How’s your prayer life?
Hardly any question — unless perhaps if someone asks about your evangelistic efforts — can cause more chin-dropping, foot-shuffling embarrassment for Christians than asking about their prayer life.
Why is that? Why do so many followers of Jesus suffer with such unsatisfying prayer lives and consider themselves hopelessly second-rate Christians because of it?
Method Is Our Madness
For almost all followers of Jesus, I believe the problem in prayer is not with the quality of the Christian, but with the method of their prayer.
The problem is not that we pray about the same old things. To pray about the same things most of the time is normal. That’s because our lives tend to consist of the same things from one day to the next. Thankfully, dramatic changes in our lives usually don’t occur very often.
No, the problem isn’t that we pray about the same old things; the problem is that we tend to say the same old things about the same old things. The result is that we can be talking to the most fascinating Person in the universe about the most important things in our lives — and be bored to death.
So we can experience boredom in prayer, not because we don’t love God, and not because we don’t love who or what we’re praying about, but because of our method.
Solution in the Spirit
What is the solution? Well, whatever it is, it must be simple. God has children all over the planet, and they represent the widest imaginable diversity in language, culture, age, IQ, education, and Christian privilege (such as access to a Bible preaching church, Christian books, Christian content online, and more). If all these believers, despite the various and dramatic differences among them, are invited to pray, then prayer must be doable by all God’s children.
PRAYER #18 - Soften My Heart
Over the next few days, we will explore specific, tangible ways to break through the boredom, and melt down the plastic prayers of our routine. But today, pray for a softening of your heart, a preparation for new movement.
Humility will always guarantee spiritual movement in your life, so let us pray for a reduction in pride, a removal of the roadblocks to an effective prayer life.
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