What Exactly is Prayer?

In our lives, just how to pray is often confusing and ill-defined as well as often neglected. Does prayer feel like a burden or an obligation to you? Have you reduced prayer to just another habit, or simply something that every good  Christian does? Has prayer become one more thing you work on to keep up with your spiritual life, or, is prayer a treasure map in the quest for fulfillment and happiness? In all of this, the primary question remains:

What exactly is prayer?

Let’s not base our definition on misguided presumptions, and thus perpetuate the same superficial view of prayer.   

To find the answer, let's turn to Jesus.

Jesus is the pray-er. The symphony of his life was conducted joyfully by an unceasing series of prayerful notes. He did not pray out of duty. He did not pray under the duress of guilt and shame. He did not pray to get God in line with His plan. Rather, He prayed because He is the Son of the Father.Jesus grasped His divine identity and as a result cast a vision for life as God intended, a prayerful life. He prayed as beloved dust, in order to talk to someone He loved.

What becomes clear as we observe Jesus praying is that to pray as beloved dust means to pray in reality. We pray in the reality of who we are. We pray as beloved children of the Father. We pray as dusty ones, sinful and broken.

We are called to pray in the truth of our identity. If we do not pray in the truth of who we are, we cannot truly call prayer being with God. Being with God implies that we have actually shown up, that we are actually present. Prayer is not a place to hide and cower like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It is a place to be honest, like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. It is not a place to avoid the truth. In fact, prayer is a place to learn the truth.

We are our most true selves when we pray. And yet we all are tempted to embrace a false posture in prayer. Perhaps this false posture is sitting in our dustiness. Rather than relating to God from our acceptance in Christ, we try to self-generate righteousness to make Him love us. Maybe we don't avoid our true selves in prayer, but we sulk in it. We spend our time in prayer brooding, beating ourselves up, and trying to manage our dustiness.

In effect, prayer becomes a place to continue with our soul rather than with God’s. We search within for answers to the problems we uncover and continue to roll around in the dust over and over, thinking it will clean us off just like Dusty the chinchilla! Prayer too often becomes a place for self talk, self fixing, self condemnation, and self obsession. For many of us, it is difficult to receive fully the Good News that we are God's beloved. It is hard for us to turn to anyone else, even God, for rescue, healing, and redemption.

If our earthly parents did not embrace us with an unwavering legitimate love, it is challenging to receive our identity as beloved of our Heavenly Father.  Yep, God is calling us to pray with Jesus,  "Abba father!" (Romans 8:15). In contrast, perhaps we embrace the promises of a beloved child while rejecting our status as dust. This may take the form of presuming upon God. Perhaps we treat God like just another of life's resources rather than the sovereign Creator of the universe who is beyond our grasp. In effect we domesticate God to fit our world. Many of us refuse to acknowledge our temporal nature in prayer. We stubbornly pretend as if we have things under control in prayer, rather than acknowledging the truth that we are feeble and needy creatures. Yet, God is calling us to pray like Jesus, on our knees in desperate need of the One who is above all things.

If we are honest, prayer feels like a challenge. We have made prayer a chore as opposed to a gracious gift. We have made prayer a place to protect a false self, rather than rest in our true selves. Jesus offered us a different vision of prayer.

What we see in Jesus is One who prayed in truth. Jesus prayed from his identity as beloved dust. This is prayer. Not a duty. Not a ritual. Not another item on your TO-DO list. Rather, it is a place of abiding. Prayer is being with a God who is always with you. This call to be with God can be a an important first step. The false postures we have spent years perfecting will not simply be undone by awareness and willpower. These false postures are habits of the heart connected too deep beliefs about God and our souls that can only be transformed by the work of the Holy Spirit.  

Our false postures in prayer can only find transformation in prayer itself. If we give ourselves to the Holy Spirit's work of purging false postures and beliefs, we should take a cue from Jesus. He showed us what it looks like to pray in reality, in the truth of our identity. He pointed us to a resource to put off these false postures in prayer. We have His sheet music for a prayer symphony.

There are 150 prayers in the Book of Psalms. We can pray them with Jesus. They can help to locate us in God's redemptive work within. There are Psalms of lament, praise, thanksgiving, and confession. As we enter into the ancient prayers all of the people of Israel, God will begin to open up a pleasing view into the truth of our identity in relationship to Him. As we pray the words of the Psalms, we will hear the voice of God singing the truth of who we are in light of who He is. 

 

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the Son of Man that you care for him? (Psalms 8:3-4)

How long O Lord?  Will you forget me forever?  how long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?  (Psalms 13:1-2)

There is no soundness in my flesh because of your unfair treatment, there is no health in my bones because of my sin, for my weaknesses have gone over my head, like a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me. (Psalms 38:3-4)

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalms 73:26)

For you formed my inward parts; you wove me in my mother’s womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are your works, and my soul knows it very well. (Psalms 139:13-14)

We must not forget that the prayers of the Psalms are God's word as such they are right speech. They reveal the truth of who God is and who we are. They are not simply prayers offered by men, but our God’s revelation. Could there be a better place for us to learn how to pray? 

The child learns to speak because the parent speaks to the child. The child learns the language of the parent. So we learn to speak to God because God has spoken and speaks to us. In the language of the Father in heaven, God’s children learn to speak with God repeating God's own words, and that’s how we begin to pray to God.

Like a child, as we pray the Psalms, we are learning prayer talk. We are learning to speak to God. We are learning to relate to Him. We are learning that God is God and we are not. We are learning that we desperately need God’s forgiveness. We are learning that by God’s abounding love and grace our Father calls us beloved.

As we pray the prayers of the Psalms, the full picture of our reality will come into focus. We will be set free to be honest about our reality and our relationship with God. As we express our true feelings, the seal of pretense is broken, and the cave of the soul is revealed. We put voice to deep feelings of regret, hurt, and pain. We ask God to search us and know us (Psalms 139:23). The poetic words of the Psalms are rhythmic tools of the Holy Spirit to welcome us into reality and invite us play along with the symphony of Jesus’ soul. In short, the Psalms invite us to pray as Jesus prayed, that our lives may declare,

My heart is steadfast, oh god I will sing and make melody with all my being! (Psalms 108:1)

What about you? Have you ever felt that praying was a chore, a duty to check off your TO-DO list as part of a daily Christian ritual? Are you totally honest with God in prayer? Pause today and think about how you relate to God in prayer. Ask God to show you how to think and pray differently.

Submit yourself, then, to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. (James 4:7)

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