Prayer. Why Bother?

Prayer is a fraught topic. It's hard to talk about it in the church, and harder to talk about it outside of the church. Almost everyone has an experience with prayer - prayers answered, prayers not answered, prayer stage fright (or maybe that just happens to pastors!). Prayer is such a personal topic that I think sometimes we're afraid to talk about it in fear of offending someone or negating their experiences.

But here I go.

Prayer reveals our heart to God...and to ourselves. It is the act of opening ourselves us and sharing our intimate selves, that changes us. And it brings us closer to God, our neighbor and ourselves.

When we pray whether it's unprepared or written, we are revealing what matters most to us. Our concerns, our wants and desires, our joys and triumphs, our failures and guilt. A prayer can often be surprising, even to ourselves. Even when we're not being entirely honest, well, that reveals something important about us too.

Scripture says a lot about prayer, mostly about prayers being answered or not answered. That's where, I believe, the problems arise. In the Hebrew Bible, prayers were answered or not depending upon the actions of the people. If you honored God through your actions (not necessarily belief), prayers were answered. If you dishonored God, nope! "But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear." (Isaiah 59:2)

In the New Testament, the idea of prayer centered more around belief. Many Christians point to this verse in Mark, "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." (Mark 11:24). They've even shortened it to a pithy T-shirt slogan, "Pray, Believe, Receive."

Believing this slogan literally is a false Gospel.  It turns God into a cosmic vending machine or wishing well.  It also puts the burden of our relationship with God on us. If your prayers haven't been answered then you must not have believed enough. That is a false and cruel statement. It is a punch in the gut to any parent who has prayed for the life of their ill child, or a woman who has prayed that her husband stop beating her, or a family who has prayed for the bombing to stop.

If you believe in "pray, believe, receive" then your only response to continued tragedy is "you weren't good enough." Or, "God chose not to help you for some unknown reason of God's own but, in the long run, God has a plan and this is part of it." Or, "God did answer your prayer, but you just can't see it." I call BS. 

For me, the heart of the Christian faith is relationship. Relationship with God and others. But also relationship with ourselves - learning to know ourselves. And prayer is an essential part of building these relationships. When we open ourselves up, we are creating relationships. 

As a pastor, the hardest thing I ever do, and one of the most rewarding things that I do is a congregational prayer. I typically don't write these out because I want to be authentic and honest. It is often my only real point of worship in a Sunday morning service. Sometimes, they aren't elegant, but other times I wonder where the words came from. More than anything, I want my prayers to bind together my heart, with those of my listeners and the heart of God. To make us one. And, to me, it is in this binding together, that the real power of prayer is found.

When we pray to God whether in anguish or in pure joy, we are increasing the bonds of love with God. We are listened to. Our concerns are God's concerns. Our joys are God's joys. God weeps with us and God leaps with excitement with us. Through prayer, we are given the comfort and assurance that "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38-39)