“I just can’t do it! I just…can’t…it’s impossible! I get unfocused and bored so easily. I guess I’m just…a…I mean, I guess I just…don’t…” Carmen, a high school Junior was frustrated and throwing her hands up in a mixture of sadness and disgust.
Picking up on her feelings I asked her directly: “it seems that you’re angry with yourself. Why are you so upset?
That’s all it took and she burst into tears, between loud, messy sobs, she gasped: “I just…got…baptized…I mean I love Him and I…want to talk to Jesus…I guess I just don’t understand”—I knew what she wanted to say, but I didn’t know whether she would have the courage to actually say the words out loud—“why is it so…hard?!…
There it was! Good for her! The first step in making life change is being able to be honest and own it, and she did.
The Biggest Problem
Out of all the difficulties of being a Christian, by far, prayer has been the biggest problem and the most challenging for the vast majority. I’ve been a Jesus-follower now for more than fifty years, and I’ve given this a lot of thought and struggled with the same difficulty as well. So, why is it so hard? Well, the obvious problem is that He’s, well, invisible!
I was working with a set of Sophomore fraternal twins, which meant that they didn’t look like each other, but were the same age and had the same birthdate; their father was an Army Special Forces soldier, and was deployed in a confidential active war zone, so in order to speak with him, they got creative. She took a picture of his face and put it on an old fashioned 12-inch “G.I. Joe” figurine, and spoke to it daily. And he made daily video and audio journals of his life. Each one of them realized the realistic problem of his: being alive; being present; and being absent from their present reality—but they found a creative way to overcome it, in order to share their lives with their dad!
Prayer = Time to Eat!
A lot of people think that prayer is something you do during certain portions of the day. At mealtimes, going to bed at night, and when you’re in trouble. But prayer should be natural and continuous. It should be like breathing. God doesn’t just want you to talk to him when you need something, but even when you don’t need something. He really just cares to know about what’s going on with you and how you’re feeling.
I really didn’t understand or comprehend the importance and the power of prayer, until I had children. I have two children, a 22-year-old daughter and an 18-year old son. Both of my kids are now grown up and no longer live at home, but when they did, the highlight of my day was for me to be able to get home and ask my children how their day went and just to talk with them and spend time with them. To commune and communicate with them! Now if I get excited about hanging out with my children and listening to their requests, complaints, funny stories, and just general craziness of their days, then think of how much more God loves to do that!
People have always asked me: “Omar, if it’s so important, then why is it so hard?” Well, I think it’s hard for five reasons:
1. Sin has gotten in the way of us communicating with God and has given us a warped and wrong view of Him. This makes it difficult for us to believe that He really wants to talk to us or is really listening.
2. We don’t know what to say to God and many of us don’t really think that we should bother because God already knows what we’re going to do before we already do it.
3. At our core, we’re really lazy and selfish and don’t view it as necessary to talk to God about everything. We figure we can keep God in the “back pocket” of our lives and pull Him out whenever we need Him–basically whenever a situation has become too big for us to handle by ourselves.
4. We’re not really willing to be honest about what we’re thinking and feeling.
5. We have a hard time paying attention and we lose attention and focus quickly.
A Conversation with Dad
Prayer is, if we look at the life of Christ, intimate dealings with our heavenly Father. Referring to God in prayer as “my Father” was virtually unheard of during Christ’s time. Jews typically referred to God in prayer as Yahweh, my Lord, my God, or God of my father. Thus, Jesus revolutionized prayer in a way that is consistent with the radical nature of His ministry.
With no previous examples of faithful Jews addressing God as “Father” in prayer, the supremely faithful Jew (Jesus) refers to God as “Father” almost exclusively in his recorded prayers. There must be a very good reason for this development.
The Aramaic word abba refers to a father-child relationship. Before Christ’s time, Aramaic-speaking children would learn to refer to their parents as abba and imma. During Christ’s life, not only small children used abba, but also grown children would refer to their father as abba. Yet, to address God as abba would have been deemed disrespectful by Jews. What our Lord did was new and, as I say, revolutionary in how to approach God.
