For all its importance – and for all its benefits – prayer is the most often overlooked spiritual discipline. It is very rare to be part of a small group that does not have at least one member who is struggling to maintain a prayer life. That dynamic is also true among clergy. How could it not? Pastors and church leaders are just people too. We all struggle to spend time in prayer from time to time because prayer is a spiritual exercise. As such it is foreign to both our physical selves and the world we live in. It does not come naturally to take time out of a busy day to engage in a conversation with someone the rest of the world ignores. Reality is that while the Trinity enjoys intimate and complete communication without end, the people He made in His image – living in the world He made expressly for His glory – often carry on our lives not even looking to speak to Him.
That’s ironic, because we are all made for relationship, and the best relationship is one where someone else knows you and loves you anyway. Of course, He knows us completely and thoroughly, for He is our creator. He knows our beginning from our end and the number of days appointed to us. He knows every hair on our heads, every intention and motivation of our hearts. He knows everything there is to know about us, and He knows all that without talking to us and without interrupting the never-ending conversation between Father, Son and Spirit. For He is God, and we are not.
Still, while we are so far removed from the divine and have nothing to say He does not already know, He yet longs to hear us speaking to Him. Like a father who can’t wait to talk to his children, He stoops down to our level, just to invest in who we are. In spite of our faulty or absent prayer lives, He looks right at us, and He speaks. God speaks through His Word, through His Spirit’s presence, through His still small voice that guides us aright. God speaks through those who have immersed themselves in Him by study and by sitting under solid preaching and teaching. God speaks through circumstance and providence, directing our paths in the way we must go. God can and does speak through innumerable ways and means. God even speaks through creation itself!
We on the other hand, have only one way to speak to Him. The disciple of God must pray. We must pray to understand and to feel understood. We must pray to communicate, and to build a relationship. He knows this. Every relationship we ever engage in begins with speaking. With communication. Our relationship with God is no exception. He knows this, so He has spoken to us that we might know to speak to Him, and how to speak to Him.
We must pray! To that very point Jesus said, “And when you pray..” Not “If”, but “When”. Whenever we can. Whenever we feel we must. Whenever the thought strikes us. This is how the Father lavishes His love on us. The creator of all, the sustainer of all, the One the whole universe answers to – somehow opens His ears to us, bends down to hear us and listens intently to us. Whenever. Whenever we barge into the throne room of grace. Whenever we need forgiveness. Whenever we need a compassionate friend. Whenever we recognize a need. Whenever we are hurt, or are happy, or are bored, or have seen something that reminds us of the privilege we have or experience a prompting to. Whenever we pray.
How jealous the angels must be. How creation must be amazed. The Father – the King – even God Most High, always having time for His children. Whenever.
Jesus stands ready to take every prayer of ours, however imperfect in knowledge, however feeble in expression, however marred with sorrow, and he presents the purified and perfected prayer with his own merit, and it is sure to speed.
Charles Spurgeon
APPLICATION: Thanksgiving
Pray to express your gratitude to Our Father for the love He so lavishes on us, that His door is always open!