Shut up and pray

For as long as I can remember I've been taught that prayer is what good Christians do. As a boy, I remember my dad, his coarse cheek pressed against mine and smelling of cigarette smoke at the end of the day, leaning close and saying the words;

"now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep

And if I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take."

Dad's thick Cuban accent made the whole event mysterious and his commanding physical presence convinced me that, whatever else prayer was, it was really important. I look back now as an adult and I have to admit, the prayer itself was lame, but I sure loved being close to my father.

Mom never let us begin a meal without first saying a prayer; even when we ate out. It was a practice that made me feel both uncomfortable and secure; as if the mere act of prayer was an awkward sign to the watching world that we were religious folk and should be respected for it! I usually prayed with one eye open though, just to see who was watching.

I got bigger and I prayed more; at times more seriously-sometimes more thoughtlessly. Others around me spoke of prayer too. We read books about prayer; went to conferences on prayer. Even my friends who made no pretense about being religious saw some practical benefit to prayer; my college teammates asked me to pray on game day. I was willing, but I insisted on praying "“win or lose...so what'’s it going to be?" I asked.

"S@#!t yeah"” they said. "Let's pray!"

So we prayed; we won some...lost some.

I'’m older now. And still praying, but I often wonder if I really get it. I mean, after more than 40 years on this planet, I'm painfully aware of my humanity. My frailty, my weaknesses, my limitations are profoundly obvious. A quick glance in the mirror proves my point. So how in the world,…better yet, why in the world do I pray?

Who am I that I should even pretend to speak to God?

Realistically, what can I expect from Him?

And more importantly, when can I expect it?

The last couple of questions expose the flaw in my thinking; and I'm not alone in this. We tend to think that prayer is our attempt to initiate communication with God. We begin a meal with prayer. We start church services with prayer. We pray in the locker room before the game. Shoot, we even pray before the drivers start their engines at the Indy 500! We do all this as if God is sitting and waiting; as if WE are the ones to start things. We forget Who was here first. We forget that "in the Beginning...was the Word," not Tom, or Steve, or Heather or Lisa. And I fear that our forgetfulness is ruining our prayer lives. God is not sitting and waiting for us to wake Him. He does not need us to wave frantically from Earth saying, "“yo! I'’m talking here!"” As if He was unable to hear and unlikely to respond.

Prayer is what one author called "“answering speech."” It is in response to God'’s initiative, not ours. Prayer; the kind of prayer we hunger for – is the response of the soul to the realization that God is at work in our world and in our lives.

Prayer is language.

Think of it this way: how do our kids learn to speak English? We don'’t give them a textbook when they're 2 and tell them to read it so that we can begin to communicate do we? No. They learn to speak the language by being spoken to. Prayer is the same. We learn this "“language" when we realize that God is speaking to us.

The more we listen, the better we speak.

I counsel couples all the time and one of the foundational things we deal with is communication. The reality is that good communication is the source of everything beautiful in a relationship,…and bad communication is the source of most of what is painful and damaging. What amazes me is how true this principle is; and it doesn't matter if you'’re not yet married or if you've been married 50 years.

Someone once commented that we'’ve got ears and only one mouth; there must be a reason for that.

For years, Ive been doing a simple exercise with couples designed to improve communication. What I’ve discovered is that the exercise works in our prayer life as well. Now I'’m not saying that God Himself needs to work on improving his communication. He'’s pretty much got it down. We, on the other hand, could use some practice. Here's how it works: the couple takes turns doing one of two things. First, they simply tell the other person what they need. Its called "“assertiveness"” and it simply means the person communicating does so in a healthy, nondefensive, and noninsistent way. It means they ask the other person clearly for what they want, doing so in a positive and respectful way. Rather than the wife railing at her husband, "“you NEVER listen to me!"” She says, "“it would encourage me more if we could have some regular time to talk together." The other person (husband in this case) is then instructed to repeat back to the wife what she said in such a way that both of them are clear about the message communicated. I instruct the husband to begin his response with the words, "so what I hear you saying is..."…
He then repeats the words spoken to him; no editing, no interpretation, no rebuttals. It'’s called "“active listening."

This is a great exercise for deepening prayer. I say this because:

1) we all have needs and we need to communicate them to Someone who not only cares, but who has the capacity and inclination to do something about it.

2) God has spoken and is speaking to us all the time.

The bottom line is, communication is happening between us and God constantly. If we feel like that communication is poor, the fault is our own as is the responsibility to do something about it.

So let's try to shut up and pray.