About Prayers

2 days back I got impressed upon my heart about the topics to continue my exploit to write; this morning I was reading some devotions, and yes the same topic came. Prayers: how exactly do they look like?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating a standardized correct form of prayer! But can I also suggest that if certain truths ring true in our hearts, then there is something fundamentally very wrong about most prayers (not all).

When I first came to Christ, prayer is something that I struggled with a lot. More precisely, I was still in my seeking phase, so yes I wasn't even sure if He existed, so I was desperate, I needed and wanted to hear from Him so badly. To this day, that remains one of my most sincere prayer- a genuine cry for help. See, it's the heart... Like many of my previous posts tended to suggest, it's always the heart!

So how then do we gauge a person's heart? I think we can't quite and frankly we don't have to, especially in the area of something as personal as our prayer walk.

The widely accepted notion of prayer being a conversation between God and us gives us a good understanding of how it should look like, so I'll use that for my dissection to reveal the fundamental flaws.

1. Many people pray and don't believe. In Mark 11, many people like to quote how faith can move mountain, but not many pay attention to the adjacent verses. Whatever you ask in prayer and believe that you have received, it will be given to you. Prayer is an integral expression of faith, it is about us asking our Daddy for something which we have not yet seen and then trusting Him for them. Have we ever prayed exorbitant requests and then the next immediate moment, we convince ourselves (and perhaps those around us) that those were too much to ask for, or worse still "I don't think it works this way." It's not for us to think, but Him to grant, for He also mentioned "I can do immeasurably more than you ever imagine". A prayer can only be powerful when you believe. I'm not saying that our unbelief restrains God. Far from it! There are people who come about and in their ever supposed good intentions, they try to explain situation- you know people don't get healed because they ask and they don't believe, or that the people didn't have faith to receive. THIS IS COMPLETELY WARPED! I can't give you the reasons why, and I believe God has specific message to allow some bad things (read my previous post). We can't draw conclusions for God because it is potentially very repelling. Let Him do His work, and my concern here is that when we pray, believe or at least try to believe. Otherwise it becomes a hypocritical act to impress. When we take faith out of prayer, there is practically no reason to do it at all. Pray this: I want to believe, help me overcome my unbelief.

2. Prayers are supposed to be powerful. Is this not linked? Let me digress a little- do we have the right perception of who our God is? Recently I was doing a module called understanding the universe, and was always so marveled by how big our God is! Imagine the sun, the Milky Way, and then beyond that, the hyper giant stars etc. our Creator God made all these! Then, we zoom in many many times and we find this protein strain called lemenin. God cares about the biggest and the smallest of our issues, and as long as we submit and commit, He cares enough to take over control of that particular issue. Ok, now back to the topic on prayer, you see the link? Don't ever think that God is too busy or too far to care!
Now the second part to this point: prayer has to be powerful! I think many of us grow up with a preconceived impression of how prayers look like, and then conform to that mold. (I'm not saying that our predecessors prayed weak prayers! Look at all the great things that have happened down history- I'm sure they were all fruits of powerful prayers!). What I am saying though is this: many caught the form, but few caught the heart. I ever seen self-battering prayers that focused on how we are suffering so badly and it's only gonna be worse. Remember Jesus's prayer: take this cup away from me, but if it's your will for me to drink it, let your will be done and not mine. Or even Paul's lamentation to his fellow colleagues in ministry. The heart is a genuine dreading of how difficult this is and then despite that, coming to a point of ultimate submission. We need not seek suffering! We seek glory, seek blessing and seek Jesus, suffering will follow and we endure it, not seek it! The crux of it is to be genuine, don't try to appear more righteous than we really are.

3. Prayers are being used to impress rather than express. See, I'm not particularly concerned about how fluent our prayers are- that's the form. So there's no need to have many words, big words, or a particular intonation. But can I also suggest that if prayer is such a big part of your life, it will transform and bear fruits as we mature and grow? It's like the more you do something, the better you become at it? So if we commune with God often, we get to know Him more, and the way we relate with Him changes? I will not name names, but I do have friends (and I'm sure it's not just them, but many others too) who repeatedly say "Lord, Lord". It comes to the extent where it began to feel a little annoying for me- either that or it has already been normalized in the church because basically everyone does that. Twice I've seen people take the stage and did prayer and they mumbled something like "Lord, you may take your seat now, Lord...". And I was like... This is the speech fillers of Christianese- you know like the erm and eh in our usual speech? Except that Lord is such a widely used Christian term that we get by with it rather easily. It becomes rather scary when we don't mean "Lord" when we say "lord". The example above- he was actually trying to get the congregation to sit down. Look at the credible speakers, listen to their prayers. You may say that those Americans are native speakers, so they are naturally more fluent. Then look at those who are near you. Look at your pastor, your leaders or even some of the Godly adults! Don't misunderstood me, I'm not saying that all who are fluent in their prayers are Godly, but I am definitely implying that prayers are an outward expression of our walk with God. If for five years, the prayers remain at "Father, thank you for the food, amen." Then there's a cause to be wary of where the relationship has grown. Besides, a good gauge is to look at how we normally talk to our friends, authorities etc.

4. Much more attention is being directed onto the form rather than the heart (yes, we are at it again). I grow up in a culture whereby the general society is uncomfortable with silence. It's like what Morrie said in Tuesdays with Morrie- what's wrong with silence. Allow me to elaborate. If prayer is conversation with God, isn't it right that it should be two ways also, then why can't God speak also? So what's wrong with us pausing? So why try to fill up every gap with one word or the other? But as of now, I am very uncomfortable with how prayers become like checking off a bucket list. Now you have 5 minutes and in the 5 minutes, your prayer should cover these points and sub points. So where is God really? I'm slowly beginning to wonder how come the Gospel and the bible in general pay so little attention to prayers when it's supposed to be the foundation of a good relationship with God. Don't get me wrong, there are specific teaching and specific mentioning about all these, but the ratio just didn't quite seem to match up to when the bible mentioned about praying unceasingly and praying day and night. I've been baffled for a while how praying unceasingly (without stopping) look like, and I've come to some sort of a personal conviction about it. I'll probably write about it another time.
But if 5 minutes is so short and insufficient that there's no space for God to interject, then how come so many spent at least half the time describing the situation (God, you know currently...). Did we really think that God hadn't already known?

This entire post came like a rant, and is perhaps confounded with some personal frustration, but if you have managed to read until here, I ask that you read it with an opened heart, and better still, do some self-reflection on our own prayer life.

By the way, I'm a native Chinese speaker, but I pray in English, and I've only come to Christ for less than 6 years.

God bless you! :)