TALK:
STOP PRAYING! This is a phrase you probably never expected to see on a Christian page; but, I really do want everyone to stop praying and pray. C.S. Lewis wrote two books (Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Proposes a Toast) in which he illustrates a conversation between Satan and a demon who has been sent out to hinder a person named Christian from growing in his walk with God. The following is a paraphrase of one of those conversations:
Wormwood: “Satan, I have good news, Christian has fallen asleep while he was saying his evening prayers!”
Satan: “WHAT?! That is NOT good news! Go quickly and wake Christian up! Remind him to finish praying!”
Wormwood responds bewildered and confused: “Why would you want Christian to wake up and pray?!”
Satan: “Let me explain; If Christian wakes up now and remembers to pray he will repeat the same prayer he has always said for the last several years. There will be no depth, thought, heart or reality behind Christian’s pray. The prayer will be the same old meaningless words. BUT, if Christian wakes up in the morning, he will realize he forgot to pray and turn back to God in authentic repentance. Christian will say an authentic, heart felt prayer and grow in his relationship with God and begin to have depth and meaning to what he is praying!”
(Some of the following points are borrowed, adapted, and inspired from what God showed me through a video, “ Prayer: Remix” by Louie Giglio)
In our lives we repeat so many of our prayers or recite the half a dozen ones we’ve grown up with for years. So often these prayers fall into a similar pattern across the board and probably sound something similar to this:
Dear Lord, Thank you for this day.
Be with/bless me/us/this event.
Forgive us our many sins.
Be with so and so
AMEN.
PLEASE NOTE: I am NOT saying these prayers are necessarily wrong or bad! As we go through this topic, I am not suggesting to become prayer police and rip apart anyone who repeats a prayer, writes one down on paper, or uses any of the above phrases. To many people, including myself, these prayers can be meaningful, heartfelt, and passionate! My goal is to challenge us at what these phrases can often mean when they do become simple phrases we say.
So lets take a quick look at what the above prayer can often become.
“Dear Lord, Thank you for this day”: It’s usually a freebie to get us started. We aren’t very comfortable with silences so instead we fill it with words. Often times we believe there is a pressure to have words to say when we pray, so we create this line, whether we mean it or not, to fill in that space. This can become a time for us to think of our next line and believe it is better then saying, “Ya God, I’m not really here right now.”
“Be/Bless me/us/this event”: Which usually means we are about to do something, go into a meeting, give a speech, write an exam and haven’t actually asked God’s opinion of it in the first place; and yet we are still going to go ahead and do it, right or wrong, but it makes us feel better thinking we have God’s stamp of approval on it.
“Forgive us our many sins”: So often we don’t even know what these are. We simply know that somewhere in the bible it says we are sinners and need to ask for forgiveness. It’s a phrase that is a vague covering and makes us feel better or makes us feel as though we can move on in life without any real change. Kind of like a kid who has gotten into trouble and says sorry not because they are sorry for what they’ve done, but to get the parent to leave them alone so they can go back to playing with their toys.
“Be with so and so”: This tends to be a bonus section for many of us. We can’t quite finish off a prayer being selfish, so we toss out a few prayers for others. We don’t actually know any of the details but it is a religious box we can check off. This can often be similar to when we greet people in church and say “I’ll be praying for you” and never do. It becomes a religious slogan and makes us feel better about our selves.
“Amen”: You might be thinking how can there ever be an issue with this phrase, isn’t this how we are suppose to end prayer? But let me challenge you that this phrase can often have the meaning of “hey God, I am out of here!”, “See ya tomorrow”, “I have left the building”, or CLICK I’ve just hung up the phone, please don’t bother me until I talk to you again tomorrow for the next 30 second prayer.
In Matthew 6:7-13, Jesus tells us not to use vain repetitions and then shows us how to pray by giving us the Lord’s Prayer. Notice though, Jesus uses the phrase “In this MANNER, pray:”, not pray this. Jesus is actually trying to get two points across; firstly that we don’t need to say repetitive prayers to get God’s attention and secondly (which is the one I would like to focus in on) that God wants us to put some thought into our prayers.
I would like to take a look a the phrase “BE WITH ME” as I think once we grasp this phrase the other phrases will begin to change.
The Old Testament is loaded with times when God is with His people. Exodus 3:11-12, Joshua 1:5, Isaiah 43:1-2 are just a sampling of God actually saying “I will be with you”. This is then expanded in the New Testament with the arrival of Jesus, Immanuel, which means “God with us”. Matthew 18:20 and 28:20 state that Jesus/God will be with his people even until the end.
So shouldn’t we pray then that God should be with us? John 14:16-17 tells us this isn’t necessary, “He will give you another helper, that He may abide with you forever- the Spirit of truth,…but you know Him, for He dwells WITH you and will be IN you.” Also found in Colossians 1:26-27. Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit and said He would be with us and IN US always! Ephesians 3:17-19 also reminds us that the Holy Spirit is not a low grade replacement to Jesus but the fullness of God Himself.