If Jesus was not who He was (the only-begotten Son), we would have grounds for joining with the Jews in accusing him of blasphemy: “This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God” (John 5:18). But, because of Jesus’s unique and therefore special relationship to the Father, it remains most appropriate to address him as Father.
As the eternal Son of the Father, the intimate relationship they enjoyed manifests itself clearly in the audible prayer of Christ in Matthew 11:27, “My Father has entrusted everything to me. No one truly knows the Son except the Father, and no one truly knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” Given the intimacy clearly revealed in the mutual knowledge Father and Son possess of one another, Jesus rightly relates to him as Father and paves the way for us to do the same.
Praise God!
The Fine Print
Admittedly, many big books have been written about this topic, and it’s not my goal to comprehensively address every issue about prayer. My goal is to address the biggest problem, and to give you real-world solutions to help you to effectively connect with Jesus through prayer.
Face to Face…with God?!
The Bible tells us of a time when people spoke with God face to face. It first happened in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve, the first humans ever, walked and talked with God daily (Genesis 3:8-10), but then, in that same chapter, they sinned and lost, not the ability, but the desire, to walk with God.
In Exodus 33: 7-11 we have the incredible story of Moses talking with God face to face! Don’t miss it, the Bible says that “the Lord spoke to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend.” What a beautiful picture of the kind of communion, communication, and closeness we should–and more importantly–can have with God, every day! We can just speak to Him about whatever kind of issue we’re having. What do you think Moses and God spoke about? Did it matter to God? The important thing was that Moses was speaking to God every day! Any relationship will generally have its ups and downs; its good days and bad days, but God still wants to hear from you.
Writer, Ellen G. White made this keen observation about prayer:
“Keep your wants, your joys, your sorrows, your cares, and your fears before God. You cannot burden Him; you cannot weary Him. He who numbers the hairs of your head is not indifferent to the wants of His children. “The Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy” James 5:11. His heart of love is touched by our sorrows and even by our utterances of them. Take to Him everything that perplexes the mind. Nothing is too great for Him to bear, for He holds up worlds, He rules over all the affairs of the universe. Nothing that in any way concerns our peace is too small for Him to notice. There is no chapter in our experience too dark for Him to read; there is no perplexity too difficult for Him to unravel. No calamity can befall the least of His children, no anxiety harass the soul, no joy cheer, no sincere prayer escape the lips, of which our heavenly Father is unobservant, or in which He takes no immediate interest. “He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds” Psalm 147:3. The relations between God and each soul are as distinct and full as though there were not another soul upon the earth to share His watchcare, not another soul for whom He gave His beloved Son.”
There’s an entire chapter, titled “The Privilege of Prayer”, in a wonderful book called Steps to Christ, that she wrote just on prayer; I’ve included a link to the chapter in the “Additional Resources” section at the end of our time together.
How to Do It
So how do you do it? There’s no exact right or wrong way, process or system–you just speak with Him as you would a friend, because He wants you to feel comfortable with Him. However, if you want to learn about some of the more common methods and ways, you can check out the link at the “Additional Resources” section.
You’re Kind of a Big Deal!
Remember, He cared enough about you to send His Son, Jesus Christ, to be born, live, die, and be raised from the dead so you and I could have eternal life in order to commune with Him, and grow eternally closer to Him; that makes you and me kind of a big deal. I don’t know how anybody can think of that and not have incredibly positive self-esteem!
Several years ago, I remember reading a story about the United States President John F. Kennedy (JFK). I don’t remember what the story specifically was about, but I do remember the fact that the author related the fact that JFK was a great father and loved to play and spend time with his children throughout his days at work in the White House. The author reported of a time when President Kennedy was spending time with several high-ranking officials and heads of state, when he excused himself, just to spend several minutes with his son and speak and play with him. If that’s what a human father does for his son, how much more do you think our Heavenly Father will take time out of His busy schedule of running all of creation to spend several moments with you listening to what’s on your mind!
