Attitudes of Prayer

So…since we have a Most High God who actually wants to dwell with us, wants to hear our prayers, wants to answer our prayers….why is it that we don’t spend time talking to Him in prayer?

I have a couple of theories about that.

For some of us, when we think about or even say the word “prayer”, the first thing that comes to mind is this image of, well, let’s say someone like King Solomon, all dressed up in kingly robes standing before a huge crowd of people in front of this magnificent temple and speaking forth a very eloquent prayer, which, of course, catches God’s attention so that He, in turn, deems it a worthy prayer to respond to. Or so our frailty perceives the case to be.

Others perhaps envision the likes of Daniel, leaving his duties three times a day so that he can go stand in his window and face Jerusalem with arms outstretched to God, offering up equally eloquent prayers, but in this case, it surely must be the discipline of three times a day that causes God to answer.

And quite a few of us might actually recall times where pew after pew of people on their knees recited by rote (for a very long and therefore very uncomfortable time) a rosary-full of prayers, with quiet endurance being the penitential key to God’s heart.

Prayer, then, has the connotation of being so “religious” in nature, that we aren’t sure that we are equal to the task. It seems better suited to cloistered nuns and priests and ministers in churches, perhaps. And, even though we say that we really “should” pray more, our minds convince us that prayer is too large and daunting a task for us, and we gladly leave it to the more “spiritual” among us.

My second theory is that the amount of time needed to be allotted to prayer, at least that powerful mountain-moving kind of prayer that we are convinced we “should” be praying, just can’t be found in our modern day schedules. After all, almost everyone works, wives as well as husbands. If we give ourselves a minimum of eight hours of sleep, and add to that 9-10 hours of work and the time to get to and from work, and then add to that housecleaning, bill paying, meals to cook, laundry to be done, kids to chauffeur to sports and school and church activities…there just is not enough time in the day to devote to that kind of prayer. And even the wife that stays home, can’t find enough hours in the day to tend to all the errands and tasks that she is called upon to do by her family. So, since we can’t devote the amount of time that we “should” to prayer, we don’t pray at all and, instead, just feel guilty about it day in and day out, trying to make up for it when we are in church.

Have you noticed the use of the word “should” in my theories? That little word is a BIG indicator of the real reason why we don’t pray.

You see, “should” doesn’t sound all that appropriate when speaking about whether or not to spend time with someone who WANTS to spend time with us, especially when that someone just happens to be the GOD OF THE UNIVERSE! I mean, really, think about it….GOD HIMSELF wants to spend time with us! With me! He loves ME and wants to spend time with ME! GOD does! GOD!!!

But when we think that we “should” pray, it kind of sounds as though it is something we are not looking forward to doing, sort of as though we are feeling the weight of some obligation, the kind of feeling that comes over us when we sit down to try to figure out where to get the money out of our budget to pay that very nasty past due bill. UGH!

No wonder we don’t pray.

We don’t recognize it as the gift and privilege that it is. And we don’t recognize how much we don’t deserve to have it.

But then again, we didn’t deserve to have Jesus Christ (God Himself in human flesh) die for us in horrible torture and humiliation on the cross. We didn’t deserve that either.

BUT HE DID IT ANYWAY.

So…what “should” our attitude be about prayer? We will never know as long as the word “should” enters into it. Here instead is what it “can” be, if we so choose:

a blood-soaked privilege purchased for us as a gift to be used for our benefit and the benefit of all those who touch our lives;

an opportunity to interact with the God who paid that price so that He could dwell with us by dwelling in us, that’s how close to us He wants to be.

Our attitude “can” be one of such gratitude and love because of His great love for us, that we don’t struggle to find time to pray…we struggle in not wanting to leave that place of closeness with Him.

Now, just in case it appears that I have prayer all figured out, let me just say that all of the above is what the Lord spoke to me just this morning…..about my attitude towards prayer.

Hence my need for this study.