Now someone may be asking, “What about James 4:8” which states, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you”? Is this not a form of James telling us to get close to God or asking God to get close to us? Let me ask then, would James contradict the rest of the Bible, and Jesus Himself, saying God is already with us and in us? James uses the words “drawing near” which in Greek has the meaning of to worship God with a pious heart. Perhaps James is talking about awareness and not proximity. Draw near to God could almost be rephrased to say, as you surrender your life and attention to God, He will make Himself more known to you. Psalm 139 7-10 describes how we can never be away from God no matter where we are physically or spiritually; that God is always there, we (as James is indicating) might not remember that or be aware of His presence until we turn our attention back to Him. It is about opening our eyes to His presence that is already there.
When we pray something like “God be with me/us/this event”, what do we really mean? Are you asking God to be with you in proximity or to make you aware of His presence that is already there? What do you really mean when you pray this phrase? Or, as we looked at earlier, does this phrase really have no meaning other then “please put your stamp of approval on this so I feel better about myself for ignoring you in the first place God.”?
God wants us to stop praying the meaningless prayers that are just words. Once we begin to recognize that God is already with us and in us, via His Holy Spirit, our prayers should begin to change. They may still include some common, well known prayers, written prayers, prayers we’ve made up on our own or prayers we’ve learned from our parents that we repeat often, but they will include our hearts and minds as well.
WALK:
At some point in our life we’ve picked up a view of prayer and relationship with God from somewhere; This may be our church, parents, media, movies, friends and a number of other places and these are often a mix of both positive and negative points; but which ever they may be, these views have left a mark on our lives. What happens then is we tend to put God at a certain point somewhere in front of us down the road. So either as a Christian, or someone trying to discover God, we try to get to Him by going down that path to where we think He is. The problem that we all run into and need to come to grips with is we’ve put our upbringing (views we’ve believed) blindfolds on and try to walk to that point in which we’ve placed God at in order to get to Him. We then run into the hurt and pain when we can never seem to get close enough to Him, never get our prayers answered and left feeling like we haven’t quite gotten to Him.
Part of the good news of the Bible is that Jesus came to remove those blind folds and point out to us that God isn’t down the road but next to us wanting to get in (Rev. 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.”), or to those who have already chosen Jesus as their savior, that God is already in you. So you no longer need to pray “God be with me” in the sense of proximity, but can change that prayer to begin a conversation with God in a living, breathing, real sense.
If you have a spouse, friend, or even a guest in your home, you wouldn’t keep asking them to be with you once they are at your house. You would change the conversation to include at that moment dialogue. As an example, if you wanted to have your friend help you prepare dinner, you wouldn’t say “be with me”, you might say “can you help me prepare dinner”, which would expand even more with things like, “can you get me a bowl, set the table, stir this pot”. If you continued to ask them to be with you, it would be unproductive and causing the other person to respond, “um, you already said that and yes I am already here, now what!?”
I challenge you to recognize that the same goes with God, He is already there, so what are you really asking Him? As a first step start with the “be with me” phrase and rethink what you are saying to God. Talk to Him like you would with anyone who is already right there with you. Then I want to challenge you with the next set of phrases, let those prayers expand/change to what you really mean or want to say. Remember, it isn’t about being self conscious about praying, but simply being aware that God is present and being aware of what you really are saying.
LIVE:
This is the hard challenge; to wake up! Wake up our prayers! Wake up our minds! Wake up our hearts! Knowing now that God is present in our lives and we should be changing those prayers we’ve always said to say what we really mean.
How often do you say the same things over and over again to a co-worker, spouse, your kids, your parents that have lost all meaning? “I love you”, “Sorry”, “I’ll do that”, “I promise”, “I’ll pray for you”, “I’ll call you.” And many others become phrases we just say out of habit. We may have said these to others, or know of people who say this to us, but we know it wasn’t really meant; it was just said because it was the “correct” response. These relationships then begin to break down and slowly but surely we loose touch, stop calling, file for divorce, and children leave home. There is a phrase I heard years ago, “You either start living or start dying”, the same goes for relationships. They are either growing together or apart; and please don’t deceive yourself into thinking that there is a middle ground, or even worse, that faking it counts as growing.
Well, the same can happen between people and God. The positive point, is that God is ALWAYS waiting, present, and ready to interact. It is ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS us that leaves, stops trying, back slides, or just says words.
I want all of us to begin to say what we mean and engage with God. This is a double sided challenge; I want you to firstly start praying what you really want to say, and to stop saying things you don’t really mean.
Again, you may be wanting to challenge this way of praying with, “Do you realize what you are asking? I have some not so nice things I want to present to God.” Well good! It’s about time! God doesn’t just want the good stuff, He wants your pain, anger, disappointment, hurts and all the depths of your sorrows. Look at Moses, King David, the prophets, the disciples and even Jesus; they all presented to God their joys and pains.
So I leave you now to try this; Stop praying and pray!
(Please note: this is part one of three on this topic of prayer. Part two “Talk with God, not at God” will include some discussion on praying to God about our pains or what is often viewed as “hush hush don’t talk about that” sort of prayers.)
