Sunday, March 26, 2006
Sermons and Lessons
INTRODUCTION TO THE AUTHOR
Douglas Steere was educated at Michigan State, Harvard, and Oxford in the early decades of the twentieth century. A Rhodes scholar, brilliant thinker, and skilled author of many fine devotional books, Steere has spent most of his life teaching philosophy at Haverford College and is a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers).
He is one of the few American authors in the past century who has combined academic integrity with spiritual authenticity. He also holds a delicate balance between contemplation (the inner life) and action (the outer life). He and his wife, Dorothy, have traveled on many missions to Africa, Europe, and Asia as members of the American Friends Service Committee.
The following selection comes from a book first published in 1938 titled Prayer and Worship. This particular selection deals with the subject of "intercessory prayer," that is, praying for people and/or events. As is his style, Steere invites us to engage in this highly important work of prayer while keeping in mind the necessity of responding to God?s call through action.
EXCERPTS FROM PRAYER AND WORSHIP
1. The Inner Springs of Prayer
Prayer for others is a form of petitional prayer that makes deep demands on the faith of an individualistic generation that has so largely lost its sense of inner community. Yet, at no point, do we touch the inner springs of prayer more vitally than here.
For when we hold up the life of another before God, when we expose it to God's love, when we pray for its release from drowsiness, for the quickening of its inner health, for the power to throw off a destructive habit, for the restoration of its free and vital relationship with its fellows, for its strength to resist temptation, for its courage to continue against sharp opposition - only then do we sense what it means to share in God's work, in his concern; only then do the walls that separate us from others go down and we sense that we are at bottom all knit together in a great and intimate family.
2. No Greater Intimacy
There is no greater intimacy with another than that which is built through holding him or her up in prayer. The firm bond that existed between John Frederic Oberlin and his parish was laid each morning in the hour that he devoted to prayer for his individual parishioners. We are told that as they went past his house at this hour in the morning, they did so in quiet, for they knew what was happening there.
Forbes Robinson's Letters to His Friends reveals his constant use of this form of prayer for his Cambridge associates. He remarks in one letter that if he really would reach some need in his friend's life, he would always prefer a half-hour?s silent petition for him to an hour's conversation with him.
3. The Power of Renovation
An unbeliever once mockingly begged Catherine of Siena that she pray for his soul. She prayed by day and by night, and the power of renovation disarmed and brought him to his knees. I know of a Japanese girl whose father had found a whole chain of reverses too much for him to meet normally and who had taken the alcoholic shortcut. She prayed for him hour after hour until the time came when he yielded, gave up drink, committed his life to the center of Divine love he had experienced, and with the help and love of his devoted family he has continued a new way of life.
4. Lapping at the Shores of Our Lives
It is not a question of changing God's mind or of exercising some magical influence or spell over the life of another. Before we begin to pray, we may know that the love of the One who is actively concerned in awakening each life to its true center is already lapping at the shores of that life. We do not do it at all.
Such prayer is only cooperation with God's active love in besieging the life or new areas of the life of another, or of a situation. If you pray for something other than what is in keeping with that cooperation, you go against the grain, and if you remain in prayer and are sensitive, you will realize this and be drawn to revise it. As in all petitional prayer, the one who really prays must be ready to yield.
5. You Are Called
You may pray for the release of some area of life in a friend and find that you are called upon to set right something in your own life that has acted as a stumbling block to him. You may pray that your friend be given courage to endure certain hardships and find that you are drawn to pack your bag and go and join him or that you are to give up your pocket money for the next month or even perhaps to give a fortnight's or a month's salary to help along his cause. In intercessory prayer one seldom ends where one began.
6. Tiny Promptings, Gentle Whispers
During these active forms of work in the silence: in contrition, in purification, in simplification and refreshment, in petition, and in intercession, frequently, if we were sensitive and listening, there come clear insights of things to be done. Often they come in that receptive silent waiting after we have opened our needs and where we do nothing but wait for direction. Again, they may come during the day and push their way in between events that seem to bear no connection with them.
These insights are precious and to be heeded if we are to live in response to that which we feel in prayer. When they involve some real adjustments that may be costly to effect, the Quakers have called these concerns. They lack a word for the tiny promptings, the gentle whispers that are equally as important and that may represent concerns in the forming.
7. The Molten Freedom of the Person
"Prayer is incipient action," and these clues are the lines along which the molten freedom of the person in prayer is to be cast. "Mind the Light" reads an inscription on a sundial. Come under holy obedience.
Here is the unformed side of life?s relationships - the letters to be written, the friends to be visited, the journey to be undertaken, the suffering to be met by food, or nursing care, or fellowship. Here is the social wrong to be resisted, the piece of interpretive work to be undertaken, the command to "rebuild my churches," the article to be written, the wrong to be forgiven, the grudge to be dropped, the relationship to be set right, the willingness to serve God in the interior court by clear honest thinking, and the refusal to turn out shoddy work.