The “Jesus Way” to Pray
We think that we’re all so slick in our 21st century perspectives, TED Talks, motivational speakers, and Life Hacks, but Jesus’ first twelve disciples were the original seekers of the tried and true “Jesus Way” to pray. One day someone woke up and realized that they literally had access to all the power in the entire world, but they had to learn how to access it, so they went directly to the source and (Luke 11:1)…well, read the story for yourself:
“When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I tell you the truth, that is all the reward they will ever get. But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you. “When you pray, don’t babble on and on as the Gentiles do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again. Don’t be like them, for your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him! Pray like this: Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us today the food we need, and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us. And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one (Matthew 6:5-13, NLT).
Anxiety-Free Guarantee!
So far we’ve found out that we can speak to God about whatever’s on our mind and we can speak to Him as we do a friend. The Bible tells us a couple of more interesting things about prayer; namely, that when we pray God’s way, we can receive an anxiety-free guarantee! God will give us incredible, unshakeable, and illogical peace! Once again, let’s see what the Bible has to say about this:
Philippians 4: 6-7, “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus” (NLT).
The Bible clearly tells us not to worry about anything! That’s pretty clear, right? So how do we stop worrying? Well, we give those prayers and requests to God and let Him take care of them. Once we do that, the Bible promises us that God will give us peace that no one can understand or comprehend, and that this peace will control our thoughts and emotions.
By the way, did you ever wonder which controls which? Do your emotions control your thoughts? Actually, it’s the other way around; your thoughts control your emotions. But the beauty of it is that it doesn’t matter because God can work with both and you can have peace as a beautiful byproduct!
Seeking Answers
A lot of times we, as Christians, think that just because we’re Christians that God will automatically answer every one of our prayers. In fact, God only has three answers:
1. Yes
2. No
3. Not Now/Wait
If there’s one thing that I have learned throughout my short life on this earth is that God’s timing and plans are better than yours or mine will ever be. So if God is not answering you, then be patient; I promise, He will speak. It may not be what you want to do right then, but God knows best and the best thing for you is to want it in God’s time and in His way.
I have really gotten myself into a whole lot of trouble in my life because I’ve told God what I’ve wanted Him to do for me and then I’ve gotten really upset with Him when He hasn’t come through for me exactly in the right way or timeframe that I had wanted. I bet you have too. So God sometimes gave me what I asked for, and let me tell you, it was disastrous! The bottom line is this: there is only one God and if I call myself a Christian, then I’ve got to learn to submit to Him not just one time, but every day—and multiple times a day if need be!
I don’t want you to be mistaken. God cares about what you care about because He cares about you, but just because my daughter wanted to have spoonfuls of sugar for breakfast, when she was four, didn’t mean I gave it to her, does it? Of course not! And if I didn’t, did that make me a bad father? Of course not! I always gave her what she needed and many times I gave her what she wanted as well.
Knock, Knock, Knocking
Take a look at this passage of scripture: “ ‘Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. You parents—if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him’ ” (Matthew 7:7-11, NLT).
Do you see what Jesus is saying in this passage? It’s a phenomenal idea. If we, as evil as we are, know how to give our children good gifts, how much more does God want to and will give them good gifts, but we have to ask God for them and then believe that we will receive them.
But just because we ask doesn’t necessarily mean that God will grant us whatever we ask for, carte blanche. We have to ask with the right attitude and the right motives. For instance, in the story found in Matthew 26: 36-44, Jesus and his disciples had just finished eating the Passover supper and Jesus went out to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. He went out to pray because he was absolutely overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of what He was about to undertake: Jesus was solely bearing the sin burden for the entire world (everybody who had ever been born before him, those who were alive when he was alive, and those who would come after him in the future). Jesus tells several of his disciples to come with him and “watch and pray” and everyone who should have had His back ended up kicking Him to the curb; and, Jesus had, what we in the Southern United States, call “A Come to Jesus Meeting” with God; translation: Jesus didn’t want to go through the experience of being crucified—but He wanted to do God’s will more than He wanted to do His own!
