Since we are in the middle of our church-wide “21 Days of Prayer”, I thought I would say something helpful and encouraging on the topic of prayer. As I thought, I pulled out Richard Foster’s classic Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home. He is such a helpful guide in this area. I will let him speak to us today.
“We today yearn for prayer and hide from prayer. We are attracted to it and repelled by it. We believe prayer is something we should do, even something we want to do, but it seems like a chasm stands between us and actually praying. We experience the agony of prayerlessness.
We are not quite sure what holds us back. Of course we are busy with work and family obligations, but that is only a smokescreen. Our busyness seldom keeps us from eating or sleeping or making love. No, there is something deeper, more profound, keeping us in check...It is the notion—almost universal among us modern high achievers—that we have to have everything “just right” in order to pray. That is, before we can really pray, our lives need some fine-tuning, or we need to know more about how to pray, or we need to have a better grasp of the great traditions of prayer. And on it goes.”
Foster continues by saying that these are important ideas that deserve some attention, but we should not start in prayer this way—as something that we must master. This idea “puts us in the ‘on-top’ position, where we are competent and in control. But when praying, we come ‘underneath,’ where we calmly and deliberately surrender control and become incompetent.”
Foster here hits the nail on the head. There are so many things that keep us from actually praying. But let’s be willing to be incompetent, to merely bring our fallibility and foolishness to the Lord and pray.
“Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong” (1 Cor. 1:26-27).