Praying with words of God reveals answers
April 9, 2011
Baha’is say prayers all the time. But they read their prayers or recite them from memory, often from prayer books they carry with them.
This was something new for me, having grown up in a conservative Christian family and a small charismatic church. I had learned that prayer is talking with God, and you use your own words to do that. As a young boy, I was especially impressed by the skills some people had to move hearts when they talked with God. They seemed blessed with a gift for choosing words, and a resonant voice that could raise goosebumps on your neck and elicit a chorus of “Amens” from the congregation. The prayers they raised up encouraged us to care for others, to be ashamed of our wrongs and do what’s right.
Sometimes, in front of the mirror at home, I’d copy them. I’d practice what I thought were especially moving words and try them out in my prayers. While my oratory skills started blooming, still I never seemed to achieve much of a prayer reputation, though a couple of times I think I might have wowed my Sunday School teacher with my new vocabulary. And, of course, my mother always applauded my mealtime blessings.
It was only years later, after I had discovered the Baha’i faith, after I started praying with words that came from a revealed source rather than out of my own imagination, that I realized for whose ears I had really been directing most of my prayers all that time.
Baha’is learn that in prayer we should be turning ourselves over to God’s will, and the perfect prayer is one in which we are interested only in his attention, not someone else’s. God already knows our hearts and there’s no need to convince him of our plans, hopes and ideas for how things might be improved.
Of course, it’s possible for a truly sincere person to pray selflessly using his or her own words. But there’s something inexplicably liberating about losing oneself in the words of God instead.
Baha’u’llah, the prophet-founder of the Baha’i faith, revealed prayers for nearly any circumstance we might find ourselves in. He also said, mysteriously, that when a servant turns to God in prayer, God himself becomes the ear with which his servant hears an answer. Interestingly, in the very words of the prayers revealed by God I usually find instructions on how to deal with the situation I’m praying about.
When my Christian friends are surprised that I seldom use my own words to pray, I remind them that when Jesus was asked how we should pray, he provided his followers with some great words to say. We know this today as “The Lord’s Prayer.”
While I still may sometimes appeal to God using my own words, I now do this only in private. And I’m finding, instead, that the most potent prayers from my heart do not originate in my own head.
Lisle Wei Veach lives in Springfield. He serves on the Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Lane County East. This column is coordinated by Lane Interfaith Alliance to offer inspiration, share personal spiritual experiences and bring a deeper understanding of individual faith perspectives with the intention of blessing our community and the world. For information, visit www.laneinterfaithalliance.org or call 541-344-0430.