Why We Don't Like To Pray

How many time have you been in a prayer circle and thought to yourself:

“I just new they were going to pray around the circle. What am I going to say? I gotta think of something great. Oh man, that person just took exactly what I was going to say. What am I suppose to say now? This makes me so uncomfortable. Ok, it’s my turn. Don’t say anything dumb. Quick, say something spiritual and deep!”

Don’t you just hate the first person that prays for ten minutes and doesn’t leave anything cool for the rest of us to say?

I was never much of a public prayer. Honestly, I still prefer to let others take charge of the group prayer, but I'll still pray now and again when called on or asked.

After awhile, I wondered why prayer was so easy to some people and not to others-me being an other. So I thought about it. My fear of public praying was two fold: a) I didn’t know who I was talking to, and b) I didn’t have anything to say.

Let's take a side trip. I’ll bring us back and wrap it up all nice and neat. I promise.

Why are your friends your friends? How do you know what your friend’s likes and dislikes are? How do you know what you know about them? Did you sit down with a list and a bunch of questions? Of course not. You know them by experience. You've invested time and effort into getting to know them. Not just who they are on the outside, but who they are on the inside.

If we didn’t spend any time with someone, we wouldn’t know anything about them. We’d lose contact, they would go on to do other things in different directions and soon we wouldn’t recognize them if we ran into them.

Why do we assume our relationship with God is any different? We don’t know God because we don’t spend time with Him. So often we make knowing God a mystery and a big project. It's really not. All we have to do to get to know Him is spend time with Him. It’s that simple.

God has one purpose on His heart, but His methods and ways are always changing. Someone once said this:

"God is always faithful to do what He says He will do, but He never does it the same way twice".

Add that to the fact that His ways are “higher than our ways” and his thoughts “higher than our thoughts” and it’s a wonder we ever connect with him at all.

But people do connect all the time. I've connected, you've connected. Here and there, now and again. The key to releasing His glory and power is living in that constant state of connection. That’s one of the beautiful things about the Trinity. Holy Spirit is our connection to the person of the Father. A move of God, or a revival, or whatever you want to call it, is simply people connecting with the heart of God on a mass scale of "togetherness".

I believe one of the biggest reasons for division in the church is a result of us not really connecting with the heart of God. Every pastor and leader and congregation member claims to know the heart of God, what He is doing, and where He is going. Why then, do all our efforts to go in that direction lead to strife, anger, confusion, feelings of failure, jealousy, and rage. Eventually everyone ends up in their own corner licking their wounds and justifying their actions to one end or another. Not that there aren’t battles. There are, and they are fierce. But any battle that puts our heart in a bad position is not a battle to be had.

As much as we want to justify it, or back it up with scripture, this cannot be the heart of God. His heart is not to have a people that have been broken and destroyed by one another.

Let us examine ourselves and start to look at the places we don't want to look. The things done to us may have been unjustified, but how many times have we returned evil for evil? How many times have our motives been infected with pride, or our actions moved out of hurt? For those of us that have hurt others, let us repent, reset, and move toward restoration and healing with others. For those of us that have been hurt unjustly, let us forgive and bless those that hurt us.

Yet I stray. So we are reconciling with God and each other. That still leaves us with what to say when it's prayer circle time.

The most effective things to say to him are the things he’s already told us! That’s why we need to know the word of God. Knowing the word of God gives us freedom without fear or error. We have the whole bible and no matter where we go, we’re safe in it!

If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's the word of God. We might not sing the same songs, or pray the same way, but praying the Word creates content that will never be a source of contention or strife. Praying scripture breaks denomination and doctrinal walls. Scripture gives us a frame work and spring board on which to take the leap of faith. Scripture gives us the head knowledge, experience gives us the heart knowledge. Someone else one said this:

"The Spirit without the Word and you'll blow up. The Word without the Spirit and you'll dry up. The Spirit and the Word and you'll grow up."

How true that is!

Getting to know what’s in the heart of God and what he’s doing takes a paradigm shift in our thinking, and a radical shift in how we spend our time, energy, and money. So where do we start? I believe it's the sermon on the mount. I challenge you to take Matthew 5, 6, and 7 in a literal way. Even for just a month. See if it doesn't turn your life upside down and inside out. I thought I was a pretty descent person until I really looked at what those verses are calling us to. It's calling us to perfection. Matthew 5:48 says: "Be perfect just as your Father in heaven is perfect". Think it's impossible? It's not if Jesus told us to do it. That, however, is another blog.

Once we turn our hearts toward these changes, power and love will be released. Suddenly we'll see things differently. We'll feel things we didn't feel before, and touch things we didn't touch. We will be able to walk in that space between heaven and earth and be an open doorway to allow heaven to invade earth.

Let the prayer and invasion begin!

As it is in heaven, may it be on earth-

J