Ambitious Prayer by Sam Richardson: 7 Ways to Pray blog series

I’m thrilled to welcome Sam Richardson to the blog series this week. As the CEO of one of the key Christian publishers in the UK, he shares from a unique position. Make sure you read to the end.

When I was interviewed for my job heading up the Christian publisher SPCK, one of the questions they posed was, “What should an SPCK book look like?”

An answer popped into my head, even though I’m not a very visual person. It must have been a good answer because I got the job – and we still use the rule seven years later. I said, “It doesn’t have people with white teeth on the cover.”

This was a shorthand way of saying that in the SPCK imprint we embrace generous orthodoxy, but there’s a line we don’t cross. In a particular type of Christian book, often but by no means always from America, the focus lies very much on worldly success, with the author appearing on the cover with their wealth and attractiveness shining out through their white teeth.

For several years I lived in a fug of rather pharisaic self-satisfaction that, unlike the ‘blessed’ followers of the prosperity gospel whose books we won’t publish, I don’t just see Jesus as a shortcut to my own ambitions.

Then someone asked me what I had been praying for recently.

And my answer seemed suspiciously close to my list of personal ambitions at that moment in time: that we’d win some awards we were up for at work; that I’d be able to do a great training block for a marathon I had coming up; that my son would do well at school.

While my goals may not have been as financial as the people with the white teeth, my prayer life still looked rather like I saw Jesus as a shortcut to my own ambitions.

I’m reminded of how I used to play in a Christian football team and how we prayed as a team before every match. Certain people, including me, would find ways to pray that we would win – without explicitly praying that we would win. Things like “We pray that we will fulfil the potential you’ve given us today” or “We pray that you would send us home satisfied from this game”.

Of course there’s nothing wrong with praying for ourselves if we align our hopes with God’s will (and of course he doesn’t care which football team wins). And there’s nothing wrong with being ambitious if our ambitions are aligned with God’s. But how can we move closer to finding that alignment?

Amy Boucher Pye’s great new book 7 Ways To Pray has as its central chapter (which I suspect is no coincidence) a brilliant chapter on Hearing God. It covers both how we can be deliberate in creating opportunities for God to speak to us, and how we can be “more open to his nudges throughout the day.”

How do I do this in my own prayer life? Here’s where I must make a confession. In fact a triple confession. Firstly, that I left these confessions to the end so that you wouldn’t give up on my blog about prayer. Secondly, that when I agreed to write this blog for Amy a few months ago, my prayer life was at a low ebb but I thought it would be fine by the time the deadline actually came around. And thirdly, that it isn’t fine yet.

But having read 7 Ways to Pray I now have a rekindled ambition that I know is aligned with God’s will: to improve my prayer life. And I have a tool that I know will help: 7 Ways To Pray.

I hope Amy may invite me back in a few months so I can tell you how I’m getting on.

Sam Richardson is Chief Executive of SPCK, the Christian mission agency working through publishing. He studied Social and Political Sciences at Cambridge and then pursued a career in publishing at HarperCollins and Hodder & Stoughton. Sam is married to Sarah and they have three boys, two cats and a golden retriever. In his spare time he coaches and plays football and he may or may not be retired from running quite fast marathons.

Yes, of course I will invite Sam back! Order 7 Ways to Pray here, including in the US, UK, and Australia. You’ll find lots of resources for small groups – videos and a leader’s guide – here.