Outgrowing Prayer

I've been thinking a lot lately about my prayer life. I've been so busy over the past few months, and my time has been so tightly scheduled most days that things have had to change, because my prayer life was up and down a bit. I have had struggles with prayer throughout my Christian life. There have been times when I faithfully kept a prayer journal. That turned out to be too pragmatic a thing for me, although it was nice to look back through my journal years later and see how God worked in the things I prayed about. That was a kind of treat.

There have been times where I felt I was going through a "dry spell" spiritually speaking, or times when everything was going so smoothly, that I sort of gradually worried less and less about whether or not I should be praying, only to have the Lord get my attention one way or another and remind me of where my focus needs to be.

This time, things have been a little different. I guess I have at least learned a thing or two over the years. Going into a time of highly increased activity, I was conscious that something like this could happen. The way I do prayer had to change a little bit going in.

I always had a tendency to be easily distracted when I was younger. I still struggle with that. At work, my job promotes a sort of "scatterbrained" mentality. It is extremely rare that I can ever start and finish a single project, and many days a single small task, without many interruptions. You get very spread out over several tasks and projects running simultaneously, each vying for priority due to either customer demand or direction from my superior.

Several things have helped me over the years to move past, for the most part, my natural tendency to be distracted and the work habits I built on the job. My martial arts instructor helped me quite a lot with focus over the years, and he helped me to counteract the thinking patterns I had developed, by cultivating in different ways, the habit of concentrating on where I am, and the elements around me. That is the practical side.

On the spiritual side, I have learned over the years that though God lives in the "eternal present", we do not. That may be an over-simplified statement, but it has obvious meaning for me. I can't do anything about the past. Even apologies for the past are made in the present, and the Bible tells us to press on toward those things which are ahead, concentrating on Jesus, right from wherever He has us. (Phil. 3:13-14)

I think I'm like a lot of other believers. When I pray, my mind will occasionally trail off to something meaningless and I have to get back on track. One simple, practical way I overcome that is to pray out loud whenever possible. That isn't always possible. I went through a time like this before, and a friend asked me when I took time to pray alone with God. At that time I was a young Christian and I answered sheepishly that I didn't really have a lot of alone time with God but that I sort of prayed along silently, whenever I could as the whole day progressed. He said, "That's kind of beautiful though." I agree with that statement, because we have a God who by His goodness elicits the desire to follow after and talk with Him, a desire to be more like Him. As I have moved through these last few months, trying to keep my head above water, I have grown closer to Him, and I have prayed about my prayer life.

When Paul prayed for the Ephesian church in chapter one of that letter, he tells the believers there that his prayers for them are constant , and that he "does not cease" to do so. He tells them the reasons for his prayers and he gives thanks to God because in His sovereignty, He is working in and through His church, His born-again believers.

The individual believer makes his petitions to God the same way, knowing that God is working, sovereignly in his or her own life, directing, growing and controlling their destiny. I want my life to bear a genuine witness to the faith that I have in Jesus Christ. Having faith in Jesus, I must have love for all the believing body of Christ, and for the world at large. Loving God first and then others is something that strongly, I believe, identifies the true Christian. Prayer is just a natural outgrowth of the Christian heart where these things are ordered. I have a responsibility to pray, but it is much more than that. I have the privilege of being able to put my face to the floor, so-to-speak, in the throne room of Almighty God.