A Year of Prayer

No it’s not a one-sided talk with God. He listens when He thinks it’s necessary to listen (listening in the Christian world is actually doing what you’re being told/asked to do, which is what I mean here) but most of the time He hears us out. He lets us tire ourselves out of our anger or sadness or whatever emotion you bring to your prayer time. Paul tells us to pray unceasingly in 1 Thessalonians. And it’s naïve that he tells us that. Pray about what and all the time? He places a lot of good heart and good judgment into the hands of his original reading community and he messed up there.

People suck. People are petty to no end.

This year off taught me too many things. And the biggest thing is that people are unceasingly petty. Have you heard some of the dumb stuff that people pray for when they’re just in an emotional rage? People pray for getting a good parking spot because they don’t want to walk too far in this heat, people pray for not sleeping in so that they’re not late to work again for the fourth time in a month, people pray for a good test grade (I KNOW YOU’VE PRAYED FOR THIS ONE DON’T EVEN TRY AND HIDE IT) when they barely studied, and the list is endless. People are as selfish and as childish as they can get away with and it doesn’t change when we pray. We pray out of our humanity. As you grow older you quickly learn that the adults you thought had those answers you’re trying to find on your own actually are as clueless as you and I. And if you’ve grown up in church and a religious household like I did you learn prayers are repetitive among people groups and it tells me that stupidity is infectious. If you think you praying for “Let your will be done, Lord” when you behave like you could give less of a rat’s ass about God’s plan and you’re somehow hiding it because you’re praying for it to happen then Jonah has Nineveh and a big fish to sell to you.

Now, as Christians we believe that one day we will stand before justice incarnate and answer to Him about everything we’ve ever said and done. When you pray you’re calling God down to your moment and getting His attention for what is on your mind at that point in time. That’s a lot of power. You have the creator of the universe on speed dial and He always picks up the phone. But as we know with every phone number we dial there is a log somewhere in the NSA’s building that has it completely recorded. I have to answer for every prayer that carelessly fell out of my word hole. Why pray and bring God into something that He isn’t involved in from the start? If I pray to God that I don’t have to deal with a coworker that I don’t want to show the love of Christ to that day, or ever, then not only do I have to drag God into this but I have to explain to Him why I just prayed the dumbest prayer on the planet. Prayers are meant to be a reflection of a God that is active in you. They should (the operative term here) reflect what He wants to do through His church and through the body of Christ. A prayer that doesn’t fall in line with that can sound wasteful and I don’t know about you but I already have enough things to answer for so I don’t need to make that list any bigger than I need to.

Jonah: "I don't want to go to Nineveh. Just destroy all of them."

YHWH: "i DoNt wANT tO gO t0 NiNeVeH." (for those of you who don't get the meme, read this in a mocking tone.)

This is how God gets when we pray something absolutely stupid.

I’m really going to drive this point home as much as I can. Have you ever met a person who tries to pray the gay out of someone? It’s the dumbest thing you can find someone doing on a daily basis. These people who try to pray the gay out of someone not only make a person even more disillusioned towards a church that is on the decline but these people, wrought with conviction that you can actually pray the gay away, have to explain to God how they sincerely thought that a prayer that calls this person, to them confused in their sexuality (but still somehow made in God’s image), is a prayer gifted to them from the heart of God for them to pray.

Let me get even clearer. A prayer that isn’t rooted in the heart of God is proof to Heaven that you don’t really know who God is at all.

Prayers, while seemingly entrenched in levels of unchanging selfishness and idiocy, thankfully, change. If you’ve been praying the same prayer for months or years then you haven’t been growing. Prayers are rooted to the moment they’re being uttered. Moments change. Circumstances change. Our prayers are meant to reflect that change in life scenery. And if we find ourselves caring about what God wants for us then our prayers are meant to change us too. Like all things in Christianity, prayer is a process that is sewed together with salvation. Salvation is a process. We aren’t saved. We’re on the way to becoming saved. We’re never going to be saved from sin and our human wants until we get to Heaven. Jesus had to undergo that process too (Luke 2:52). When salvation began its cleansing process within us then we gave permission for prayer to aid the process. I’m glad I haven’t been praying the same prayer for too long of a time. A new prayer you can pray is a sign that God hasn’t given up on you. And that’s the best news I think we can ever hear.

At the tail end of February 2017 I did a fast from cursing for 28 days.

Yes you read that right…..Okay stop laughing. I can wait.

Are you done? Good. Jackass.

Why would I do something so stupid? It felt like the right thing to do at the time. Why force a fast? You wouldn’t be invested in it if you forced it to happen. So for 28 days I kept a PG mouth but thoughts that only Jesus should be allowed to see. Thoughts that are proof that I need wild grace. And the best prayer is change. And there was a moment that hit me across the face harder than Juan Manuel Marquez’s overhand right hit Pacquiao’s face (for those who don’t watch boxing, look up Pacquiao-Marquez IV and just cringe at that punch, you’ll know which one when it happens) and it’s a moment that I’ll keep with me into the far future. If I tried to forget that moment then I’m sure in some ways that it would be my way of saying I regret fasting. A middle finger to God, and I don’t think I’m okay with that. And it was a moment where I was praying in my nonchalant manner and I remember sounding so stupid and hearing myself and I went “You’re being an idiot.” But it was clearer than most times I tell myself that. Which isn’t a secondary result of prayer’s nature yet it is prayer’s strongest feature due to us having to hear ourselves bear our hearts to God. And our hearts are stupid as hell sometimes. A meditative function where God really doesn’t have to do anything but let us wear ourselves down and figure out our problems on our own and He watches us slowly but surely become the people He wants us to be without Him having to intervene. Which makes the transformation sincere.

And that’s the functional goal of prayer: Sincere transformation.