Introduction

“The names of the gates were these: Ear-gate, Eye-gate, Mouth-gate,Nose-gate, and Feel-gate”
- John Bunyan
As quoted in “The Marvelous City of Mansoul”
by A.P. Gibb

“let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak”
James 1:19

Yes, this is yet another book about prayer. And possibly one that is a little off the beaten track. And who am I to write such thing as a book that tells other people how they should pray? The shear impertinence!

I am reminded of a remark J.R.R. Tolkien once made about a new book on prayer his good friend, C.S. Lewis, had come out with (Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer). One of Tolkien’s other friends had asked him what Lewis’ new book was about. And he replied “It’s about Lewis praying.” Yes, this could very well be a book about how Stephenson prays, but I hope you will forgive my effrontery. I really do have a serious reason for writing this book.

My reason is that I grew up in a fundamental Christian home, and among fundamental Christians, but it was not until December 3rd, 1995 - when I was thirty-nine years old! - that I stumbled upon the fact that prayer actually does change things in daily life.

All my life before then, I had thought of prayer as a “spiritual duty” that was part of my on and off “devotions” and part of the public functions of the Christian assemblies I had fellowshiped with. I had always thought of prayer as something that had to do with the heavenly realm that had no significance or ability to change anything “down here.” Prayer always felt to me like I was stuffing an old, cobwebby suggestion box that had a rusty lock on it -- something that I could continue to deposit my concerns into without ever knowing if anyone was going to act on them or not.

The scandal of this - that I could grow up in a fundamental Christian milieu and not really believe in prayer - is one reason why I have decided to write this book and share with you what I have learned. I suspect there may be a good number of people brought up as Christians who have never learned how to pray properly and see their prayers answered.

My other reason is that I often regret how long it took me to discover the reality of prayer. I think about how much of my life I have wasted because I did not have the direction of the All-Seeing God. If I had only known when I was a youngster! If I had only known when I was in high school! If I had only known when I went to college! My life could have been completely different from the way it has turned out now. Spiritually speaking, “I coulda beena contenda!”

Woulda, coulda, shoulda. My life has turned out the way it did. Even that was God’s will. “The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way.”(Ps 37:23, KJV) By Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection, I have had my bad removed from God’s sight and His good accounted to me. Despite my ignorance and spiritual deafness, I have always been where God wanted me to be. I just wish I had really known that during those times! But God is kind. “I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten” (Joel 2:25, KJV). I’ve still got a lot of life in me yet. And in writing this book, I hope to not only revive older persons in their prayer life, but also ignite young people in true prayer so that they will have a flying start in their Christian lives.

I am not saying that this is the way of prayer. I am saying that it is a way of prayer. One that opened up to me true prayer and fellowship with God. And for all of its stranger elements, it is Biblically based.

I need to give you a warning before you go further in this book: If you do not know Christ as your savior, this book may do you more harm than good. The harm is this: If you do not know Christ as your savior, and persist inordinately in prayer without Him, you may end up in communication with beings who are not the triune Godhead of God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ), and God the Holy Spirit. The case of the evil King Ahab is instructive:

19 And the LORD said, Who shall entice Ahab king of Israel, that he may go up andfall at Ramoth-gilead? And one spake saying after this manner, and another saying after that manner.
20 Then there came out a spirit, and stood before the LORD, and said, I will entice him. And the LORD said unto him, Wherewith?
21 And he said, I will go out, and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And the LORD said, Thou shalt entice him, and thou shalt also prevail: go out, and do even so.

2 Chr 18:19-21, KJV

The God of Heaven has revealed that: “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”(Acts 4:12,KJV) To go on in prayer while ignoring this revelation is to risk attracting the attention of lying spirits who are always ready to volunteer their services against the souls of men. God turned against Ahab because he did evil and because he listened to prophets who were not prophets of the true and living God.

If this is all news to you, you need to read one or more of what are called “the gospels” in the Bible (the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). The word “gospel” is an old English word for “good news.” And it is very good news. You can also read Christian books that are about the gospel, or you can read my Internet document entitled Twenty Seven Metaphors to a Grasp of Happiness.

