Selfish Prayers
(Orthodox Christianity) Taking the idol of the self out of Prayer
Selfish Prayers
Our prayers are often out of order from the instruction of Christ when He granted us the Our Father.
“Our Father who art in the heavens, hallowed be thy name, thy Kingdom come.”
The first part of prayer is a praise of God himself.
“Thy will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven.”
The second part is a surrender to His will.
“Give us this day our daily bread.”
The third part is a cry to God to guide us and grant us the assistance and sustenance for the day ahead.
“And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
The fourth part is a daily repentance for our sins to God and a forgiveness of sins that have caused external harm from others.
“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
The fifth part is a plea for God to deliver us from satan and reorient us on a path of Salvatinon.
The Our Father is not only the prayer that Christ has granted to humanity himself, but it is the blueprint for how we should pray.
Worship God
Surrender to His will
Equipping for the day to come
Repentance and Forgiveness
Asking to be placed on the path of Salvation
To simplify even further, these five parts can be split into two sections:
Worship of & Surrender to God
Asking for God’s help
I sat in a coffee shop one morning after yet another sleepless night and had the privilege of eavesdropping the Bible study of three dedicated elderly Christians with a conversation that came to climax with the words, “everyone is worried about what God can do for them but rarely worried about what they can do for their God.”
Our target fixation as humans is often our undoing in our lives of prayer.
Many are fixated on what they believe they need most urgently.
Our immediate, given circumstances smother our worldview, and a sense of crazed urgency or “tasteful sensibility” takes over our highest priority.
“But the bills need to paid.”
“Work is demanding longer hours.”
With the perceived suffocation of the “ever so dire” situations, we retreat not into prayer, but into worry and pride.
“I have a dire situation at hand.”
The rush to take matters into one’s own hands in an isolated frame of mind is one of the most arrogant acts a man can commit.
When the eyes are not on God before every word, deed, and thought, the man himself becomes “god,” in his hierarchical orientation.
What ensues then?
A withering of one’s spiritual disciplines.
When the anxiety of a busy morning is understood to be more urgent than the morning prayer rule, we have signed all worship to the world as opposed to our devotion to God.
Emergencies are few and far between, and in these striking instances, God knows their urgent essence far greater than the psyche of any man could ever comprehend.
The rugged individual spirit of the man on a mission all on his own with no discernment from God, a bubble of delusion and decay.
The potential competence of an individual in completing tasks is a blinding force when one desires to take stock of one’s own awareness and humility.
And what is one left with after weeks, even months of this state?
A withered prayer life, and a shallow connection to God that leads to desperation in prayer, due to poor spiritual health.
We drown in the hallucinated waters of our turmoil, and the prayers we say with our head barely above water are prayers to be saved and relieved of our pain.
It is an infinitely powerful God that we pray to who always answers our prayers, but the limits of our mind see the problems still as greater than the prayers themselves. The prayers are fixated on the problems and not God Himself, resulting in prayers that are still focussed on the limited figure, the self and not the eternal figure, God. This is a fundamental mistake.
This fixation on what is being prayed for as opposed to who we are praying to is to not allow room for God to alter our minds with His wisdom and grace. It is the arrogance to believe that one’s anxieties are more believable than the power of our God.
A leap of Faith is found in every true prayer to God where we pray deeply to worship and know Him. When one takes this leap of Faith to know who God is, He will then show the person praying who he, himself is. To know God’s identity is to know one’s own identity and therefore know how one would act to solve the issues at hand.
To begin with God in our prayers is to abolish a pattern of selfish prayer, and after we have placed our focus on God in our prayers first, God more often not directs our attention to others outside of ourselves.
To put others before ourselves in our order of prayer is another act of Faith in knowing that this is well-pleasing to God, and God is known in His scripture to bless the selfless man who prays for those he loves.
“Then the Lord restored Job's losses when he prayed for his friends, and He forgave their sin. But the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.“ (Orthodox Study Bible, Job 42:10
Our greatest anxiety comes in the form of the unknown, the inactions or actions of choice causing potential harm to our lives, yet this same anxiety is a force to press against when strengthening one’s prayer life. Praying in spite of this potential anguish is prayer that is stress-proof, and it is prayer that is well pleasing to God.
St. John Maximovitch served as the Archbishop of Western America, with every duty imaginable to someone of this position in facilitating the necessary logistics and general administrative duties that facilitate the worship of the flock. Many archbishops have been known to succumb to this pressure and opt to become a good administrator of the Church, while allowing their daily focus in Liturgy to wither. Yet St. John of San Francisco and Shanghai was said by many to be far more fixated on his daily duty in Liturgy before any administrative duties were considered, and his time served as Archbishop was known to bring many to the Faith and facilitated the completion of Holy Virgin Cathedral in San Francisco.
There will always be worldy, seemingly urgent reasons not to pray, and every last one of them is indeed a lie that eventually breeds selfish prayers of desperation.
It is in breaking this lie, that we take the leap of Faith to pray to our Lord and pray for others before our selves are even considered, yet after this leaps of Faith away from selfish prayers, our needs are always met.
Job 42:10