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Few of us have Ashley’s courage to articulate the quiet cynicism or spiritual weariness that develops in us when heartfelt prayer goes unanswered. We keep our doubts hidden even from ourselves because we don’t want to sound like bad Christians. No reason to add shame to our cynicism. So our hearts shut down.
Because we don’t think prayer makes much difference.
Praying exposes how self-preoccupied we are and uncovers our doubts. It was easier on our faith not to pray. After only a few minutes, our prayer is in shambles. Barely out of the starting gate, we collapse on the sidelines—cynical, guilty, and hopeless.
Because we can do life without God, praying seems nice but unnecessary.
“Your relationship with your heavenly Father is dysfunctional. You talk as if you have an intimate relationship, but you don’t. Theoretically, it is close. Practically, it is distant. You need help.”
When Jesus describes the intimacy he wants with us, he talks about joining us for dinner. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20).
Oddly enough, many people struggle to learn how to pray because they are focusing on praying, not on God. Making prayer the center is like making conversation the center of a family mealtime. In prayer, focusing on the conversation is like trying to drive while looking at the windshield instead of through it. It freezes us, making us unsure of where to go. Conversation is only the vehicle through which we experience one another.
Many people’s frustrations with prayer come from working on prayer as a discipline in the abstract.
You don’t experience God; you get to know him. You submit to him. You enjoy him. He is, after all, a person.
If he is all-wise, then he’s not going to do everything I want because I don’t know what I need.
You can’t have a good story without tension and conflict, without things going wrong. Unanswered prayers create some of the tensions in the story God is weaving in our lives. When we realize this, we want to know what God is doing. What pattern is God weaving?
Learning to pray doesn’t offer us a less busy life; it offers us a less busy heart.
They feel calmer, more ordered, even in the midst of confusion and pressure.
LEARNING TO PRAY DOESN’T OFFER YOU A LESS BUSY LIFE; IT OFFERS YOU A LESS BUSY HEART.
A needy heart is a praying heart. Dependency is the heartbeat of prayer.
Nothing exposes our selfishness and spiritual powerlessness like prayer.
The criteria for coming to Jesus is weariness. Come overwhelmed with life. Come with your wandering mind. Come messy.
Don’t try to get the prayer right; just tell God where you are and what’s on your mind. That’s what little children do. They come as they are, runny noses and all. Like the disciples, they just say what is on their minds.
but when it comes to praying, we don’t come just as we are. We try, like adults, to fix ourselves up.
Private, personal prayer is one of the last great bastions of legalism. In order to pray like a child, you might need to unlearn the non-personal, nonreal praying that you’ve been taught.
The only way to come to God is by taking off any spiritual mask. The real you has to meet the real God. He is a person.
Your mind will wander to where you are weary.
We don’t know what troubles us. So, oddly enough, we might have to worry before we pray. Then our prayers will make sense. They will be about our real lives.
You’ll end up less selfish.
“Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:7, 9-11).
