Pray It Like You Mean It

I believe in the power of prayer.

I also believe that the Creator listens to my prayers.

And I suspect He often finds them amusing.

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In all honesty, the number of times I've truly gotten quiet enough to settle into a prayerful and reverent state of mind are remarkably few.  Now, don't get me wrong, I pray every day - sometimes several times a day, and sometimes several DOZEN times a day.

But there have been a few special pit stops on my faith journey thus far that were more, um...communal.  More intimate.  Quiet and deep time, where I can hear far more than I say.

I'm not able to get that way too often.  More often, my prayers go something like this:

Heavenly Father, I worship You and thank You for this day (my nose itches).  I am grateful for all that You (what's that there on the floor near my foot?) have provided for my family and me (did I run the dishwasher?)  Please help our friend ____, who is battling cancer and is in need of Your comfort and care (bet I already have melanoma myself).  We ask for Your protection and care for our troops (man I hope my kid never joins the military, that's gotta suck) and we thank You for the saving grace we find in Your son, Jesus Christ (you know, Amazing Grace has always been one of my favorite hymns).  For it is in His name we pray, Amen.

I suspect that my prayers sometimes wander because I am praying without intent.  In other words, I am praying because that's what I'm supposed to do - that's what Christians do, right?  We pray!  We worship how great God is and we pray for sick friends and we give thanks for all of our blessings and our salvation and we check the box indicating YES, I have indeed said my prayers.  Now on to the next item on the to-do list.

Not much intimacy in that, huh.

I mentioned in an earlier post this week that I am really busy at work right now, and it is harder than usual to shut off my mental firehose long enough to enter a posture of contemplative prayer.  I can't hear anything other than me, me, me, ME, ME, MEMEMEMEME MEEEEEEE and it makes me nutty (ok, nuttier).

I went to our Wednesday night Bible study at church this evening - true to form, I was late, and everyone was praying quietly when I walked in.  I scurried to an empty table, found a seat, and bowed my head.  And tried to pray.  Then tried some more.  The more I tried to pray, the harder it was to stop thinking about other things.

So - I stopped trying.

As if that wasn't bad enough, about that time, our pastor invited everyone to pray corporately - to pray together, aloud.  Aloud!  That used to be one of my other prayer barriers too...I might pray, but I sure as heck wouldn't do it where you could hear me.

Well, now what?  I contemplated leaving - after all, everyone's eyes had been closed since I arrived, so they wouldn't even know I'd been there and bailed.  But I came for Bible study, and if I had to sit through people praying out loud, well then, that's just what I had to do.

At the tables all around me, I heard whispers, then more audible prayers.  People were taking turns, offering prayers for one another, for our church, for our country....for our world.  There was a steady hum throughout the room - the sincere and soft sounds of devoted Christ-followers speaking with and listening to the Holy Spirit among us.

Now for my friends who are scoffers, I know exactly how wacky this sounds, but I'm telling you the truth - there was a Presence there with us, in that big open sanctuary.  A divine Presence of peace and unfathomably singular power.  His presence.  No kidding.

In the absence of trying to pray "well", I stumbled into another one of those intimate moments where He did all the talking and I sat quietly empty in a good way.  Empty of stress, empty of my own head noise - empty of anything else but love for Him and His people.