CHAPTER 1
âWHAT GOOD DOES IT DO?â
I was camping for the weekend in the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania with five of our six kids. My wife, Jill, was home with our eight-year-old daughter, Kim. After a disastrous camping experience the summer before, Jill was happy to stay home. She said she was giving up camping for Lent.
I was walking down from our campsite to our Dodge Caravan when I noticed our fourteen-year-old daughter, Ashley, standing in front of the van, tense and upset. When I asked her what was wrong, she said, âI lost my contact lens. Itâs gone.â I looked down with her at the forest floor, covered with leaves and twigs. There were a million little crevices for the lens to fall into and disappear.
I said, âAshley, donât move. Letâs pray.â But before I could pray, she burst into tears. âWhat good does it do? Iâve prayed for Kim to speak, and she isnât speaking.â
Kim struggles with autism and developmental delay. Because of her weak fine motor skills and problems with motor planning, she is also mute. One day after five years of speech therapy, Kim crawled out of the speech therapistâs office, crying from frustration. Jill said, âNo more,â and we stopped speech therapy.
Prayer was no mere formality for Ashley. She had taken God at his word and asked that he would let Kim speak. But nothing happened. Kimâs muteness was testimony to a silent God. Prayer, it seemed, doesnât work.
Few of us have Ashleyâs courage to articulate the quiet cynicism or spiritual weariness that develops in us when heartfelt prayer goes unanswered. We keep our doubts hidden even from ourselves because we donât want to sound like bad Christians. No reason to add shame to our cynicism. So our hearts shut down.
The glib way people talk about prayer often reinforces our cynicism. We end our conversations with âIâll keep you in my prayers.â We have a vocabulary of âprayer speak,â including âIâll lift you up in prayerâ and âIâll remember you in prayer.â Many who use these phrases, including us, never get around to praying. Why? Because we donât think prayer makes much difference.
Cynicism and glibness are just part of the problem. The most common frustration is the activity of praying itself. We last for about fifteen seconds, and then out of nowhere the dayâs to-do list pops up and our minds are off on a tangent. We catch ourselves and, by sheer force of the will, go back to praying. Before we know it, it has happened again. Instead of praying, we are doing a confused mix of wandering and worrying. Then the guilt sets in. Something must be wrong with me. Other Christians donât seem to have this trouble praying. After five minutes we give up, saying, âI am no good at this. I might as well get some work done.â
Something is wrong with us. Our natural desire to pray comes from Creation. We are made in the image of God. Our inability to pray comes from the Fall. Evil has marred the image. We want to talk to God but canât. The friction of our desire to pray, combined with our badly damaged prayer antennae, leads to constant frustration. Itâs as if weâve had a stroke.
Complicating this is the enormous confusion about what makes for good prayer. We vaguely sense that we should begin by focusing on God, not on ourselves. So when we start to pray, we try to worship. That works for a minute, but it feels contrived; then guilt sets in again. We wonder, Did I worship enough? Did I really mean it?
In a burst of spiritual enthusiasm we put together a prayer list, but praying through the list gets dull, and nothing seems to happen. The list gets long and cumbersome; we lose touch with many of the needs. Praying feels like whistling in the wind. When someone is healed or helped, we wonder if it would have happened anyway. Then we misplace the list.
Praying exposes how self-preoccupied we are and uncovers our doubts. It was easier on our faith not to pray. After only a few minutes, our prayer is in shambles. Barely out of the starting gate, we collapse on the sidelines âcynical, guilty, and hopeless.
The Hardest Place in the World to Pray
American culture is probably the hardest place in the world to learn to pray. We are so busy that when we slow down to pray, we find it uncomfortable. We prize accomplishments, production. But prayer is nothing but talking to God. It feels useless, as if we are wasting time. Every bone in our bodies screams, âGet to work.â
When we arenât working, we are used to being entertained. Television, the Internet, video games, and cell phones make free time as busy as work. When we do slow down, we slip into a stupor. Exhausted by the pace of life, we veg out in front of a screen or with earplugs.
If we try to be quiet, we are assaulted by what C. S. Lewis called âthe Kingdom of Noise.â[1] Everywhere we go we hear background noise. If the noise isnât provided for us, we can bring our own via iPod.
Even our church services can have that same restless energy. There is little space to be still before God. We want our moneyâs worth, so something should always be happening. We are uncomfortable with silence.
One of the subtlest hindrances to prayer is probably the most pervasive. In the broader culture and in our churches, we prize intellect, competency, and wealth. Because we can do life without God, praying seems nice but unnecessary. Money can do what prayer does, and it is quicker and less time-consuming. Our trust in ourselves and in our talents makes us structurally independent of God. As a result, exhortations to pray donât stick.
The Oddness of Praying
Itâs worse if we stop and think about how odd prayer is. When we have a phone conversation, we hear a voice and can respond. When we pray, we are talking to air. Only crazy people talk to themselves. How do we talk with a Spirit, with someone who doesnât speak with an audible voice?
And if we believe that God can talk to us in prayer, how do we distinguish our thoughts from his thoughts? Prayer is confusing. We vaguely know that the Holy Spirit is somehow involved, but we are never sure how or when a spirit will show up or what that even means. Some people seem to have a lot of the Spirit. We donât.