It’s true that God always wants to hear what you’re thinking and He wants you to be honest, but He always wants you to remember that He is in charge and He knows what’s best for you! Notice that Jesus’ prayer ended with “not my will be done, God, but your will be done.” In other words, Jesus shared his heart with God, but in the end, He submitted His will and ultimately His life for what God wanted Him to do.
There is also a second point that I need to clarify: when praying, you may have to pray more than once to gain peace in your heart about a specific concern! That’s okay; Jesus depended on constant communion with God. Why would we think it would be any different for us? It’s not, and we need to be aware that if anything, we live in an exponentially distorted, Godless, evil, and hedonistic society.
A Stinging Worm!
When our daughter was two I remember my wife calling me on the phone, almost in tears, because our daughter wouldn’t stop calling out to her—“She’s like a stinging worm! She just…won’t stop!” was my wife’s wail.
When praying, we have to be like a stinging worm to God—in fact, this isn’t just my opinion, but the commandment of Jesus. He says that, with our prayers, we should be consistent and insistent–and not give up. Take a look at this interesting story and then tell me if Jesus didn’t have a great sense of humor. First some context: this story isn’t even about prayer, but about God’s justice, His righteousness and our faithfulness. It’s found in Luke 18:1-8:
One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up. “There was a judge in a certain city,” he said, “who neither feared God nor cared about people. A widow of that city came to him repeatedly, saying, “Give me justice in this dispute with my enemy.” The judge ignored her for a while, but finally he said to himself, “I don’t fear God or care about people, but this woman is driving me crazy. I’m going to see that she gets justice, because she is wearing me out with her constant requests!” Then the Lord said, “Learn a lesson from this unjust judge. Even he rendered a just decision in the end. So don’t you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will grant justice to them quickly! But when the Son of Man returns, how many will he find on the earth who have faith?” (NLT).
Although this wasn’t the direct point, Jesus alluded to the fact that the crooked Judge answered her unwavering request just to get her off his back! Now let me ask you a question: is that the kind of God we serve? A God who’s unjust and selfish? No! Of course not! We serve a God who’s kind, loving, patient and forgiving, so go to God with whatever you’ve got going on in your life; I promise: you won’t be disappointed.
TBH
Many times due to the fact that the society and culture we live in are so busy, we tend to sometimes not want to pray or connect with God. We are either too busy or too tired to pray. You may say to yourself “I can’t pray everyday? It’s too much! I just don’t think I’ve got the power in me to keep on trying! That’s right, you don’t!
There’s absolutely no way that you can do it by yourself, so you need the Lord’s help. The Bible says that you can ask God to do it for you. He can empower you with the Holy Spirit! Again, the Bible has a wonderful story about a man who made a specific serious “Ask” of Jesus, (Mark 9:14-24) but, when Jesus responded, was honest about the level of his faith in Jesus’ ability to heal his son: “ . . . ‘Have mercy on us and help us, if you can.’
‘What do you mean, “If I can”?’ Jesus asked. ‘Anything is possible if a person believes.’ The father instantly cried out, ‘I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!’ ” (vv. 22b-24, NLT).
This is not just an interesting story of Jesus being large and in-charge, but indeed this story illustrates a crucial point about being honest with God about the weakness and frailty of our faith as human beings: The father of the boy who was possessed by a demon asked Jesus to heal him, and he was very honest in what he said when Jesus made his statement about faith and possibility. The man immediately replied honestly and transparently: “I do have faith! Please help me to have even more.”
The Spirit Speaks “Human”!
Be honest with God, He already knows what you’re thinking–even when you’re not even sure. Don’t believe that last statement? Read this passage of scripture and see for yourself. Paul wrote in Romans 8:26, 27: “And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will” (NLT).
Isn’t it good to know that when you’re so tired or so upset or so confused that you just don’t even know where to begin in prayer that the Holy Spirit takes all of that and speaks to the Father on our behalf. The Spirit can speak “human” pretty good, since technically He designed and created us.
“In Jesus Name…Amen!”
Did you know that God says that if we pray for anything in His name that He will give it to us? That’s right: you didn’t misread this information. I told you the truth! You really can get anything you desire just by praying for it, but before you decide to ask for model looks, athletic abilities, a six-figure salary, a relationship with that certain special someone, or that nice house, fancy car, or blinged out smartphone, there’s just one catch: you’ve got to be praying for things that Jesus would be praying for!
