500 Prayers for Young People (eBook)

Introduction

There’s not a lot to do in solitary confinement. All being well, most of us will never see the inside of a cramped, dark cell, where the only entertainment to be found is in counting the footsteps of the guard outside. Yet if, through some strange collision of circumstances, you found yourself in such a place, what would you do?

The answers to that question can form only a very short list. In solitary, you have no resources, no light, and no one to talk to. Well, almost. Because, as many people persecuted around the world for their faith have discovered, the one thing they can’t take away from you is prayer.

When everything else is stripped away, prayer is mankind’s last resource. Wherever we are, however old we might be, even if we’ve lost the power of speech, we can still pray.

In the writer Mark Yaconelli’s words, “Prayer is home” (in the article “Coming Home”, Youthwork, May 2008). It is the thing we can return to when everything else has failed us; when we’re defeated; when we’re lost; when we’re broken-hearted. And it’s not just something we can do in those times; it’s something we’re programmed to want to do.

When sudden, unexpected circumstances hit, even the most hardened atheist can turn to prayer. When our lives are interrupted by something that shocks and unnerves us, sometimes the frowned-upon reaction “Oh my God” is less blasphemy than it is a simple acknowledgment of truth – a tiny, desperate, automatic prayer.

The desire and need to pray is created inside each one of us at the same time as we get spleens, eyeballs, and collarbones. Like a computer program that is created to contact its manufacturers regularly and “request latest updates”, so we are born with an innate desire to talk to our maker.

That’s why, in those desperate moments when we do turn to prayer, we instantly feel some degree of comfort. That’s why, to stretch the software analogy a little further, we often walk away from prayer feeling refreshed, updated and upgraded.

WELCOME, WHOEVER YOU ARE

“What a lovely present,” you may have said but not thought as you were passed what will inevitably have become a “gift book”. Or perhaps you glanced at the cover in a bookshop somewhere and, attracted by the “bumper-value” aspect of getting 500 of something, excitedly decided to buy – almost at the same time aware that this will probably end up gathering dust in the wishful-thinking department of your bedroom shelf. Maybe you’re neither of these; you could just be someone who wants to inject a bit more prayer into your life, and thought that this sounded like a jolly sensible resource for a person with such an aspiration.

Whoever you are, my aim over the next few pages is to convince you that this collection of prayers isn’t best suited for dust-collecting or for your next trip to the local charity shop (yes, I am fully aware of the potential irony here), but deserves a regular and dynamic place in your life. I’m not expecting you to take it out with you on a Friday night, but, in putting it together, I’ve aimed to create a book that will reward your investment every time you open it. So, as a result, I’m hoping you’ll want to keep opening it.

The book contains, as you know by now, 500 prayers that I have considered suitable, useful, relevant or important for people journeying through the alternately marvellous and agonizing teenage years. Which immediately poses an important question: who am I, and what gives me the right to tell you what to pray? I’m a youth worker; I volunteer at a medium-sized (whatever that means) youth group run by my local church, and help to run talks, small-group discussions and activities. I am entirely unremarkable in this regard, and by no means the best youth worker around (although I did win bronze in the fictional 2004 World Youth Worker championships). But I do at least know some teenagers, which I hope gives me the edge over other people who might choose to write such a book, notably politicians. As well as doing this in my “extra” time, my day job is editing Youthwork magazine, which is the UK’s leading Christian youth-work resource. This is a bit like saying the Thames is London’s leading river, because of course there aren’t any other major ones. But it sounds good at dinner parties and in book introductions. Plus it gives me some insight into the world that you, the reader, inhabit.

That brings me neatly on to the topic of how this collection has been composed. This is not a compilation of prayers written in what I imagine “youth” language to be. As a thirty-three-year-old dad of three, I know the days when I could still have claimed to be young are well behind me. So if you were worried that on these pages you might find such horrors as a prayer written in text-speak, some sort of rap liturgy, or a section called “Da Psalms”, you can breathe again. In my experience, teenagers don’t enjoy being patronized. Instead, I’ve brought together prayers from a mixture of sources, which I simply believe you will find relevant and accessible. Some of them are classic prayers, written by saints, martyrs and heroes of the Christian faith; others are reinterpretations of psalms or Bible passages. The majority are original prayers, written by me in straightforward language and in a range of styles. But not including rap. Where I’ve felt it necessary, I’ve also included a few words of explanation or application, which you should always feel free to disregard completely. Most of the prayers are written in modern, contemporary English, but one or two I’ve left untouched in their original, more old-fashioned form. I’ve done this because I think they’re much more amazing without my heavy-handed rewriting, and because I credit you with the intelligence and perseverance to be able to enjoy them as they are.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

This book is split into a number of sections, basically in an effort to help you to find the sort of prayers that you might be looking for at a given moment. Most of the prayers are designed to be used in an individual setting (where it’s just you and God), but many of them will work in a youth group or church context too. In one sense, then, you can view this as a sort of reference book, which you can pick up whenever you’re in need of a specific form of words. Yet I hope that’s not the only way you’ll find yourself using it.

I don’t know what the terms “devotional” and “quiet time” mean to you. Ever since I became a Christian, at fourteen, they have been haunting, guilt-inducing reminders to me that I don’t spend nearly enough of my time with – or even thinking about – God. When you’ve made the decision that he exists, and that the point of existence itself is to know him, that’s a bit of an oversight. Yet I think part of the problem with prayer is that we get into a cycle of guilt: we don’t do any; we feel ashamed that we don’t give God even a fraction of our time when we know he deserves our whole life…and so we push ourselves further away from him because we’re suffering from a sort of spiritual embarrassment.

Let’s just take a reality check at this point, then: God loves it when we spend time with him. Even just a little bit; even if it’s been ages since we last spoke to him. Parents of first-year university students are always fraught with worry when, night after night in that first term, the phone doesn’t ring. Their world has shifted dramatically – they no longer know where their beloved sons and daughters are each night – and, as the children get wrapped up in the excitement and intrigue of their new life away from home, the parents left behind become gibbering wrecks. And yet, when that phone call finally comes, that home is filled with joy. There is no anger that the call has taken so long, only delight that it has finally been made.

So it is, on a much larger scale, with God. We should never allow ourselves to get caught up in guilt about how long it’s been since we last called; we just need to pick up the phone. All of which is a roundabout way of saying that time with God is something we should aim for every day, and never allow to be overshadowed by the failures of yesterday. One of the ways in which you might want to use this book, then, is to give you some words with which to start off that time. Many people don’t find it easy to express how they’re feeling when talking to someone face to face; if we’re honest, it can sometimes feel even harder when the other person is to some extent invisible. So these prayers, whether they offer words of thanks, apology or request, can help to give language to however you’re feeling when you come to pray.

PRAYER AS A DISCIPLINE

I’ll pop up now and again throughout the book to introduce each section, but, before I let you loose on the prayers, a word or two about my own “devotional” life. A few years ago, I heard a preacher make a very bold claim at the front of the church I was visiting. He promised that, if I made the commitment to pray every day, my life would look very different one year on. At the time I was sceptical, yet, several years on, I believe those words so passionately that I would comfortably preach them...