My middle daughter plays for a local girls’ team.
Part of her commitment to the team sees her take part in weekly training sessions. Watching the team go through their training routines made me think about what Paul had to say to Timothy about the benefit of physical exercise.
Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives’ tales; rather, train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come. (Paul’s First Letter to Timothy)
This got me to thinking what it means to ‘train yourself to be godly’. Thankfully the rest of Paul’s letter to Timothy and indeed the follow up letter as well as aspects of his letter to Titus give good indications as to what godly training would look like. Not just that, but quite a large part of scripture gives excellent advice on how to conduct godly training.
The thing about godly training, as well, is that it’s evidently our way of becoming more and more who we are in Christ. That’s not something that you do in private and has no implications other than that private area of life. Godliness is not something that’s private in nature – exactly because it is your nature.
So that kind of thinking got me considering more elements of godly training and the first thing I thought about was prayer. It was the first thing because everything about the training succeeds on effective communication. That communication starts with what God says to us and it continues effectively with how we respond. It’s about cultivating that healthy ongoing communication.
Prayer is about what is said to God and how its said, it’s just as much however about what is said in return. It’s about that sensitivity to giving space to perhaps getting something hear that inspires prayer or triggers a need for silence in prayer.
Prayer certainly is not somethign we can ever become complacent about as though we’ve got it nailed down and sorted and know how it goes. That sort of arrogance in communication misses the whole point of the relational dynamic in prayer. However much we grow in knowing God and however intimate we get, there’s still an understanding that He is God. Take two steps back and acknowledge what that means in all its magnitude and there’s no room to become arrogant. There’s all the more reason for gratitude and humility, as well as a greater desire to communicate and maintain that line of communication.
As a result prayer is something that we need to do regularly as part of our training for godliness. It works for some to have explicit and clear prayer time as a discipline at some point in the day. The training, however, should go beyond that. That time of prayer shoudl be a support to discovering how to pray without ceasing so that there’s a greater sensitivity to learning how to cultivate that kind of prayer life and prayer flow that operates in all circumstances.
It is such a privilege for me to witness some in their prayer life and see how it incorporates those set times of individual prayer, corporate prayer as well as the flexibility to cultivate prayer in any setting. I’ve observed people truly come to pursue God’s will in a given situation because of that determination to develop the relationship in prayer. Watching those examples tells me again that all the biblical instructions to pray with the examples to back it up are still very much applicable today.
The principle of developing a vibrant prayer life is clear in scripture. How that happens and what that looks like is not supposed to be identical in the life of every believer. Just as communcation between people is not identical. Ongoing intentional and vibrant communication, however, is one of the fundamental and basic principles of good relationships which is why to become as God designed you, that communication is vital.
There is more to training for godliness than prayer – but nothing really shifts until prayer is in place.
(Photo by Amaury Gutierrez on Unsplash)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
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