Prayerdundency

I grew up in a home of memorized prayers. I’m not saying this is a bad or good thing, but it was my reality. Each night as my family sat down for dinner, a different family member would say,

Heavenly Father, we come to you in prayer to thank you for this food and ask you to bless it and make it nourishing to our bodies, we ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.

I first learned those words about the same time I learned to speak, and though I haven’t prayed them in years, I will probably remember them forever.

I grew up in church, so praying was never foreign to me. Even so, when I was young I remember having a certain aversion to praying out loud. Praying at meals and bedtime was one thing, but thinking up my own words was very much another. I felt lost without my prayer scripts. As I got older all of that slowly began to change, as God became more and more real to me. I prayed at church and with my family, but I also learned to pray on my own, to have my own conversations with God. I remember as a teenager loving to pray, and feeling free at the idea that I could pray however I wanted. No scripts, just me and God.

I fear I’ve lost that.

I still love to pray, but something has changed. I don’t regret the blessing of growing up in a Christian home, but just as the believer who comes to know Jesus late in life has their own particular set of battlefields, the Christian-from-birth sort of believer picks their way daily through the minefields of ruts, restlessness, and redundancy. I try to genuinely talk to God in my prayers—prayers of praise, of concession, of thankfulness, neediness, longing, and intercession—and though the situations always change the prayers all start to feel the same. It’s like I’m locked back into memorized scripts of pre-thought out words mechanically repeated in varying patterns. Sometimes when I’m talking to God I see myself as that old uncle who keeps telling the same stories over and over again. I’m only 27 and I can’t help but feel a little washed up.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to feel this way. I’m sure I’m not the only person to feel like this now. But in the midst of our Summer of Prayer it does feel painfully drawn to the surface. So what do I do about it? I suppose, I pray. And when I’m finished with that prayer, maybe start another.

-Lori Rice Council member, Worship and Arts

Prayer – A Holy Intrusion

We are a few weeks into our Summer of Prayer and I am finding that the whole thing is a bit of an intrusion on my life. As I mentioned a couple weeks ago in a message – Prayer brings us into the larger realities of God’s presence and purpose for us. Further, in prayer, a movement takes place in me whereby I relinquish control over situations and people as I bring them into the presence of God. Now that is all fine and good to preach, but a bit inconvenient to live.

Sometimes, late at night, I awake and find myself unable to fall asleep. It is in those moments that people come to mind and I begin to worry about them; wondering if they are doing well in their particular life circumstances. Those experiences are an intrusion to my sleeping! I mutter a prayer… “really Lord, I would be a much more rested servant of you if you brought up the needs of people in the daylight hours.” But in the end, since I cannot sleep, I pray unspecific words:

God, help so-and-so know that they are beloved of you.

Jesus, may that person know the grace and forgiveness that exists in you.

Father, let hope increase for the one who feels life is hopeless right now.

May your peace, O Christ, guard their hearts and minds.

Prayer is not always pleasant, in fact it can actually be work! I don’t know if this has been true for you in our Summer of Prayer? If it so, I am truly sorry if you’re experiencing a similar intrusion to your sleep. Yet, I do not think that I am liable for ay undisclosed side-effects to prayer (WARNING: Use of this activity may cause sleeplessness in some individuals).

So weigh in on the conversation – how has prayer disrupted your life?

Kent Place, Lead Pastor