HA, gotcha!
Let’s look and see what the Bible has to say about this important point and how we can apply it to our daily lives: “ ‘. . . I tell you the truth, you will ask the Father directly, and he will grant your request because you use my name. You haven’t done this before. Ask, using my name, and you will receive, and you will have abundant joy” (John 16:23b, 24, NLT). In fact, when we finish praying–and the majority of us finish our prayers like this: “In Jesus name, Amen!” You might be interested to know that the word “Amen” literally means: “So be it.”
James, Jesus’ half-brother, didn’t pull punches when he wrote about the reason why many of us don’t get our prayers answered: “What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.” (James 4:1-3, NLT).
As we’ve already learned, we should be honest with God about what’s happening in our heart and lives and what we’re concerned, happy or sad or anxious about; but in the end, our prayer should be the same as that of Jesus when he was in the Garden of Gethsemane: “not my will, but God’s will be done.”
Our prayer should be that God’s will be done. Jesus was not concerned about doing His will, but what God wanted him to do. And what did God want him to do? To draw closer to God more and more every second of every day and live in such a way that He maximized His opportunities to share salvation and the saving love of God with others; or to be able to bless others and serve them by and through His life directly; or to be able to share His knowledge with others in order to make them disciples so they could share the saving love of God with others.
So you see, basically, God will answer your prayers when you pray for things that are focused on building a closer and intimate relationship with God; on helping you to share God’s saving love with others through evangelism or through unselfish service towards others or ultimately through training/teaching or discipling others to better and more closely live with and be like Jesus. Basically, God loves to answer prayers that are unselfish!
Job’s Job
Okay, so now that you know all about prayer, it’s time to put into practice what you’ve learned. Don’t worry, it’s normal to be anxious and worried about doing it wrong. Yes, it’ll feel weird, and no you won’t freak God out with your honesty and your fears, questions, anger, hurt, frustration, etc. Trust me: God can take it.
When Job—a man who the Bible described as “ . . . blameless—a man of complete integrity. . . [who] feared God and stayed away from evil” (Job 1:1b, NLT) found out he had literally lost everything in this world that he held dear, he immediately unloaded on God—and God was cool with it; in fact, to make you feel better about whatever you’ve got going on right now, check out what Job said to God:
“Job stood up and tore his robe in grief. Then he shaved his head and fell to the ground to worship. He said, ‘I came naked from my mother’s womb, and I will be naked when I leave. The LORD gave me what I had, and the LORD has taken it away. Praise the name of the LORD!’ In all of this, Job did not sin by blaming God” (Job 1:20-22, NLT).
My assignment for you—and I want you to begin today—and I want you to do it for a full month! I challenge you to begin your prayer time with God every day by hitting Him with the most outrageous, challenging, crazy, stressful, sad stuff that you have going on in your life.
I want to challenge you to do it, because once you do, you’ll feel better and you’ll quickly realize that you haven’t sinned by unloading on God, and that God is big enough to absorb all your yuck. I promise you, that something amazing will happen: when you consistently do that, you’ll be trauma-bonded, so to speak to Jesus, meaning that you’ve shared the most intimate and personal stuff with Him. When you do this, you’ll naturally begin to share your every day normal life stuff with Him, too, and before you know it, you’ll be having a natural and normal relationship with Jesus.
I know, I think it’s pretty amazing, too.
I’m so thankful that we have a God who is the kind of Creator who is powerful enough that he “ . . . through the Son he created the universe. The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God, and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command” (Hebrews 1:2 3, NLT). But God is so personal that He keeps “ . . . track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book (Psalm 56:8, NLT).
Reach out to Him today. I know that time talking to Jesus will change your life for eternity!
Additional Resources
The Privilege of Prayer
7 Ways to Pray: Time-Tested Practices for Encountering God
How Does Prayer Work?
From Breath of Life The Construction Zone: Prayer Changes More Than Things
