I’ve often struggled with prayer.
I’ve been plagued by questions like, “What is it really?”, “What does it accomplish?” and “Why am I so bad at it?”
I completely understand if prayer is irrelevant to your life and worldview. Please feel free to stop reading and catch the next post. But if you’ve ever wrestled with these questions, I hope my story will help.
At a conference on prayer I attended many years ago, I learned two helpful concepts that have stuck with me:
1. I don’t pray for how it changes the world. I pray for how it changes me.
I don’t claim to know how God answers prayer. There are examples in the Bible and my own life where prayer seemed to have effected earthly outcomes and other times when it didn’t. I believe God answers prayers in the way a parent answers requests from their children—sometimes yes, sometimes no, sometimes not yet. Answers from a good parent, however painful, are always given with the child’s best interest in mind. That’s where I land—I trust that God knows what’s best for the world and for me. My final prayer is always “Let Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” (The Bible, Matthew 6:10)
Regardless of the outward influence of my prayers, they change me in good ways. When I pray for others, I’m more motivated to help them, and I’m jolted out of my obsession with my own problems. As I meditate on the struggles of others, I’m reminded of the sweetness of my own life. When I pray for myself, I’m reminded that I need help from Someone bigger than me to become who I want to be, providing a healthy dose of humility.
2. Prayer isn’t something you do, it’s Someone you love.
Rather than ask “Why should I pray?”, try “In a relationship, why should I talk?” You talk to get to know each other. To share information, thoughts, feelings, fears and anxieties, hopes and dreams. To deepen your connection. Because you enjoy each other’s company. That’s how I feel about talking with God. At its core, my relationship with God is just that—a relationship. What better way to grow and maintain a relationship than through talking?
Obviously communicating with God is different than communicating with another human being. The conversation often feels very one-sided. I believe there are ways to learn to listen to God’s voice, but that’s beyond the scope of this post (You can read my post on how I connect with God here). Different though it may be, prayer is the most effective way I’ve found to deepen my relationship with God.
The following excerpt from the late author, professor and theologian Henri Nouwen beautifully addresses this topic. Read his words. Try prayer, in whatever way works for you. Pray for others. Pray for yourself. Be honest. Be vulnerable. Be specific. Be grateful. If you do, I believe you’ll find a deeper, more satisfying life, and you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.
Why Pray? by Henri Nouwen
Why should I spend an hour in prayer when I do nothing during that time but think about people I am angry with, people who are angry with me, books I should read, and books I should write, and thousands of other silly things that happen to grab my mind for a moment?
The answer is: because God is greater than my mind and my heart and what is really happening in the house of prayer is not measurable in terms of human success and failure.
What I must do first of all is to be faithful. If I believe that the first commandment is to love God with my whole heart, mind, and soul, then I should at least be able to spend one hour a day with nobody else but God. The question as to whether it is helpful, useful, practical, or fruitful is completely irrelevant, since the only reason to love is love itself. Everything else is secondary.
The remarkable thing, however, is that sitting in the presence of God for one hour each morning—day after day, week after week, month after month—in total confusion and with myriad distractions radically changes my life. God, who loves me so much that he sent his only son not to condemn me but to save me, does not leave me waiting in the dark too long. I might think that each hour is useless, but after thirty or sixty or ninety such useless hours, I gradually realize that I was not as alone as I thought; a very small, gentle voice has been speaking to me far beyond my noisy place.
So, be confident and trust in the Lord.
This post was originally published December 4, 2021.
Daily Meditation posted by the Henri Nouwen Society, Nov 20, 2021. Text excerpts taken from “You are the Beloved” by Henri J.M. Nouwen (c) 2017 by the Henri Nouwen Legacy Trust, published by Convergent Books.