Forget about God for a minute. Where do you fit in? Can you pray for what you want? And whatâs the point of praying if God already knows what you need? Why bore God? It sounds like nagging. Just thinking about prayer ties us all up in knots.
Has this been your experience? If so, know that you have lots of company. Most Christians feel frustrated when it comes to prayer!
A Visit to a Prayer Therapist
Letâs imagine that you see a prayer therapist to get your prayer life straightened out. The therapist says, âLetâs begin by looking at your relationship with your heavenly Father. God said, âI will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to meâ (2Â Corinthians 6:18). What does it mean that you are a son or daughter of God?â
You reply that it means you have complete access to your heavenly Father through Jesus. You have true intimacy, based not on how good you are but on the goodness of Jesus. Not only that, Jesus is your brother. You are a fellow heir with him.
The therapist smiles and says, âThat is right. Youâve done a wonderful job of describing the doctrine of Sonship. Now tell me what it is like for you to be with your Father? What is it like to talk with him?â
You cautiously tell the therapist how difficult it is to be in your Fatherâs presence, even for a couple of minutes. Your mind wanders. You arenât sure what to say. You wonder, Does prayer make any difference? Is God even there? Then you feel guilty for your doubts and just give up.
I WONDERED, DOES PRAYER MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE? IS GOD EVEN THERE?
Your therapist tells you what you already suspect. âYour relationship with your heavenly Father is dysfunctional. You talk as if you have an intimate relationship, but you donât. Theoretically, it is close. Practically, it is distant. You need help.â
Ashleyâs Contact
I needed help when Ashley burst into tears in front of our minivan. I was frozen, caught between her doubts and my own. I had no idea that sheâd been praying for Kim to speak. What made Ashleyâs tears so disturbing was that she was right. God had not answered her prayers. Kim was still mute. I was fearful for my daughterâs faith and for my own. I did not know what to do.
Would I make the problem worse by praying? If we prayed and couldnât find the contact, it would just confirm Ashleyâs growing unbelief. Already, Jill and I were beginning to lose her heart. Her childhood faith in God was being replaced by faith in boys. Ashley was cute, warm, and outgoing. Jill was having trouble keeping track of Ashleyâs boyfriends, so she started naming them like ancient kings. Ashleyâs first boyfriend was Frank, so his successors became Frank the Second, Frank the Third, and so on. Jill and I needed help.
I had little confidence God would do anything, but I prayed silently, Father, this would be a really good time to come through. Youâve got to hear this prayer for the sake of Ashley. Then I prayed aloud with Ashley, âFather, help us to find this contact.â
When I finished, we bent down to look through the dirt and twigs. There, sitting on a leaf, was the missing lens.
Prayer made a difference after all.
[1] C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 171.
CHAPTER 2
WHERE WE ARE HEADED
Even if you feel that you pray badly, we need to know what good prayer looks and feels like in order to develop a praying life. Knowing where we are headed can help us on the journey. So before we get into the nitty-gritty of how to pray, letâs get a clearer picture of what we are aiming for.
The Praying Life . . . Feels like Dinner with Good Friends
The highlight of Kimâs week is our Saturday evening meal with Mom-Mom, her grandmother, at a local restaurant. On a hot summer day or a bitter winter day, Kim comes in exhausted from her job as a dog walker at a kennel, but she perks up when she sits down to eat with Mom-Mom. We prop up her speech computer in front of her, and she chats away on her 112-key keyboard. We never get tired of hearing her electronic voice, partly because weâre never sure what is going to come out next.
Recently, we were in a restaurant, and Kim ordered lasagna with her speech computer by selecting a three-icon sequence that spoke the word lasagna.[1] When the waitress told Kim the lasagna was vegetarian, Kim, not being a fan of vegetables and not liking change of any sort, hit the table with her fist, making the silverware and plates dance. The poor waitress about jumped out of her shoes. When she came back with our food, she circled us cautiously, not sure when she was going to get a repeat performance. Our family will be telling that story for years.
Our best times together as a family are at dinner. At home after a meal, we push our dishes aside and linger together over coffee or hot chocolate. We have no particular agenda; we simply enjoy one another. Listening, talking, and laughing. If you experience the same thing with good friends or with family, you know it is a little touch of heaven.
When Jesus describes the intimacy he wants with us, he talks about joining us for dinner. âBehold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with meâ (Revelation 3:20).
A praying life feels like our family mealtimes because prayer is all about relationship. Itâs intimate and hints at eternity. We donât think about communication or words but about whom we are talking with. Prayer is simply the medium through which we experience and connect to God.
Oddly enough, many people struggle to learn how to pray because they are focusing on praying, not on God. Making prayer the center is like making conversation the center of a family mealtime. In prayer, focusing on the conversation is like trying to drive while looking at the windshield instead of through it. It freezes us, making us unsure of where to go. Conversation is only the vehicle through which we experience one another. Consequently, prayer is not the center of this book. Getting to know a person, God, is the center.
The Praying Life . . . Is Interconnected with All of Life
Because prayer is all about relationship, we canât work on prayer as an isolated part of life. That would be like going to the gym and working out just your left arm. Youâd get a strong left arm, but it ...