Lessons on Prayer from C.S. Lewis
“He who feeds the sparrows has you in His care.”
Glenn Wishnew | Est. 4-5 minutes
Pray often, especially when you don’t feel like it.
In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis’ imaginative correspondence between a senior demon and his protege, the devils are ‘working’ on a man who is in a spiritually dry season. Wormwood, the understudy, surmises that the man’s decreasing desire for prayer is the death blow to his Christianity.
The more experienced demon, Screwtape, rebukes Wormwood for his premature excitement. According to Screwtape, the man is experiencing “merely a natural phenomenon,” that will eventually pass away. Even worse from Screwtape’s perspective, God has withdrawn His felt presence ultimately for the man’s spiritual benefit.
“He leaves the creature to stand up on His own legs – to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence, the prayers offered in a state of dryness are those which please Him best…He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles.”[i]
In short, if this man learns to ‘walk’ by praying through a season of spiritual dryness, his Christian character will be dangerously resilient.
Indeed, the devil’s cause is “never more in danger, then when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken and still obeys.”[ii]
On the cross, Jesus looked round at a universe from which every trace of God seemed to have vanished. And He obeyed still. Therefore, when we pray without feeling His presence, we are following the model of Jesus whose obedience in that moment “put the [devils] to open shame by triumphing over them.” (Colossians 2:15).
2. Be honest with God, and with yourself.
When praying, there is a perennial temptation to present a false self to God – whether in public for the approval of others or in private for our own self-esteem. Jesus warned His disciples about this: “Do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.” (Matthew 6:5)
Lewis instead urges transparency in prayer. He encourages his friend Malcolm to offer even mundane requests to God. “Those who have not learned to ask him for childish things will have less readiness to ask Him for great ones.”[iii] In Lewis’ estimation, we ought “to lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.”[iv]
What do you need right now? And how can God, in hearing your request, “do more than anything you ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20)?
Beyond requests, Lewis encourages us to confess our sins with honesty. The modern world, Lewis admits, perceives confession as gloomy even morbid. However, far from gloomy, confession brings joyful liberation. Vocalizing our sins to God dislodges the guilt festering in our souls and flushes it out of the system.
“A serious attempt to repent and really to know one’s own sins is in the long run a lightening and relieving process. Of course, there is bound to be a first dismay and often terror and later great pain, yet that is much less in the long run than the anguish of unrepented and unexamined sins, lurking in the background of our minds.”[v] Even worse, “those who do not think about their own sins make up for it by thinking incessantly about the sins of others.”[vi]
Lewis presents alternatives for us. Either we will confess our sins and release the guilt from our souls, or we will dwell on others’ sins and suffer the great anguish of a soul weighed down by sin.
3. Praying through pain may only get silent responses. But the silence is laced with compassion.
One of Lewis’ underappreciated books is A Grief Observed, a series of reflective chapters about how he mourned the loss of his wife Joy Davidson. In one sequence, Lewis asks God when he will see Joy again, what that will be like, and if that is even possible when his soul seems to want her more than God Himself.
“When I lay these questions before God, I get no answer. But a rather special sort of ‘No answer.’ It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, ‘Peace child; you don’t understand.’”[vii]
Lewis scholars have observed a connection between that passage to a previous one in The Magician’s Nephew, where Digory is pleading with the Lion Aslan – the Christ figure – to cure his mother.
“But please, please—won’t you—can’t you give me something that will cure Mother?” Up till then [Digory] had been looking at [Aslan’s] great front feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory’s own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself.
“My son, my son,” said Aslan. “I know. Grief is great. Only you and I in this land know that yet. Let us be good to one another.”[viii]
4. There’s no limit on the number of people who deserve your prayers.
C.S. Lewis managed to keep up correspondences with men and women all over the English-speaking world (click here for an in-depth statistical analysis of his lifetime letter count). Letters to an American Lady is a published book containing over 100 letters he wrote to an aspiring American writer, Mary, who sought his advice on Christianity and literature.
In her previous letter, she mentioned receiving money for rent – an answered prayer. In his follow up letter, Lewis wrote “Clearly He who feeds the sparrows has you in His care. Never suppose that the amount “on my plate” shuts up my sympathy for the great troubles you are undergoing. I pray for you every day.”[ix](emphasis mine)
During this time, Lewis’ wife is dying from cancer, he struggles to walk without a surgical belt because of osteoporosis in his leg, and his financial situation is so perilous that he can’t afford to replace his broken-down furniture. Safe to say, his life is busy and his prayers could consist of his requests alone.
Yet he prayed for this woman daily and her living situation. Walter Hopper’s 3 volume collection of Lewis’ letters suggest that he was praying for tens of people each day whom he had never met before. Lewis once said, “One of the many reasons for wishing to be a better Christian is that, if one were, one’s prayers for others might be more effectual.”[x]
5. Prayer is God at work in all directions
Lewis admonishes us to pray often, pray honestly, pray through pain, and pray for others.
Behind his appeals lies the great truth that prayer is God-in-action. God The Father is the One we pray to, God the Son is the One who prays for us, and God the Spirit is the One inside us “interceding with sighs too deep for words.” (Romans 8:26)
Thus, “the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers. The man is being caught up into the higher kinds of life – what I called Zoe or spiritual life: he is pulled into God, by God, while still remaining himself.”[xi]
Prayer is, for Lewis and for us, getting swept up in the Spirit’s movement inside us, dwelling with Christ beside us, and calling upon the Father above us.
[i] Lewis, C.S.. The Screwtape Letters (Enhanced Special Illustrated Edition). N.p.: HarperCollins, 2011. Pg. 14.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Lewis, C.S.. How to Pray: Reflections and Essays. United States: HarperCollins, 2018. Pg. 40.
[iv] Ibid., 62.
[v] Ibid., 63.
[vi] Ibid., 63.
[vii] Ibid., 136.
[viii]Lewis, C.S.. The Magician's Nephew. United Kingdom: HarperCollins, 2009. Pg. 76
[ix] Lewis, C.S.. Letters to an American Lady. United States: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014. Pg. 64.
[x] Ibid., 51.
[xi] Lewis, C.S.. Mere Christianity. United States: HarperCollins, 2009., pg. 163
© Glenn Wishnew | This article was first published in Lakelight Monthly, November 2023 Edition
