"One Sunday, after another week of performing my best for God, I stood to preach His life-changing Word. As I approached the pulpit, the truth hit me squarely between the eyes. I hadn't prayed at all. Not that day. Not the day before. Not the day before that. To the best of my knowledge, I hadn't prayed all week. And I called myself a pastor. That's when it dawned on me: I had become a full-time minister and a part-time follower of Christ. From the outside, I looked the part. "God bless you," I'd say, followed by the promise, "I'll be praying for you." But that was usually a lie."
Craig Groeschel "Confessions Of A Pastor"
Learning to follow Jesus is absolutely a life-long quest for genuineness. There is always the presence of a common enemy whose only intent is to draw disciples of Jesus into a phony, if unintentional, way of practicing what we profess to believe. Even people who know better, people who know they are sliding down a slippery slope toward the spiritual lie but choose to ignore the reality. I too have been there and struggled with just admitting to myself and my Father that I was very negligent in my relationship with him in prayer.
Where are you right now in your skill development in this area of your spiritual life? Take a moment to think about this. Prayer is a learned skill that we are taught by the Holy Spirit to practice to perfection. But that perfection isn't at all about repeating traditional prayers or phrases or even using words we may have heard someone else pray during worship on Sunday. None of those are wrong unless they become a habit that gets stuck in a meaningless ritual. Just pray. It's a conversation with your Father who is anxious to hear your voice speaking only to and for him.
In all my years of church leadership, I have heard thousands of good men and women, young and old, confess just about every kind of sin you can imagine. But I cannot recall even one instance of someone confessing the sin of prayerlessness. To hear that come from the mouth of a mega church pastor really shocked me. Of course he goes on to other confessions in his book but to make this confession before his church family really cuts to the heart of his calling. I respect that.
Many years ago, these words of David stood me straight up and got my attention -
"In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation." Psalm 5:3 NIV
"Listen God! Please, pay attention! Can you make sense of these ramblings, my groans and cries? King-God, I need your help. Every morning you'll hear me at it again. Every morning I lay out the pieces of my life on your altar and watch for fire to descend." Psalm 5:1-3 MSG
David has challenged me to pray with absolute expectation. Doing so isn't always easy. It wasn't for him either. I've learned to not try to explain what God does or doesn't do. He does what he pleases because he is God and I wont always understand or even agree with his actions. He is my Father and I fully trust him to hear my heart and act in my best interest, even though I may not see it immediately. These words of Paul have also helped me learn to pray with expectation:
"The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will." Romans 8:26-27 NIV
That "weakness" is common to all of us, which is one of the reasons God has given us the Spirit as a gift. He instructs and trains us in the critical spiritual disciplines, but through that process, he also takes our prayers to the Father and puts them in a language we are incapable of learning, while God reads our hearts. Wow, that truly inspires me in ways I can't even put into words.
Until next time, spend some time wrestling with 1 Thessalonians 5:17.
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