In that document, I do my best to break the gospel message down into modern metaphors that modern people can understand while using as few Bible quotations as possible. I use as few Bible verses as possible, not because I have something against the Bible, but rather because the revelation the Bible presents is often couched in ancient and rural metaphors that are foreign to modern, urban minds. The revelation is the same. The metaphors have been modernized.

In any case, the point is that you need to be connected to God, through Christ, by the Holy Spirit before you embark on a life of prayer.

One last thing. Just because I have written this book, no one should presume my spiritual life is better, or more advanced than another person's. I make no such claim. I have come to concrete prayer late in my life, and it shows. The only thing I have to say for myself is that God has a habit of using the foolish things of this world to confound the wise, and the weak things of this world to confound the mighty. ( 1 Cor. 1:27). I assure you that you would be hard put to find a weaker or more foolish Christian than I.

Now, to get on with it!

Table of Contents

Part I - Airy-Fairy Prayer

-Chapter 1 Unknown Recipient

-Chapter 2 Lack of Direction

-Chapter 3 Conscious or Unconscious Unbelief

-Chapter 4 A Lack of Expectation and "Book keeping"

-Chapter 5 Lack of Persistence

---Caring, Bleeding, and Persistence

---Unconscious Inhibitions to Caring

-Chapter 6 - Un-thankfulness

Part II Concrete Prayer

---The Disciples Prayer
---A Note on Spiritual Immodesty

-Chapter 1 The Hallowing of the Name
---Ontology
---Reputation
---Signifier of Transformation
---The Personal Name of God
---The LORD’s Opinion of His Name
---The Basis of Communication
---Prayer Begins with a Name
---Names as Powers
---The Great Provision and the Great Permission
---Reciprocal Hallowing

-Chapter 2 Surrendering to Direction
---The Use and Abuse of Prayer
---Who Really Does The Praying
---The Ground Zero Prayer


-Chapter 3 The Reality of Prayer
---Can It Be Real?
---Contingent Truth
---Experiences?
---A Metaphor of the Reality of Prayer
---Practical Considerations
---The Subconscious and Synchronicity
---The Personal Reality of Answered Prayer
---The Objective Reality of Answered Prayer
---Time Versus Eternity
---But Not in a Vacuum
---Israel’s Testimony and the Birth of Science

-Chapter 4 The Green Eyeshade and the Telephoto Lens
---Recorded Prayers
---George Muller’s Green Eyeshade
---My Green Eyeshade
---The Telephoto Lens of the Serious Naturalist

Chapter 5 Keeping at It
---The Paradox of Repetition
---Vain Repetitions
---Why Prayer? Why Repetition?
---But "Without Ceasing?"
---Bombs away!
---Tag Team
---Other People’s Written Prayers
---Metaprayers
---Conformity to His Image and Into His Body
---Spinning Your Wheels
---Response to Evil: A Personal Odyssey

-Chapter 6 Staying Out of the Spiritual District Court of Thankyou
---Giving God Credit
---Out in Left Field

-Chapter 7 - The Word of God, Prayer, Santification, and Mysticism
---The Word of God
---Conversations with God - NOT!
---The Journey of a Thousand Miles ...
---... Begins With The First Step
---Imprints
---At the Root and Not the Fruit
---My Little Method of Bible Study
---Not in 15 Minutes ...
---... Nor a Lifetime
---The Swinging of the Front and Back Doors
---Not Christ, But I!
---A Stubborn Habit?
---No, It’s More Then Likely You Can
---The Strength that is Weakness
---The Deathly Deadly Clockwork Oranges
---The Deeper Life That Isn’t
---God’s Grace versus Lasciviousness
---The Anatomy of a Fifty Foot Fall
---The Cure of All Things
---Mysticism
---Mysticism and the Occult

Part III - Putting It All Together - Your First Prayer Notebook

Part IV Corporate Prayer

Epilogue - The Object Supreme