8. Established in the Power
Yet we need more than the intimations. We need spiritual staying power to carry them out. "Profession of truth, without the life and power, is but a slippery place, which men may easily slide from," wrote Isaac Penington. He commends his own practice of praying to be established in the power that will enable him to carry out these leadings. "I wait on him for the strength to fulfill it."
Here in the silence, as that power gathers, it is well to face the difficulty one will meet in carrying out this concern. Here in the silence it is well to see the only semi-inflammable character of the bridge you mean to burn; to face the inertia, the resistances, the amused smiles of friends; the coldness and want of understanding on the part of many who resent having their attention called to social justice in which they are involved?the strangling doubts of your own later hours?doubts that led Teresa of Avila to say: "I see few people who have not too much sense for everything they have to do." These need to be met and overcome in the silence.
9. The Precious Chain of Influence
If we ignore these leadings, they poison future prayer. Katherine Mansfield wrote, "I went upstairs and tried to pray, but I could not, for I had done no work." And if they are ignored, they break the precious chain of influence that this act may have set going. You become a link in this chain when you begin to pray. If you fail, it must wait for another. "Were you faithful? Did you yield?"
There is nothing greater than this constant fidelity. "The world goes forward," wrote Harold Gray, who served a term in Leavenworth during the war for his conscientious objection, "because in the beginning one man or a few were true to the light they saw and by living by it enabled others to see." Holy obedience to the insights, the concerns that come, that persist, and that are in accord with cooperation with God?s way of love is not only the active side of prayer, but is the only adequate preparation for future prayer.
10. Loving Back
There can be no complete prayer life that does not return to the point from which we began - the prayer that is a response to the outpouring love and concern with which God lays siege to every soul. When that reply to God is most direct of all, it is called adoration. Adoration is "loving back." For in the prayer of adoration we love God for himself, for his very being, for his radiant joy.
"Religion is adoration," was a favorite remark of that veteran of prayer, Friedrich von Hugel. "The most fundamental need, duty, honor, and happiness of men is not petition or even contrition, nor again, even thanksgiving ... but adoration." Adoration is not alone a special stage in prayer, although it may be that, too. All the truest prayer is shot through with it and its mood is the background to all real contrition, petition, and intercession.
In adoration we enjoy God. We ask nothing except to be near him. We want nothing except that we would like to give him all. Out of this kind of prayer comes the cry "Holy! Holy! Holy!" In the school of adoration the soul learns why the approach to every other goal had left it restless.
Related Tags: sermon, lesson, prayer, Douglas Steere, Quakers
Douglas Steere was educated at Michigan State, Harvard, and Oxford in the early decades of the twentieth century. A Rhodes scholar, brilliant thinker, and skilled author of many fine devotional books, Steere has spent most of his life teaching philosophy at Haverford College and is a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers).
He is one of the few American authors in the past century who has combined academic integrity with spiritual authenticity. He also holds a delicate balance between contemplation (the inner life) and action (the outer life). He and his wife, Dorothy, have traveled on many missions to Africa, Europe, and Asia as members of the American Friends Service Committee.
The following selection comes from a book first published in 1938 titled Prayer and Worship. This particular selection deals with the subject of "intercessory prayer," that is, praying for people and/or events. As is his style, Steere invites us to engage in this highly important work of prayer while keeping in mind the necessity of responding to God?s call through action.
EXCERPTS FROM PRAYER AND WORSHIP
1. The Inner Springs of Prayer
Prayer for others is a form of petitional prayer that makes deep demands on the faith of an individualistic generation that has so largely lost its sense of inner community. Yet, at no point, do we touch the inner springs of prayer more vitally than here.
For when we hold up the life of another before God, when we expose it to God's love, when we pray for its release from drowsiness, for the quickening of its inner health, for the power to throw off a destructive habit, for the restoration of its free and vital relationship with its fellows, for its strength to resist temptation, for its courage to continue against sharp opposition - only then do we sense what it means to share in God's work, in his concern; only then do the walls that separate us from others go down and we sense that we are at bottom all knit together in a great and intimate family.
2. No Greater Intimacy
There is no greater intimacy with another than that which is built through holding him or her up in prayer. The firm bond that existed between John Frederic Oberlin and his parish was laid each morning in the hour that he devoted to prayer for his individual parishioners. We are told that as they went past his house at this hour in the morning, they did so in quiet, for they knew what was happening there.
Forbes Robinson's Letters to His Friends reveals his constant use of this form of prayer for his Cambridge associates. He remarks in one letter that if he really would reach some need in his friend's life, he would always prefer a half-hour?s silent petition for him to an hour's conversation with him.
3. The Power of Renovation
An unbeliever once mockingly begged Catherine of Siena that she pray for his soul. She prayed by day and by night, and the power of renovation disarmed and brought him to his knees. I know of a Japanese girl whose father had found a whole chain of reverses too much for him to meet normally and who had taken the alcoholic shortcut. She prayed for him hour after hour until the time came when he yielded, gave up drink, committed his life to the center of Divine love he had experienced, and with the help and love of his devoted family he has continued a new way of life.
