Three Central Points with Pete Greig in Prayer
The opportunity to choose the new book is a happy place for me. I'm there every several days, and I expected yesterday's crossroads to be no different. Less than 24 hours later, I can't imagine not having picked up, by the sovereignty of God, Pete Greig's Dirty Glory on the Christian's imperative to pray with consuming passion. Hoping to infect you, dear reader, I want to look at why we must pray with passion, Who the central focus of prayer with passion is, and what the results are likely to be.
1. Why prioritize prayer?
Greig lays out, "If our voices are to ring out with the authority of prophetic dissonance," declares Pete Greig in Dirty Glory, "in contemporary culture, WE… MUST… DISCOVER how to pray."
He had me at the word dissonance. If the healthful discomfort that happens when two ideas are at war with one another. A voice with prophetic dissonance stands out from the culture because the profit recognizes his or her authority does not come from the sanction of the culture. Instead, intimate, insistent prayer provide constant renewal of our identity and purpose that cultural conformity cannot.
2. Who is at the center of prayer's focus?
Just as Greig with the interrogative HOW and our exposure to how-to books on every subject sets us up to expect a focus on ourselves and our technique, he implodes that. "Knowing HOW to pray," says is actually less important than WANTING to do it."
We want to pray, he says, when we begin to see that the alternative is indefensible, how easily drawn into the ways of the world we are. We want to pray when we realize Who we are following in prayer. Greig re-fashions our notions of Jesus when he says Christ, "models a mystical militancy; wrestling with the devil in the wilderness, rejoicing as he sees Satan fall from heaven, shouting his rebuke to the storm, casting demonic spirits into the abyss. He might well be viewed as a little extreme by many of his churches today. Contemplative prayer and quiet conversation with God may not always be enough. If we truly want to see the kingdom of God return to this enemy-occupied world, we cannot avoid a certain aggression in prayer any more than a soldier can avoid his gun, or a boxer his fists, or a theologian great tracts of his Bible."
3. What change follows prayer?
We go into the prayer closet, says Greig, aware that in following such a robust Savior we will not come out the same. He pleads for that, in fact, praying, "May the desire for Your Presence begin to erupt beyond the predilections of current circumstances. May the frameworks of normality begin to feel… Intolerable. Compel us to wonder again. Inspire us to innovate. Provoke us to rage against injustice."
God is so confident in prayer's power that he sends us out from specific sessions of prayer into… The same circumstances we left. He knows that He can transform how we see them and the years of habit that may be pulling us toward inattention and inaction.
1. Why prioritize prayer?
Greig lays out, "If our voices are to ring out with the authority of prophetic dissonance," declares Pete Greig in Dirty Glory, "in contemporary culture, WE… MUST… DISCOVER how to pray."
He had me at the word dissonance. If the healthful discomfort that happens when two ideas are at war with one another. A voice with prophetic dissonance stands out from the culture because the profit recognizes his or her authority does not come from the sanction of the culture. Instead, intimate, insistent prayer provide constant renewal of our identity and purpose that cultural conformity cannot.
2. Who is at the center of prayer's focus?
Just as Greig with the interrogative HOW and our exposure to how-to books on every subject sets us up to expect a focus on ourselves and our technique, he implodes that. "Knowing HOW to pray," says is actually less important than WANTING to do it."
We want to pray, he says, when we begin to see that the alternative is indefensible, how easily drawn into the ways of the world we are. We want to pray when we realize Who we are following in prayer. Greig re-fashions our notions of Jesus when he says Christ, "models a mystical militancy; wrestling with the devil in the wilderness, rejoicing as he sees Satan fall from heaven, shouting his rebuke to the storm, casting demonic spirits into the abyss. He might well be viewed as a little extreme by many of his churches today. Contemplative prayer and quiet conversation with God may not always be enough. If we truly want to see the kingdom of God return to this enemy-occupied world, we cannot avoid a certain aggression in prayer any more than a soldier can avoid his gun, or a boxer his fists, or a theologian great tracts of his Bible."
3. What change follows prayer?
We go into the prayer closet, says Greig, aware that in following such a robust Savior we will not come out the same. He pleads for that, in fact, praying, "May the desire for Your Presence begin to erupt beyond the predilections of current circumstances. May the frameworks of normality begin to feel… Intolerable. Compel us to wonder again. Inspire us to innovate. Provoke us to rage against injustice."
God is so confident in prayer's power that he sends us out from specific sessions of prayer into… The same circumstances we left. He knows that He can transform how we see them and the years of habit that may be pulling us toward inattention and inaction.
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