Jesus Course

Most people seem to believe that there must be something very difficult about praying. A belief, perhaps, that God will only answer a prayer if it is said in a particular way or using a particular formula.

Many churches have traditions that they follow when it comes to prayer but, as far as I am aware, there is no Christian church anywhere that will claim that these are the only way you can pray.

The disciples of Jesus asked Jesus himself for some help with this difficult question and Jesus gave them the Lord’s prayer to use. It’s debatable whether Jesus meant this as a prayer to say or a formula to follow. Personally I think it’s both.

There are countless books written about prayer and various ways of thinking about the various kinds of prayers that we can use and at what times we should use them.

Then people get pretty obsessive about what ending you put on a prayer to make it work, or whether you should ever say a prayer more than once.

For my part I think an awful lot of nonsense is spoken about prayer and most of it creates so much confusion that people start to think its like writing a PHD thesis every time you start to pray.

Perhaps the biggest load of nonsense I hear – and I’ve heard this one a lot – is that some people say they are just not the praying kind.

“I’m more of a practical person so I leave the praying up to the more spiritual types”.

Rubbish, my friend.

This is like saying you are not the kind of person who eats – I leave that up to the hungry people – or breathes – I leave that up to the breathing people.

The problem isn’t that you can’t pray it’s that you have become so confused by the whole subject that you think it’s best left up to the experts.

Prayer is simply conversation with God. At times you might want to tell God about something that is worrying you or that you want. Other times you might want to tell God how fantastic he is.

Like any relationship things get pretty dull if you only ever talk about the same thing, so make sure there is variety in your conversation.

There are no right or wrong words to use. There is no set formula for how to do it or what ending you must use. There is not even a rule about how many times you should say something. Jesus sometimes makes the point that God doesn’t answer just because we repeat our prayer over and over (like you might on a prayer wheel) but at other times he makes the point that we should keep asking.

So just express what is on your heart and God will listen. The more you pray the easier it feels.

Don’t hold back – pray to Jesus.

Christian living pray, prayer

Jesus was really into praying, he just couldn’t get enough of it. The gospels are full of comments about how Jesus was going somewhere to pray or trying to get some quiet time for prayer, etc.

It surprises me, then, to learn that some Christians don’t pray other than when they are in church. Here is some research on prayer (a few years old now though). It doesn’t include the U.S.A. but here is one just for them. Even if we take a good view of the results (and we must always be wary of surveys) at least 20% of Christians don’t pray. What I found even more interesting is that in the first survey mentioned 86% said they had received an answer to prayer but only 64% pray every day. Even worse only 48% saw prayer as vital to faith.

Surely with Jesus being so hot on the subject we Christians should be doing it more. I also think we should be paying more attention to our use of time because some Christians complain that there just isn’t enough time to pray. I often wonder how many of these watch a soap on the T.V. or read a newspaper, or twitter, or facebook, etc. Anyway it’s not about the time you spend it’s about the quality of the time you spend.

Now I’m really not trying to make anyone feel guilty because what I want is to see more people praying.

So how do you pray? Well that’s one of the easiest things in the world to do. You open a conversation with God. It means having to open yourself up to God and I can’t give you a formula for that but if you have ever had a relationship with another person you will know what this means.

A lot of people get stuck on what to say. Not a problem – the disciples had a similar issue and so Jesus gave them a prayer to say. There are bookshelves collapsing in Christian book shops with prayers that you can use and before you get all uppity about not praying using someone else’s words Jesus never told us not to (in fact the Lord’s prayer and the psalms and nearly every hymn and worship song ever written is a prayer written by someone else).

Like all this stuff though I’m sure Jesus would want to point out that it isn’t about the words or about how many times you say them it’s about what is inside that counts. Whatever words you use make them real and meaningful to you and pour out your heart to God.

Sometimes people think prayer is going to be boring – in fact this is a lie the devil has been pushing on me ever since I became a Christian. Every time I’m going to do some praying a little voice in my head says “this is going to be boring you know”. Experience however tells me different. Not every day is wonderful but some days you just won’t want to stop.

A very important thing I learned about prayer is that the more you do it the better it gets. If you struggle with boring prayer times then you need to persevere and if you do it will improve.

Anyway – let’s pray.

Christian living Jesus, pray, prayer