Other People’s Written Prayers

It strikes me now that our consideration of the word “amen” has just clarified for us the proper use of prayers that other people have written down.

In my opinion, reading the written prayers of others is no different from hearing a prayer from a brother praying in a meeting. If we agree completely with a written prayer to the point where we wouldn’t change a word of it, (which means we believe it is Biblical, addresses something we need to pray about, and - in terms of private prayer - represents something we are willing to keep tract of in our prayer notebook) then we are perfectly within the bounds of Biblical obedience use it and say “amen” at the end.

If you will forgive me for going extra-biblical for a moment, I’d like to point out something that scientist, mathematician, and philosopher Alfred Korzybski said in 1921 that is very germane to the topic of written prayers.

Korzybski said that the key difference between human beings and animals and plants was that plants were what he called “energy-binders,” while animals were what he called “space-binders,” and human beings were what he called “time-binders.” Plants can not “go” anywhere or protect themselves, but they have the capacity for storing solar energy in the form of their fruits. Animals can go places and fend for themselves, but they have no concept of time in the sense of being aware of a “yesterday, today, and tomorrow.” Animals have no capacity to encode what they have learned in life into symbols that can be passed on to their offspring. So animals always start nearly from stratch and never accumulate knowledge.

Humans on the other hand, are very aware of time, and they have the ability to encode what they have learned about life into symbols that can be left behind to all the succeding generations. Humans knowledge does not have to start from scratch. It can accumulate from one generation to the next. Recall, if you will, when the angel to the prophet Daniel talked about knowledge being “increased” (or “exploding”) in “the time of the end.” (Dan. 12:4) We are certainly there by now.

So this means that if you have your own private prayer meeting, you can invite to it Hudson Taylor, John Bunyan, Amy Carmichael, Oswald Chambers, Adoniram Judson, John Nelson Darby, and D.L. Moody - provided any of them left behind a written prayer that:

1.) you agree with Biblically, and can say “amen!” to without reservation

2.) you believe the Lord would have you use

3.) you are willing to copy down in your notebook and keep track of whether you received answers to it or not.

I believe this is a concrete use of written prayers that does not fall into vain repetitions. And its pretty fab to having such destinguised company when one prays.