If I am ever feeling a kind of spiritual dissonance or distance from the Lord, I can almost always trace it to prayerlessness.
Last fall, one of my kids asked me about prayer, afraid that he wasn’t “doing it right.” I walked through tenants of the Lord’s prayer from Matthew 6 as well as the parable of Pharisee and the tax collector from Luke 18. “In the end,” I told him, “Be honest with God. Confess your sin, praise Him for how great He is, and ask Him for help. Don’t worry about fancy words. God loves a humble heart.” My son shrugged, saying, “I’m not good at prayer.” Boy, do I know what he means. But I told him what I personally need to hear every day: “You get better at praying by praying.” There’s a Puritan expression for it—Pray until you pray—meaning that you have to work through the kinks of mechanical wooden praying before you get to the unfiltered, open-hearted conversation with the Lord.
Prayer is the goal and prayer will get you there.
There is no shortcut to a vibrant prayer life. You can read books on prayer, make a plan for prayer, talk about prayer, but if you never give yourself to it, you won’t find that sweet place of communion with God that your heart longs for. I’ve had seasons of fruitful prayer and seasons where I’ve barely skimmed the surface because I was distracted eager to get to other things. In recent years I’ve been able to draw a straight line from my scrolling habits to my waning ability to focus in prayer. After that conversation with my son last year, I felt a little hypocritical giving him instructions on how to pray because I was struggling so much myself to maintain focus and really pray. My prayer life looked more like a running to-do list mixed with my grocery list and a bit of intercession here and there. The whole thing was topped with exasperation with myself. Enough is enough, I told myself. My anemic prayer life wasn’t going to improve without “making every effort” as Peter would say (2 Pet. 1:5). Though God never leaves me, I wander away without meaning to. Prayer will always guide me back.
So, I prayed about praying.
If that’s not a cry for help, I don’t know what is. The older I get, the more I become so aware of my limitations, my weaknesses, my distractibility, my wandering mind. Feeling the weight of all those weaknesses, I prayed about prayer. I prayed very specifically about prayer. I asked the Lord to wake me up earlier in the morning so that I could give nearly an hour to prayer first thing. I set my clock as usual, but I began to routinely wake up before it rang. I made some coffee and settled in to pray. It was hard at first, but as the fog of sleep burned off with the rising sun, I found myself drawing nearer and nearer to God in prayer—and it brought so much joy. It was worth any lost sleep. It kept me coming back to Him throughout the day, picking up the conversation where we left off earlier in the day.
Over the summer, I took up the practice of praying while walking. I love a morning walk and sometimes an evening walk too, weather permitting. I have always (and I mean always) worn headphones on my walks. I can remember walking with a Walkman and my favorite cassette tapes when I was a kid, and later in high school, an unwieldy discman which skipped ridiculously. I can nearly chart the change in technology over the years by the device I carried on walks: Walkman, discman, iPod shuffle, iPod Nano, and eventually, an iPhone. I have always loved to listen to music and (eventually) podcasts while I walk. But, I discovered this summer that if I leave my headphones at home, I’m alone with my thoughts, and that somehow always turns to prayer. I’ve learned to utilize my walks for thinking and praying, even praying out loud to help maintain focus. It’s been such a refreshing practice that I leave the headphones at home more often than not these days. I didn’t know walking would be such a help to my prayer life, but it has.
The New Testament writers assumed we would be praying people. Phrases like “continue steadfastly in prayer” and “when you pray” and “pray also for us” and “pray without ceasing”—these statements stand on the presumption that we’re already praying. This is part of the Christian life, but instead it’s not a have-to. It’s a get-to. This is something Jesus made possible for us at the cross. He covered us with his righteousness so now we can draw near to the Father with every confidence (Heb. 10:19-21). We can approach God in prayer with confidence that He will provide mercy and grace when we need it (Heb. 4:14-16). We’re promised that we can pray and that God will hear us, so we should take every opportunity to enjoy that privilege.
It might feel a little strange to pray about praying, but I find that speaking honestly to the Lord about my struggle to pray is the best way forward. The obstacles begin to shrink as soon as I acknowledge and confess their existence to Him. I believe He wants us to pray, so I believe He will honor our desires to be more faithful in prayer. I know the way to grow in prayer is prayer itself, and the more I pray, the easier it gets. And the more I hunger for that sacred hour with the Lord. What would happen if every temptation to scroll, to disassociate, to be distracted or entertained was replaced with steadfast prayer? I cannot imagine the joy.
Photo by Emma Simpson on Unsplash
