Prayer

I used to alway address my prayers to Jesus, but last year I was in a small group here at the college that studied a certain book on prayer (The Disciple’s Prayer). One of the points that the author made was that Jesus taught His disciples to pray, “Our Father…,” and so we ought to address our prayers to God the Father. Since then, I have mostly addressed my prayers to my Father; however, at least when I first started, my prayers did not feel as intimate as they used to be and the wonder, awe, and importance of Christ seemed to diminish. The way I read the Bible was affected to, because Jesus no longer seemed to be the central character; the Scriptures did not seem to be as alive.

I do not know if praying to the Father is the cause of this shift, but the two things seem to be correlated. I think part of the reason for this initial alienation is because I has been unaccustomed to praying to my Father, and so he seemed distant. Prior to this book study, I had felt like Jesus was becoming increasingly my elder brother, my friend, my lover; but for some reason I did not know the Father so well.

Now I am more comfortable praying to my Father, and he seems closer than before; still, I miss Jesus. My dad gave me a book to read on prayer. It basically said that because God is Trinitarian it is appropriate and good to pray to all three persons, both individually and collectively, but that prayer is to be addressed primarily to the Father. Here is a summary given by the book (The Theology of Prayer by Wayne R. Spear, pg. 28):

“But while prayer to any of the persons, or to the tree together, is proper, Scripture teaches that prayer is ordinarily to be addressed to the Father. The New Testament pattern for prayer is that it is made to the Father, through the Son, by means of the Holy Spirit.”

What do you all think? Have you experienced similar tensions in prayers? Do you have any suggestions or advice on how to pray in a Trinitarian way so that none of the persons is left out? Again, there may be more issues going on behind the scenes of which I am not entirely aware, but I do seem to lack a Trinitarian approach to prayer.