The Mary Prayer

I got some of you didn’t I? When you read the title of this blog posting you thought, “Oh man, is Mike going Catholic on us? Is he going to start asking us to pray to Mary?“

No, I’m not going to ask us to start praying to Mary; I am, however, going to ask us to start praying like Mary. Over a period of time God has been teaching me that I have become too adult-like in my faith in some ways that are not helpful or healthy. One of those areas is my prayer life. He has been teaching me through His Word and through encounters with young children like Anna Grace Sellers that He wants to restore child-like qualities to my life – particularly in my prayer life.

So, I took note as I read in O. Hallesby’s classic work, Prayer, when he referenced Mary, mother of Jesus, as an example for us to emulate in our prayer lives. Hallesby writes the following based on the account of the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee in John 2:1-11:

“Mary teaches us through her example that we do not have to try to help God fulfill our prayer...Notice what Mary says to Jesus. Just these few, simple words, “They have no wine.”…To pray is to tell Jesus what we lack. Intercession is to tell Jesus what we see that others lack…To most of us prayer is burdensome because we have not learned that prayer consists in telling Jesus what we, or others, lack. We do not thing that is enough. Instinctively we feel that to pray cannot be so easy as all that. For that reason we rise from prayer many times with heavy hearts, ‘Can God hear this prayer of mine? Will God heed my humble supplication? And how will he do it? Everything seems so impossible.’

…And when the answer is not forthcoming at once, we think that we must do something in addition to what we have done before God can hear us. Just what this something is, we are not certain of in our own minds. And this uncertainty causes that inner anxiety and worry which makes prayer so painful….And especially will our prayer life become restful when it really dawns upon us that we have done all we are supposed to do when we have spoken to Him about it. From that moment we have left it with Him. It is His responsibility then, if we dare use such a child-like expression. And that we dare to do!

Instead of our former anxiety and worry we will now often be able to experience a certain child-like inquisitiveness, having left the matter in the hands of Jesus. We will say to ourselves, ‘It will be interesting to see how He solves this difficulty.’”

Let us pray this year like Mary, and like children such as Anna Grace – shamelessly, persistently and expectantly (see Luke 11:1-13).