in on Adam, Noah, Abraham, David, Jeremiah, and Job. Stay with us - it promises to be quite a ride!

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