Praying.
I've found myself doing a lot of it recently.
I used to find it hard.
So hard.
At the start of my relationship with Jesus I marvelled at the sheer beauty of it.
Prayer that is.
Yet as I moved onwards through the strands of time, I regressed to a place where I found it hard.
Really hard.
It seemed pointless, it seemed empty at times. Like no one was listening. Like God didn't really feel like listening to me.
I read about prayer, studied it, searched for the essence of it, had conversations about it, learned from people who really know about prayer, taught on it, spoke about it, championed it, while doing it less and less. And when I did it felt dry, forced and cliched.
Praying.
I wondered what it was? I wondered why I was fascinated by it? And I wondered why it seemed to evade me.
I used to find it hard.
Yet.
It changed.
Why?
Because I realised something.
Something important to me.
I saw prayer as a thing that I had to do. Which of course in one sense it is. I saw it as something that was required. A discipline that was a necessary part of being a Christian, but in a kind of unhealthy regimented way. Something I should perform at various points throughout the day in order to fulfil my christian walk.
But.
I was missing the beauty of a relationship with Jesus that in fact can be every minute of every day.
And
Because of that.
It was dry
Really dry
There seemed to be something missing.
So as I studied, observed, experienced and participated in many aspects and traditions of prayer from the monastic to the mad, I kept seeing quite a bit of the same trudge towards fulfilling a requirement.
The definately was something missing.
Then.
It changed for me.
It was the night I sat with a homeless man in the quiet hours after midnight, in a small city doorway on a street prayer shift.
He was slightly drunk. I had gone to see if he was OK. I knew him from our church, and I wanted to check on him. I ended up sitting with him for a few hours. He was looking up at the sky. He offered me a swig of his half bottle of vodka. I declined. He asked me why I didn't drink. I told him about my decision to become a Salvation Army Officer. He laughed. He then said that he wished he could give up the drink. He knew it is killing him. He then switched the conversation around. He said That he was very glad he was not a Salvation Army Officer. Intrigued, I asked him why? He said "You have to pray officially!" He then went on to tell me that he prays, right there in the doorway, "And God talks back to me" he said with a kind of nonchalance that was utterly genuine.
I spent the next few days fixed on his words.
And.
The penny dropped.
I had made prayer official.
An official part of my work.
I know we have to pray officially in one sense of the word, and the bible urges us to pray without ceasing.
But.
I had been doing it out of a weird sense of duty.
Officially!
I hadn't meant to.
But after all the knowledge of prayer gleaned over having my head in books, or my ears in a lecture hall, or my eyes watching people pray, I had made it a thing that I should do instead of a thing I really wanted to do.
I had made it official.
And it was dry and lifeless.
And.
Meaningless.
In a flash.
I really wanted what this man in a doorway had.
A simple dialogue with Jesus.
It's all I ever wanted really.
And I dropped my old way of praying and picked a new way straight way.
I've never looked back.
The complexities of prayer have so often succeeded in stifling the simplicity of it.
I often wonder if I was actually speaking with Jesus in that doorway. Because it was a crucial moment in my life. For all the lectures and books, which have taught me so much, it took a homeless man, in desperate danger of death, to teach me a ground breaking lesson.
That prayer isn't official.
A thing we have to do or should do.
But prayer is a precious thing that I should want to do.
And I found that I desperately wanted that.
So I just started doing that.
Talking to him not in cliches or a particular style.
I just started being, well, me.
I dropped trying to speak to God like an eloquent man, which i'm not, or sitting around moping because I didn't get an answer. I dropped trying to pray like some of the people I had seen praying what I thought were amazing prayers. I closed the distance I had created by making prayer a chore instead of a want.
The beauty of a real relationship with God returned to my life.
Vibrant, real and true.
Prayer is the essence of the covenant.
The binding strand between us being His people and Him being our God.
Praying.
Without it there is no relationship.
Without it there will be no Church.
Is it time to stop making it difficult?
Is this for you tonight?
Is it?
