Prayer…it's not just for bedtime anymore!

Good morning Trinity Tribe,

I'm not sure about you, but I have always been scared of prayer. Until I went to Divinity School, I had never prayed out loud, other than "God is Great, God is Good." I had heard minister after minister pray these beautifully constructed, theologically sound, big word-filled prayers. I KNEW that I could not pray like that. I couldn't get up in front of other people and have them hear me stumble around a prayer. I couldn't let other people hear what I was saying to God. It wouldn't be formal enough. It wouldn't be grammatically correct enough. It wouldn't be good enough.

However, it doesn't say that prayer has to be like that in the Bible, at least anywhere I can find. We are to pray without ceasing. We are to pray for ourselves and for others. And, if you read the Psalms, you see real raw emotion. David even yells at God in his prayers. There is weeping. There is laughing. Paul is constantly praying for the churches to whom he writes.

We do not need to be afraid to pray. We can pray out loud. We can pray in a whisper. We can pray with our bodies…in today's motionless world full of watching TV, perhaps this would be a great spiritual discipline to take up. What if we took a cue from our Muslim cousins and prayed while laying on the floor five times a day? What would our hearts be like if we took prayer that seriously that we stopped everything we were doing in order to pray? What if we prayed normal words and didn't try to sound like a Bible professor?

Prayer is merely acknowledging God's presence around you and with you. It isn't as hard as we make it out to be. I challenge all of us, myself included, to spend more time in prayer. It might be while you drive to work…it might be stopping 5 times a day to acknowledge God's presence. It might be praying for something specific. It may just be remaining silent and listening to your heart beat and your breath wash in and out of your lungs. No matter how or when we pray, it is time well spent at the feet of our Creator.

1 John 5:13-15 My purpose in writing is simply this: that you who believe in God's Son will know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you have eternal life, the reality and not the illusion. And how bold and free we then become in his presence, freely asking according to his will, sure that he's listening. And if we're confident that he's listening, we know that what we've asked for is as good as ours.