Mealy Mouthed No More

It's in prayer that our real relation to God shows itself, whatever it is that we may say in our theology or at church. In prayer we discover if we actually believe God to be the gracious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has reconciled us to Himself through the same Lord Jesus. Unless and until we believe that is the case, all prayer becomes mealy-mouthed, a timid refusal to say plainly and directly what is thought or felt, but rather wanders and weaves trying to find what may be pleasing or acceptable to God, not wishing that we get him offside.

Mealy-mouthed is an adjective that Martin Luther popularised. When a person has a mouth full of meal (ground grain) it is very difficult for him to speak. The meal is held on one side of the mouth and the person has to speak sideways, around the meal as it were. Mealy-mouthedness is indirect speaking. Try to speak directly with a mouth full of meal and it all sprays out. Mealy-mouthedness is the speaking of one who wants to conceal what is in his or her heart rather than letting it all out.

Such speech is the manner of speech of person who does not have confidence about his or her relationship with the person to whom he or she speaks. In prayer we find by experience whether we have finally come to know the truth that God was, in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. The person reconciled to God has been brought to Him in an encounter of wills. Where once we lived in an opposition of wills against God, in reconciliation we are brought into an encounter of will which strives to come to a unity of willing. Prayer is an encounter of wills – and it persists until unity of willing is accomplished. True prayer does not rush too quickly to the cry, "Not my will but Thine be done!" This cry may sometimes be a subterfuge of the refusal to pour our hearts and minds into knowing of the action of God in a situation. It may sometimes be a refusal to engage with God. Prayer is often an agonia - an agony, a wrestle, a struggle, even a fight. Remember Abraham, Jacob and Moses our fathers in faith! Each prayed (Genesis 17, 32, Exodus 33) in a tussle with God until there was unity in will and intention. None of them piously laid aside the struggle with an effete "... if it be according to your will."

Confidence in reconciliation is the secret of persistent prayer. This is the secret of boldness in prayer. The reconciled person is shameless and unafraid in asking and seeking and knocking on the door of the Father. Jesus tells the parable of a rude neighbour disturbing his friend in bed with a request for help (Luke 11:1-13). He says of the friend in bed: “I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man’s boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs.” The story focuses our attention on the man’s boldness. The Greek word used there (anaideia) is used only here in the whole New Testament. It really has the idea around it of shamelessness, impudence, disrespect, disregard, recklessness and ruthlessness! And this is to be the character of our praying to the Father: “So I say to you…” says Jesus and he urges us to ask, seek and knock – literally the sense is “ask and keep on asking, seek and keep on seeking, knock and keep on knocking.” Jesus is urging us to a certain shameless impudence in our seeking from the Father.

What is key in the parable is not what the friend in bed thinks of his rude neighbour, but rather the unstated assumption of the rude neighbour about his friend next door. He clearly has confidence that the friend will do what is needed for him even though it be inconvenient and difficult for him. Clearly he has a high estimation of the character of his neighbour. He knows enough of his neighbour to be sure that if he goes to him in difficulty and need that his neighbour will respond with help. Jesus urges the same confidence on the disciples – everyone who asks receives; everyone who seeks finds; whoever knocks will find the door opened. Jesus illustrates again. No father is going to hand out poisonous, dangerous gifts to their kids when asked for fish or eggs – and this is in the world where we are in slavery to sin. How much more then will the Father give good gifts to his children? Be confident in asking Him! He gives the overflow of the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him.

We need to be taught to pray like this. How does a human being have such confidence in God? Something has to happen in our relation to the Father to turn our praying from mealy-mouthed and halting words into the strong words of confident children before the Father. The real teaching about prayer occurs at the cross of Christ. Nothing teaches prayer like reconciliation with the Father! Our mealy-mouthedness is an inability and an aversion to saying the direct thing. This refusal to speak directly with the Father, to say what is actually in our hearts and minds, comes from our sinning in Adam at the beginning, and has continued down through our tortured history of Religion and her close cousin, Unbelief.

Sin and guilt is the death of prayer. True prayer can only return when confidence in approaching God has been restored – and that only happens when sin and guilt have been dealt with fully and finally. Whilst we are unsure of this, our prayers will be wheedling and manipulative, rather than direct with the Father, full of confidence before Him. At the cross of Christ, at last full and frank ownership of the guilt of the world in the face of the holiness of the Father took place. Christ made a full confession of the Father’s holiness and of human guilt in his bearing of the sin of the world. His cross was the great declaration, “You are just Father, and holy, in judging all this sin that humanity has become.” In Christ, the Father was reconciling the world to Himself by not counting our sins against us, but rather making His Son to be sin for us and judging us and our sin in His Son, thereby enabling all who have faith in this Son and his sin-bearing obedience to approach the Father with confidence and freedom. And so we pray with confidence.

We need a radical rediscovery of all this today. Prayer is often the first thing to go in our public worship when there is "pressure for time." We gather to pray, and hardly anyone prays. We speak such cautious words in prayer, and we go away having barely opened the front gate, let alone banging without stop on the front door. The matters before us for prayer are great and our prayers must surely rise in greatness to them. We receive not because we ask not. Do we have wills so captivated by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that we will His will that His name be hallowed and that His Kingdom come? Do we wrestle with Him for this in the face of the seeming reversal of that will in our world, where men and women do not hallow His name and where sin and evil prevail in the idolatries of our time? P.T. Forsyth made the point that the judgment for refusing to pray is that we then are unable to pray. For me, I know today that I must ask again - with all urgency and insistency - Lord, teach me to pray.