All Prayers in One

Throughout my prayer life, certain prayers have risen above the rest and have stayed with me. I repeat them—again and again. Not as mantras or route prayers, but as real prayers. Prayers that remind me of where I’ve been and where He’s taking me. Prayers that remind me of who He is. Prayers that bring me home when I’ve strayed. Prayers that keep me grounded and anchored.

            At one point in my Christian walk I was praying for discernment. Not that I hadn’t prayed for it before, but I was at a point in my ministry where I needed an extra measure because every decision I made as a ministry leader was being questioned: “Did you pray about that?” “Did God reveal this to you or are you speaking from your own point of view?” “What did God say about this?” As a result of this constant questioning, it became increasingly difficult to make any decision for fear of making the wrong one, of not listening or hearing the voice of God correctly. I remember mulling everything over in prayer—I mean EVERYTHING! I couldn’t even make the simplest of decisions without calling myself or my decisions into question. About the time I was nearly paralyzed by the prayerfulness of each decision, God lead me to an audio series by Graham Cooke on discerning the will of God. In that teaching he talked about how God had given us a mind, intelligence, and the ability to make sound decisions. Through this teaching, God affirmed in me the fact that He had given me wisdom and a strong foundation of scripture. God declared that He had already given me discernment and that I was using that discernment in every decision I made—even those decisions I didn’t take directly to Him in prayer.

            While that season was truly testing, it allowed several prayers to rise to the surface and become a part of who I was and how I made decisions in life and ministry. Throughout that season my prayers went something like this:

            Lord, I want to be able to see things as you see them. I want to look at a situation and see what you see. In the natural, I want to see the spiritual. I want to have “spiritual eyesight.” I want to see people through your eyes. I want to love them like you love them. I want to have your heart towards them. I want to be your hands as I reach out to them and your feet as I bring them the gospel of peace. I want a new level of discernment so that I can see beyond what is apparent to what is hidden. I want to see your kingdom come here on earth, and I want things on earth to be as they are in heaven. I want your will—in my life, in my ministry, in the lives of my husband and children, in the lives of the people of my church. I want your will to be done above my will. I want to see earth through heaven’s eyes.

After awhile, these prayers simply became:

                        Your eyes.

                                                Your heart.

                                                                        Your kingdom.

                                                                                                            Your will.

            Notice the number of times I say “I want” in my first prayer. Seems like a pretty self-centered prayer. Yet it is not. Yes, it is all about me—me bowing down, me surrendering, me giving up, me giving in. Yet it is all about Him—Him being elevated, Him taking over, Him revealing, Him being Him. And when I distill it down, when I sift it out, it is all Him, not me: HIS eyes, HIS heart, HIS kingdom, HIS will. I must decrease so that God might increase.

            My professor and friend Terry Wardle first introduced me to the idea of “all prayers in one” as prayer method during this season of my journey. You might have heard of “centering prayer” or “breath prayer,” and this prayer method is very similar to these. In this method you allow your prayers to be sifted until the fullness of the prayer comes to the surface. The root, the essence, rises above all the other words and your prayer is stated in a few, simple words. As Wardle taught our class about this prayer method—about praying all prayers in one, I realized I was doing just that. That the “I want’” was being distilled and sifted out of my prayers, until all that was left was Him. That the essence and root of my prayer was rising above all the other words.

            What are your prayers? The ones you repeat over and over? Go back through your journals. What themes do you see throughout? When it’s all said and done, what’s most important? Begin to sift through these prayers. What is their essence? What is the root of these prayers? What words rise to the surface?

            The most amazing thing about these prayers is that when we pray them, God knows all the others prayers that are bound up in this one prayer! He knows all the words that have been spilled at His feet. He sees all the tears and has recorded each one (Psalm 56:8). He knows every word spoken and unspoken. He knows the fullness of each word. He knows the lifetime of prayers that lie behind it. He knows the lifetime of prayers yet to be prayed ahead of it. The prayer speaks of who He is, what He’s done, and what He’s going to do. The prayer speaks of your essence and of His essence.

            I pray that as your prayers are distilled into one that God will meet you there; that He knows every prayer of your heart; that you will have full assurance that He hears you; that He will answer you.