A Methodist Way of Life - April 2022 - Praying Daily
Service sheet (pdf)
Start by listening to ‘Lead me Lord’:
Hello and welcome to the Bradford North worship video for April, the first of 12 services focusing on the commitments contained within the Methodist Way of Life and introduced by Rev David Goodall in last month’s video. My name is Claire Nott: I’m a local preacher on trial in the circuit and one of the lay pastors at Baildon Methodist Church.
The anthem you heard at the start was Samuel Wesley’s ‘Lead me Lord’, based on Psalm 5 verse 8. Our call to worship is a selection of other verses taken from the same psalm:
I pray to you, O Lord;
3 you hear my voice in the morning;
at sunrise I offer my prayer[b]
and wait for your answer.all who find safety in you will rejoice;
they can always sing for joy.
Protect those who love you;
because of you they are truly happy
This month, we are focusing on one of the three commitments contained within the Worship section of the Methodist Way of Life: ‘We will pray daily’. Our first song reminds us that no matter what is happening in our life we can bring it to Jesus in prayer. I encourage you, as the psalmist proclaimed, to sing for joy as we sing ‘What a friend we have in Jesus.’
STF 531: What a friend we have in Jesus
In this service, we are going to explore several ways in which we can pray daily. Maybe one of them will provide encouragement to you if this area of worship is something you struggle with. You are not alone! Sometimes in our day-to-day busyness, it can be hard to see how we can fit in a regular time for prayer but, hopefully, in 45 mins time you may have some strategies for praying or be thinking about prayer in a different way. Let’s start with…a pair of socks! What on earth does this have to do with prayer? Listen to our first reading and I’ll then explain.
Reading – Ephesians 6: 10-18 (NIV)
There is an ancient Irish prayer, usually attributed to St Patrick and the 5th Century, often called ‘St Patrick’s Breastplate’. It echoes the reading you just heard in calling for God’s protection for the day to come. It begins,
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness
of the Creator of creation.It goes on to proclaim our faith, to praise creation and to ask for strength for the coming day before declaring
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise, Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.
Instead of ‘I arise today’, some translations use ‘I bind unto myself today’ which appeals to me with the commitment evident in the language to hold our faith firm throughout the day, to look for our creator in the world around us and to be fully immersed in Christ in everything we do. Back to our pair of socks…as you get dressed each day, you may find it helpful to use it as an opportunity to pray: to ask for God’s protection, to use each item of clothing to represent being clothed in God’s armour – so that when troubles come, we can stand firm with the belt of truth buckled around our waist, the breastplate of righteousness in place, our feet fitted with the gospel of peace and we can take up the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit.
Many people find it helpful to regularly pray at set times of the day, whether that is first thing in the morning to commit each new day to the Lord, or at night, when you reflect on what has happened during the day and give thanks for what has gone well or confess what could have gone better. In fact, the term ‘Methodist’ was originally used to mock John Wesley and his Christian friends at Oxford on account of the disciplined methods of spirituality which they observed. Wesley continued the systematic practice of spiritual disciplines throughout his life. One of the rules he lived by was spending 4.30am to 6.00am each day in prayer, Bible-reading and meditation. He repeated the collect for the day at 9.00am, 12 noon and 3.00pm, and prayed short prayers every hour on the hour. At the end of each day he would review his behaviour, his motivation in doing good, and his fervour in his prayers of that day. Wesley kept up this demanding rule of life for some years as an external discipline, until it became internalised as an ingrained approach to life.
In the study materials attached to this service, there are links to various resources that use liturgy of the hours if you’d like to explore this idea further. At the end of the service you’ll hear a modern interpretation of St Patrick’s Breastplate but our next song also refers to acknowledging and needing God in our lives at different times of the day.
StF 526: Lord of all hopefulness
Our second reading is Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians but it is likely that he would have also sent this message to other churches and it is just as relevant for us today.
Ephesians 3: 14-20 (The Message)
I have been finding visual aids really helpful in reminding and helping me to pray daily. For example, take this teaspoon: as you stir your cup of tea or coffee, offer a simple TSP prayer – thank you, sorry and please. Let us pray:
Lord, thank you for the promise of the day ahead, for the conversations we’ll have and the people we’ll meet. We’re sorry for the times when we have ignored opportunities you’ve given us to show your love or ignored your call. Please help us to be patient and discern what your will is rather than our own. Amen
Or you could think of SPOON as a structure for your prayer:
Saying sorry
Praise
Others
Ourselves
Needs
Beads have long been used in Christian tradition to support prayer – think of rosaries or prayer beads. In preparing for this service I made myself a prayer bead keyring – you may like to make something similar for yourself, picking different coloured beads to represent situations you want to regularly pray for. I’ll explain my choices as we offer our prayers of intercession, let us pray:
Loving Lord, this blue bead represents people in need and as I hold it we name individuals we know who are suffering at this time and ask for the Spirit to provide them with patience and hope (silence). Red represents the love we show our neighbours; we pray for the mission of the Church and the community outreach that takes place within our circuit (silence). As I hold the green bead, we bring the climate crisis before you Creator God, acknowledging our ongoing destruction of the environment and pray that world leaders act upon commitments made at COP26 (silence). The white bead is a prayer for situations of conflict, that peace and reconciliation can occur (silence) this stripy one reminds me of bees so thank you Lord for this wonderful world that we live in, for the resources you provide to meet all our needs (silence) we offer all these prayers in the name of Jesus, remembering his sacrifice which gave us our freedom and rejoicing in the Grace we freely receive. Amen
It's time to sing again and our next song leads us into thinking of prayer for ourselves as individuals and after it we’ll be looking at a different way of thinking about praying daily.