4. Lapping at the Shores of Our Lives
It is not a question of changing God's mind or of exercising some magical influence or spell over the life of another. Before we begin to pray, we may know that the love of the One who is actively concerned in awakening each life to its true center is already lapping at the shores of that life. We do not do it at all.
Such prayer is only cooperation with God's active love in besieging the life or new areas of the life of another, or of a situation. If you pray for something other than what is in keeping with that cooperation, you go against the grain, and if you remain in prayer and are sensitive, you will realize this and be drawn to revise it. As in all petitional prayer, the one who really prays must be ready to yield.
5. You Are Called
You may pray for the release of some area of life in a friend and find that you are called upon to set right something in your own life that has acted as a stumbling block to him. You may pray that your friend be given courage to endure certain hardships and find that you are drawn to pack your bag and go and join him or that you are to give up your pocket money for the next month or even perhaps to give a fortnight's or a month's salary to help along his cause. In intercessory prayer one seldom ends where one began.
6. Tiny Promptings, Gentle Whispers
During these active forms of work in the silence: in contrition, in purification, in simplification and refreshment, in petition, and in intercession, frequently, if we were sensitive and listening, there come clear insights of things to be done. Often they come in that receptive silent waiting after we have opened our needs and where we do nothing but wait for direction. Again, they may come during the day and push their way in between events that seem to bear no connection with them.
These insights are precious and to be heeded if we are to live in response to that which we feel in prayer. When they involve some real adjustments that may be costly to effect, the Quakers have called these concerns. They lack a word for the tiny promptings, the gentle whispers that are equally as important and that may represent concerns in the forming.
7. The Molten Freedom of the Person
"Prayer is incipient action," and these clues are the lines along which the molten freedom of the person in prayer is to be cast. "Mind the Light" reads an inscription on a sundial. Come under holy obedience.
Here is the unformed side of life?s relationships - the letters to be written, the friends to be visited, the journey to be undertaken, the suffering to be met by food, or nursing care, or fellowship. Here is the social wrong to be resisted, the piece of interpretive work to be undertaken, the command to "rebuild my churches," the article to be written, the wrong to be forgiven, the grudge to be dropped, the relationship to be set right, the willingness to serve God in the interior court by clear honest thinking, and the refusal to turn out shoddy work.
8. Established in the Power
Yet we need more than the intimations. We need spiritual staying power to carry them out. "Profession of truth, without the life and power, is but a slippery place, which men may easily slide from," wrote Isaac Penington. He commends his own practice of praying to be established in the power that will enable him to carry out these leadings. "I wait on him for the strength to fulfill it."
Here in the silence, as that power gathers, it is well to face the difficulty one will meet in carrying out this concern. Here in the silence it is well to see the only semi-inflammable character of the bridge you mean to burn; to face the inertia, the resistances, the amused smiles of friends; the coldness and want of understanding on the part of many who resent having their attention called to social justice in which they are involved?the strangling doubts of your own later hours?doubts that led Teresa of Avila to say: "I see few people who have not too much sense for everything they have to do." These need to be met and overcome in the silence.
9. The Precious Chain of Influence
If we ignore these leadings, they poison future prayer. Katherine Mansfield wrote, "I went upstairs and tried to pray, but I could not, for I had done no work." And if they are ignored, they break the precious chain of influence that this act may have set going. You become a link in this chain when you begin to pray. If you fail, it must wait for another. "Were you faithful? Did you yield?"
There is nothing greater than this constant fidelity. "The world goes forward," wrote Harold Gray, who served a term in Leavenworth during the war for his conscientious objection, "because in the beginning one man or a few were true to the light they saw and by living by it enabled others to see." Holy obedience to the insights, the concerns that come, that persist, and that are in accord with cooperation with God?s way of love is not only the active side of prayer, but is the only adequate preparation for future prayer.
10. Loving Back
There can be no complete prayer life that does not return to the point from which we began - the prayer that is a response to the outpouring love and concern with which God lays siege to every soul. When that reply to God is most direct of all, it is called adoration. Adoration is "loving back." For in the prayer of adoration we love God for himself, for his very being, for his radiant joy.
"Religion is adoration," was a favorite remark of that veteran of prayer, Friedrich von Hugel. "The most fundamental need, duty, honor, and happiness of men is not petition or even contrition, nor again, even thanksgiving ... but adoration." Adoration is not alone a special stage in prayer, although it may be that, too. All the truest prayer is shot through with it and its mood is the background to all real contrition, petition, and intercession.
In adoration we enjoy God. We ask nothing except to be near him. We want nothing except that we would like to give him all. Out of this kind of prayer comes the cry "Holy! Holy! Holy!" In the school of adoration the soul learns why the approach to every other goal had left it restless.
Related Tags: sermon, lesson, prayer, Douglas Steere, Quakers
