This is the first in an ongoing series on prayer that I will probably end up compiling into a book of some kind. It's based on the Russian Orthodox spiritual classic "The Way Of A Pilgrim" about a man who roams the Russian country side trying to figure out how to "pray without ceasing." A helpful spiritual guide makes him aware of a "secret chain of prayer" - a string of verses throughout the New Testament that give us a picture of what prayer is all about. Here is the first installment:



Matthew 6:5-8
"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

Prayer is not a performance. God doesn’t care how eloquent you are. He doesn’t even care how many words you use. Jesus is laying out the basics of what a life of prayer is and isn’t. Sometimes, in the back of our minds, even though we wouldn’t articulate it in this way, we believe some very hideous things about what God is like. First of all, we believe that talking to God is like placating a bureaucratic oaf with just the right combination of checked boxes and rightly-placed signatures. We imagine that there is a procedure for getting a prayer answered or for becoming a man or woman “of prayer.” But what Jesus says here is very hard to misunderstand. He basically says, no, there’s no procedure. There is only a Father who is already well aware of what you need. Don’t assume that God wants to hear you mouth a bunch of “right beliefs” or “faith-activating statements” to get his generosity all lubed up and ready to bless. He is generous already and if we don’t get exactly what we pray for, it’s because we haven’t asked for what he knows we need. It’s because whatever he has planned, it is so much better than what we are asking for. And when we continue to come to him, even though he doesn’t always answer in the way we have specifically asked him to, that is faith.

There’s an unfortunate myth going around that faith is a substance like electricity or magnetic energy and the more you have of it, the more stuff you can get God to do for you. But faith is not a “thing” in itself, faith is a relational reality, completely dependent on the person you put your faith in. Turning faith into a substance that can be accumulated like rainwater in buckets is putting your faith in faith. It’s a bit like falling in love with falling in love; nothing relational happens. That’s why going into your room and closing the door has it’s own reward; although it may not be the reward we are going into it looking for. The reward is relationship. Yet, even just going into a room by ourselves and closing the door behind us doesn’t preclude the possibility of performing our prayers. The audience might just be you, and you might catch yourself marveling over what a wonderful, self-sacrificial “prayer warrior” you are. Of course, this usually happens in group settings, where a prayer meeting is hijacked by someone with a theological ax to grind and it quickly turns into a captive audience for longwinded, overbearing sermonizing thinly veiled as a prayer. There really is no reward in that situation, because most everyone can tell what is happening while it is happening. The pristine, eloquent prayer that serves only to send a message that the person praying knows how to pray, that can impress other humans and impressing humans is all it will get you. God is yawning the entire time, even while other humans are on the edge of their seats.

So the natural reaction is that any eloquent prayer is sinful, therefore we should make all of our prayers as ineloquent as possible. We should grunt our prayers like uncouth Neanderthals. We should mispronounce words on purpose, just to sound inarticulate. Surely that’s the way to go! But again, we are simply looking for the “right way to pray.” It becomes a performance yet again; a mechanical process designed for maximum efficiency. We are looking for the kind of prayer that “works.” And again, if it ever does work, or make people think more of us, we’ve got our reward.

Prayer works, but it does more than just work. It brings us into conversation with the almighty creator of the cosmos. And conversation, as awkward as it can be initially, can get very interesting. Eventually, as you converse with someone else you find fascinating, you begin to forget yourself. You are asking questions not to sound smart, but because you are genuinely curious. You open yourself, not because you want or need validation, but because you want to share more of who you are; you want to be known. Yes, along the way, every friendship has benefits - favors can be asked, time can be set aside, kindnesses can be given and received. But they are never the main thing (not the reward) but the byproduct of a deepening friendship. Relationship is the ultimate reward of any conversation. Conversations that see anything other than relationship to be the ultimate reward are manipulative, not real interaction.

What is the place for written prayers in the divine conversation? Aren’t written prayers all meant to make us sound more eloquent than we are? If that is the case, we’d better stop reading the Psalms. Or saying the Lord’s Prayer. But these are “prayer-templates” graciously given to help us enter into the Living Conversation. Yes, if they are used to try to manipulate God better, then don’t use them. But if they express something that you can latch your Amen onto, and help you put into words something that was previously very difficult for you to express, then by all means use them. God might employ them to reveal something to you about himself and then you find that the ball is rolling and you two are interacting. Or short sentence “prayer darts” that you can shoot off can be very helpful during the day during work or other situations in which it is difficult to say more. Or even repeating a very profound sentence of scripture can be a wonderful way to come into The Presence. Or even just a few words and a lot of silence. Don’t look for the right, human-approved way to get God to do what you want him to. Just start the conversation and remember there are two sides to it.