STF 523: It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, O Lord
The third and final reading is Matthew 26: 36-46 (GNT)
This year’s World Day of Prayer service, written by Christian women in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, included the stories of 3 women who feel excluded for a variety of reasons. One, Natalie, talks about having an abusive partner who hurt her so badly when she was pregnant that her baby was born early. She says that in the days she spent in hospital, not knowing if her child would live, that God spoke to her saying, “Stop praying for your child to live. Instead, pray for my will to be done.” Natalie said, “Yes,” to God who offered only to be present, with no promises that everything would be okay. She goes on to say that her baby is now 13 years old, that she’s no longer with her abusive partner and that God has good plans for her, filling her life with more joy and beauty than she ever thought possible. (WWDP, 4/3/2022)
As we heard in our Gospel reading, Jesus himself used prayer for strength to endure what he knew was coming; his human nature asking if there was any way for it to be avoided but ultimately praying, if there was no alternative, that God’s will be done. This is something we have to be honest about with prayer: whenever we ask for things in prayer, for example, for a friend or family member to be cured of a disease or for peace in a war zone, we have to pray in the knowledge that this may not be possible and that, ultimately, all we can pray is that God’s will be done. The Methodist Covenant Prayer echoes the words of Jesus at Gethsemane when we say, ‘Your will, not mine, be done in all things, wherever you may place me, in all that I do and in all that I may endure’.
John Wesley in his sermon ‘The Means of Grace’ urges us to seek God’s grace through prayer, to be persistent in prayer and to follow the advice given in the Gospels about prayer. He also said that the point of prayer is not to inform God about our concerns but to inform ourselves and to encourage us to rely on God to supply our wants and to put ourselves into a state in which to receive the good things God has prepared for us.
One way of viewing prayer is that it is more of a way of being than an isolated act of doing. It requires us to open to God’s gracious presence with our whole heart, soul and mind; Rowan Williams, when he was Archbishop of Canterbury, likened it to sunbathing, basking in God’s presence is like being in the rays of the sun. You’re not going to get a better tan by screwing up your eyes and concentrating. You give the time, and that’s it. All you have to do is turn up. And then things change, at their own pace. You simply have to be there where the light [is]
Sister Wendy in her book, Sister Wendy on Prayer, uses a painting by Craigie Aitchison, Boat (1998), as a way to reflect on the mystery of God. I’m using parts of her reflection along with content from Richard Rohr’s daily meditation emails to invite you to open yourselves to God’s presence and to be in his light. On the video there is an image similar to Craigie Aitchinson’s painting but, if you are reading the paper version, you may want to draw your own.
Draw a boat on the sea, give it a mast and sail, full of wind. Put a couple of stars in the sky. We can’t see the sailor on the boat. The boat represents our prayer, we have launched it on the sea of faith and stay quiet within it. All movement comes from God. We await Him, we surrender to Him. Where we want to go is not the point; it is where God wants to take us. We do not see where that is. There is ‘Starlight’, yes, but no sun or moon, no clarity of vision. All that is in our power is choice: do we stay still, hidden, unable to take control, or do we jump up and steer that boat ourselves, refusing God’s lordship? …Prayer is impossible without trust. What matters is to stay at rest, down below sight level while the wind that is the Holy Spirit bears us over the still waters to where God waits for us. In this place we know we’re not being manipulated, we’re not being used, we’re not being judged, we’re not being evaluated, we are simply being. It’s the place of ultimate freedom. Pneuma, the Ancient Greek word for breath, also means Spirit and whilst our boat requires the breath of wind from the Spirit, we can use breath prayer to remind us that each breath is God’s gift and that God’s spirit is nearer to us than our own breath. Concentrate on your breathing, focus on each breath in and each breath out. On your next breath: breathe in ‘Abba’, breathe out ‘I belong to you’, breathe in ‘Healer’, breathe out ‘speak the word and I shall be healed’, breathe in ‘Lord’, breathe out ‘here I am’, breathe in ‘Jesus’, breathe out ‘have mercy on me’.
As our next song is played, you may want to continue focusing on your boat, basking in the presence of God.
StF 530 To be in your presence Lord
I volunteered to prepare the service and materials for this particular commitment of the Methodist Way of Life services as one of the units I’ve been studying recently as part of the Local Preacher training has been about prayer. As with all the modules, it has challenged my prior knowledge and thoughts and my understanding is continually growing and adapting. At the start of the unit, my one sentence definition of prayer was that it was an opportunity to speak to God. When I think about prayer now, I see myself opening to God, to be bathed in his light, and to understand his will. Prayer is about us showing God’s love in our concern for others, our thankfulness and praise and continuing to show that love by undertaking actions to effect change in the situations we’ve prayed about or that others have prayed about. At the heart of our prayers is the acknowledgment that everything we have came first from God, that our focus is on what God’s will is and bringing about God’s Kingdom on Earth. I’m not sure how I can condense that into one sentence though! There is one prayer that brings all those thoughts together, the one that Jesus taught us to use.
Let us share together The Lord’s Prayer
There is a statement attributed to St. Augustine that says: “The one who sings prays twice”. When we sing praise, we not only sing, but also love him of whom we sing. Our final hymn draws together all that prayer is as we sing
STF 519: Father, I place into your hands
The study materials accompanying this service contain links to resources mentioned here along with questions for you to consider and discuss to encourage you to commit to praying daily. Each month you’ll also be asked two standard questions: “What practices will help you live out this commitment?” and “How often do you need to do it?”
Let’s end by sharing The Grace together and I then invite you to listen to Stuart Townend’s version of St Patrick’s breastplate prayer: ‘Liturgy of the Hours’.
The Grace
Stuart Townend – ‘Liturgy of the Hours’
[References to books/quotes removed to keep the written version to 4 pages but please contact me on clairen@baildonmethodists.com if you would like further details.]
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