Why Pray?

There we have the fears, and if all that’s true, then why would we pray?

  1. Pray Because You’re Overwhelmed

The great social sin of the modern world is naivete. Belief is out; cynicism is in. Where did that modern phenomenon come from?

Historically, the Enlightenment set forth the great myth of human progress, which assumes that with the passing of time, everything is improving, people are becoming more whole, and the world is getting steadily better. That assumption, which served as the backbone of the developing world, was deflated by two world wars and the bloodiest, most barbaric century in recorded history. The balloon was popped on the optimism of human progress, leading to an equally widespread sweep of disillusionment.

You and I have been groomed by a post-Enlightenment story of deconstruction that doesn’t trust God anymore but has plenty of reasons not to trust people either. The result is multiple generations of people who find safety in pretending they don’t need either one—I can trust myself, guide myself, be enough for myself.

Jesus once wisely said that we’ll know a tree by its fruit. So what’s the fruit of that story of self-sufficiency in the life of the modern person? We’re overwhelmed. Everyone I meet is drowning in “their thing.” It doesn’t matter if “your thing” is an artistic endeavor, profit margins, wining and dining clients, or raising children. We can’t see past “our thing” because “our thing” (whatever it happens to be) is all-consuming.

We’ve avoided becoming naive, but we’ve done it at the cost of becoming overwhelmed. The story that was supposed to free us is really just swapping jail cells. If the story we thought would free us is trapping us, the logical thing to do is look beyond it. Instead, even in the church, our prayers don’t exchange overwhelmed lives for transcendent peace. They simply drag God into our overwhelmed lives, and the only way we can make him fit is to shrink him down to a reduced size. We keep on praying, but we lower the bar of expectation and power in prayer.

We kick like mad to keep our heads above water, all the while talking passively to an imagined God who is powerless to do most anything except give us the right perspective to make it through the day. We dwindle God down to a divine Being just as overwhelmed and powerless as we are, and our prayers to that God are understandably vague and infrequent.

Constantly overwhelmed lives should drive us to prayer at its purest and rawest, but the tendency for many of us is to pray safe, calculated prayers that insulate us from both disappointment and freedom.

  1. Pray Because Trust Comes before Faith

We fear silence. But the thing that calms that fear isn’t faith; it’s trust. Faith is the assurance of what we hope for. Trust is confidence in the character of God.

Before we can have faith that God will answer a given request, we simply have to learn to trust the character of the God we’re talking to. In my experience, trying to will faith into the equation doesn’t make the possibility of silence any less terrifying, but trusting the character of the listener certainly does. Trust allows us to say, “I don’t understand what God is doing right now, but I trust that God is good.”

What if I pray and the cancer doesn’t disappear? Or I don’t get the job? Or she doesn’t come back? Or he’s still addicted?

Without trust, we suppress the disappointment that God’s silence leaves with us. We build a wall to protect ourselves from the very God we pray to. We carefully nuance our prayers, guarding ourselves against allowing God to disappoint us like that a second time (we’ll get deep into the weeds of unanswered prayer in chapter 9).

With trust, we can come to the God whose character doesn’t seem to match his silence, saying with brutal honesty, “Where were you? How could you? What were you thinking?”

Jesus hasn’t revealed a God we can perfectly understand, but he has revealed a God we can perfectly trust. Trust is the certainty that the listening God hears and cares. I trust the God who, even when he doesn’t make the suffering go away, wears the suffering alongside me. Trusting the God revealed in Jesus means silence is real, but it’s not forever.

  1. Pray Because Complaints Are Welcome

God isn’t nearly as worried about our mixed motives as we are. I can prove it. Here’s a few prayers that made the cut as part of the inspired, inerrant, canonical Scriptures:

May burning coals fall on them;
may they be thrown into the fire,
into miry pits, never to rise. (Psalm 140:10)

I am worn out calling for help;
my throat is parched.
My eyes fail,
looking for my God. (Psalm 69:3)

I pour out before him my complaint;
before him I tell my trouble. (Psalm 142:2)

Anger, depression, complaint. Whoever wrote those needs to see a professional.

David—that’s who wrote those prayers. You’ve probably heard of David—ancient Israel’s most famous figure, the king who set an unreachable bar for all subsequent kings, the man after God’s own heart, the one whose bloodline was promised to lead to the Messiah. He’s the psychotic nightmare who wrote those prayers. They were collected into the Psalms, which have framed Christian worship and prayer since before the church’s inception. Those prayers sit right alongside some of David’s more revered poetry.

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he refreshes my soul. (Psalm 23:1–3)

Well, apparently David wasn’t always that serene and balanced because he also prayed, “May burning coals fall on them.”

Praise the Lord, my soul,
and forget not all of his benefits . . .
who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. (Psalm 103:2, 5)

He mustn’t always have felt like God was spreading his wings because he also prayed, 

“I am worn out calling for help.”
Every day I will praise you
and extol your name for ever and ever. (Psalm 145:2)

I guess that “every day” was hyperbolic because some days it wasn’t praise on his lips: “I pour out before him my complaint.”

The psalms reveal a garden variety of motives. Some of the words in those prayers go directly against the teachings of Jesus and the character of God (What happened to loving enemies and a God who is rich in love and loyal in faithfulness?), meaning some of the psalms are technically heretical. So why would those prayers be included in the Bible?

Because they’re honest. That’s what makes these psalms exemplary. God is looking for relationship, not well-prepared speeches spoken from perfect motives. God listened to overreacting rage, dramatic despair, and guileless joy, and he called David a man after his own heart. When it comes to prayer, God isn’t grading essays; he’s talking to children. So if God can delight in prayers as dysfunctional as the ones we find wedged into the middle of the Bible, he can handle yours too without you cleaning them up first.

If the Bible tells us anything about how to pray, it says that God much prefers the rough draft full of rants and typos to the polished, edited version. C. S. Lewis said of prayer, “We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.”

The way your motives change isn’t by working them out in silence; it’s through such brutal honesty with God that he, by prayer, can refine your motives. Complaints are welcome.

  1. Pray Because the Only Way to Get It Wrong Is by Trying to Get It Right

I find it so helpful that when teaching his disciples to pray, Jesus included this line right in the middle: “Give us today our daily bread.”

What a simple request! Bring your felt needs to God—the needs of this day—and talk to him about them. How should we pray? The most straightforward response is to talk to God about what’s on your mind. That’s it! You talk to God like a friend. You vent. You ask. You laugh. You listen. You unload. You just talk. You don’t try to sound more holy or pure or spiritual than you are. Prayer isn’t a noble monologue; it’s a free-flowing conversation, and the only way to get prayer wrong is to try to get it right.

In the wise words of Candler School of Theology professor emerita Roberta Bondi, “If you are praying, you are already ‘doing it right.’”

Excerpted from Praying Like Monks, Living Likes Fools by Tyler Staton. Copyright © (October 2022) by Zondervan. Used by permission of Zondervan, www.zondervan.com. 

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