Yancey on Prayer: Just as I Am

I’ve been wanting to post some of my favorite bits from the Yancey book I’ve been enjoying over the last month or so. This is the week. Here’s part one, of five, all from Prayer: Does It Make a Difference? By Philip Yancey. I’ll queue them all up now so one will be published each morning.

“Norwegian theologian Ole Hallesby settled on the single word helplessness as the best summary of the heart attitude that God accepts as prayer. ‘Whether it take the form of words or not, does not mean anything to God, only to ourselves,’ he adds. ‘Only he who is helpless can truly pray.’

“What a stumbling block!” says Yancey. Isn’t it though?

“Almost from birth we aspire to self reliance… all the while we are systematically sealing off the heart attitude most desirable to God and most descriptive of our true state in the universe." (p. 33)

“Prayer makes room for the unspeakable, those secret compartments of shame and regret that we seal away from the outside world.” (p. 41)

And, in one of the many short testimonies scattered throughout the book, a woman simply identified as “Dee” describes her own experience with prayer:

“So many times when I pray I feel like I’m either shaking my fists in God’s face (defiance) or pounding them on his chest (grief). Would that I could just place them on his knees, and have him hold my hands in his.” (p. 77)

Notes: The Hallesby quote is from a 1975 book simply titled Prayer, pp. 16-17.