Yancey's pain makes sense of prayer

Braden Blyde

I feel Philip Yancey's pain, or perhaps more accurately, he feels mine, and he feels the pain of most Christians--praying isn't always easy.

Yancey admitted during his presentation on Friday evening he struggles to pray for more than seven minutes a day. Hearing this as a follow-up to Festival of Faith speaker Herb Larson's spend-an-hour-with-God-or-you're-not-doing-it-right angle makes for an interesting comparison, but one best left to the confines of my own mind.

We've all prayed unanswered prayers, struggled with the role of prayer and predestination and wondered what difference prayer makes. In a world of disparate beliefs and theologies, these experiences unite Christians.
Yancey found the process of writing his new book tedious: hours of research, including interviews, weeks of solitude at his desk and the nit-picking process of editing. However, Prayer: does it make any difference? contains a message offering comfort to the questioning Christian.

Yancey neatly summarised the problem with our perception of prayer-self-interest. Whether it is the "thanks, thanks, thanks" or the "please, please, please" prayer, it is our own image at the centre. He proposed that prayer is an opportunity for us to "jump into the stream" of God's will, putting us in a position to be open to the needs of the world in the Creator's eyes. It makes sense. God knows what we want and need, He knows our burdens, but we don't know His. Prayer offers us this insight.

I found Yancey's presentation as refreshing as it was challenging. I might still kneel with eyes closed to pray, I might still slip into self-centredness, but prayer finally makes sense.

An evening with Philip Yancey

Brenton Stacey

Prayer helps make God visible. It is a simple yet profound statement, and it formed the core of bestselling Christian author Philip Yancey's presentation to 1450 people in the Chan Shun Auditorium this past Friday (September 7).

Yancey began by sharing two "theological insights" he had gained from climbing every 14,000-foot mountain in Colorado, the largest state in the United States . . . "ironed flat"--he completed the last of his 54 climbs two weeks before touring Australia. The first insight: "no matter how it looks, trust God." The second: "you are not in control of your life." Yancey used Psalm 46 as a biblical reference to both, contrasting the description of mountains falling into the heart of the sea with the directive, "Be still, and know that I am God" (NIV). "It's as if God is saying, 'I'm God and you're not, and that's a good thing," he said.

The Bible contains 650 prayers. Yancey read all of them during the writing of his new book, Prayer: does it make any difference? He also read letters, interviewed friends and researched for hours in libraries. What did he learn? Prayer is instinctual. "When we're grateful and desperate, we pray." Yancey spoke during his first half interview with host David Pope--who invited us to eavesdrop on the conversation--of struggling to pray for more than seven minutes a day. So, he invites God to take over his "inner conversation," which he offered as a solution to the problematic and daunting biblical challenge to "pray continually" (1 Thessalonians 5:17, NIV).

Yancey suggested a good way to begin a day would be to pray, "Lord, what are you doing in my city or town today, and how can I be a part of it?" He illustrated this by telling the story of Joanna and Julian Thomas, co-directors of the Centre for Hope and Transformation (CHAT). The Thomas's accepted in the late 1990s an invitation from Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison in Cape Town, South Africa, to wean inmates off their addiction to violence--the inmates committed 279 violent acts the year before the couple began. CHAT offers courses focusing on life skills, conflict resolution and restorative justice. It is working--the inmates committed only two violent acts in 2005. Yancey visited Pollsmoor this past year and found, on a wall in one of the cells, the Bible verse, "Surely the Lord is in this place" (Genesis 28:16, NIV). "Joanna told me, 'We just had to make God visible,'" said Yancey.

The Saltmine Theatre Company provided more humourous but no less thought-provoking entertainment. Two of the four sketches featured prayer. In the first, from the company's The Screwtape Letters play and under dark, red lights, a senior devil instructed his junior apprentice in the art of temptation, in this case tempting a Christian not to pray. The second dramatised Dutch Christian Holocaust survivor Corrie ten Boom meeting a former guard from the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany. He had become a Christian and now sought Corrie's forgiveness. She stood trembling, battling against the coldness she felt toward the man. "Jesus, help me! I can lift my hand. You supply the feeling."
"An evening with Philip Yancey" cost $30 (although not for students, who received free entry), but you couldn't argue about value for money--the program ended at 10 pm.