Kaile Judge - The Phenomenology of Prayer - Post 1

Elements of Prayer

Prayer is more complicated than just sitting in your room and talking to yourself, the walls, or the ceiling. Prayer requires structure and intention, and no one is perfect at this practice. In The Phenomenology of Prayer, Merold Westphal lays out the five essential parts of prayer.

The first being praise, praising God for merely being Him, something like "Dear Lord, you are wonderful, your presence fills this space." Merold points out that praising God and thanking God are two completely different things. To praise is to be grateful to have God, regardless of the blessings He has givin' to you. To thank God is more so acknowledging Him for the things he has blessed you with that you might have asked for or wanted. In this, Merold says that "praise is the perfection of worship." Worshiping God is very similar to praising Him in that you must surrender over to Him and invite His being into your space, heart, mind, and soul.

The second part of prayer is thanksgiving, as mentioned before. Once you acknowledge God and invite Him into your hearts, you can then thank Him for everything he has done or blessed you with. Thanksgiving is essential because it humbles the person praying and lowers them to understand they can not do all things alone and apart from God's blessings. 

The third part of prayer is confession. Recognizing your sins and faults before the Lord and asking for forgiveness for them. God forgives all sins when you go to Him with a heart posture of genuine repentance and actively turn from your sin. This step also humbles the individual praying to a place of needing God and needing His flawlessness and forgiveness.

The fourth part of prayer is self-petition. This part is where the one praying can ask for things for themselves. It could be something like a job promotion or something more profound, like peace or guidance in a challenging situation. Going off of this is step five, which is intercession, or praying for others. This step is where you pray for your family, friends, strangers, the whole world. Essentially whoever or whatever is on your heart or you think needs help with whatever it might be. 

In concluding about the steps of prayer and the heart posture associated with it, Merold says that "prayer is a deep, quite possibly the deepest decentering of self, deep enough to begin dismantling or, if you like, deconstructing that burning preoccupation with myself." I could not agree more with this statement. As someone who personally prays, I have found that prayer brings the most humbling of hearts and the perspective of selfless love towards others.

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