Photo: Bokeh / Tomedia. Silhouettes on the Beach at Night.

My notes on prayer contain a very simple suggestion: please, thank you and sorry.

I like that. I am perfectly capable of making a simple thing unnecessarily complicated, and prayer gives me plenty of opportunities. Am I saying enough? Am I saying the right thing? Have I understood what God wants before I have even started speaking?

Meanwhile, there are things I need help with, things I am grateful for and things I need to own up to. Those seem like reasonable places to start.

A conversation without an audience

In Matthew 6:5–8, Jesus talks about people praying to be seen. He tells his listeners to go into their room, shut the door and pray to their Father in secret. He also warns against piling up words as though the quantity will make God listen.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

Matthew 6:6 (KJV)

That takes quite a lot of the performance out of it.

Nobody needs to hear how eloquently I can explain my problems. God already knows what I need. I can speak plainly and give him my attention.

One of the sermons spent time on the room itself. My notes veer off into the Greek word and descriptions of storehouses. But the instruction I need to act on is clear enough in English. Go somewhere private. Close the door. Pray.

I don’t need to finish a word study before I can manage that.

Something will fill the time

In another set of notes I wrote about ordering our private lives. Unless we make room deliberately, other things will take it.

I know how easily that happens. Work, plans, things I want to build, whatever thought I have decided needs pursuing immediately. By the time I have dealt with one thing, I have usually found several more.

Jesus’ pattern in Mark 1:35 is to withdraw and pray even when people want his attention. There are genuine needs around him. The time with the Father still happens.

And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.

Mark 1:35 (KJV)

For me, the practical step is giving prayer an actual place in the day. Somewhere I can stop opening another thing. A few minutes that I have already decided belong to that conversation, rather than hoping I will feel unusually spiritual between jobs.

Please help me with the thing I don’t know how to handle. Thank you for the people and work you have given me. Sorry for the way I behaved. Show me what needs to change.

There is enough there for a real conversation.

I can ask without pretending to control the answer

I believe God answers prayer. I also know an answer can look different from the thing I had in mind.

That is difficult when I want certainty. I can start treating prayer as another way to manage the outcome, then become confused or disappointed when life doesn’t follow the version I requested.

The Lord’s Prayer itself asks for God’s will to be done. Jesus teaches us to ask for what we need while recognising whose will we are seeking.

I want to be able to ask honestly and remain willing to listen. That includes prayers for other people, whose circumstances I can’t control and often don’t fully understand. I can bring their names to God without producing an explanation for everything they are going through.

A quiet room won’t sort out every distraction I have. But I can put the phone down, close the door and start with what is true today. There is something I need help with, somebody I can pray for, and plenty I can thank God for. I can give that conversation a few uninterrupted minutes.

Photo: Bokeh / Tomedia. Tree Branches and Leaves in Nature.

There is a fairly consistent complaint running through my church notes.

I need to pray more.

Different date, different passage, sometimes a different church. Same bloke arriving at the same conclusion. I would like to say repetition has made me excellent at this. The notes suggest otherwise.

I can spend ages thinking about God, planning things I could build to help people understand the Bible, and trying to work out what I am meant to do with my life. Then I realise I haven’t actually brought much of that to him.

I have done all the surrounding activity. The conversation is still waiting.

Being useful gets most of my attention

One sermon described the pressure to perform, achieve and prove yourself. That felt unpleasantly familiar.

I understand work. Give me something to build or a problem to solve and I can at least start pulling it apart. I might doubt myself throughout the entire process, but there is something to do. Something I can point at afterwards.

A relationship with God doesn’t give me that same control. I can’t build enough things to make him owe me affection. I also can’t keep postponing the relationship until I have become the person I think would deserve it.

Romans 8:14–17 talks about being God’s children. That is the relationship I keep forgetting when I start treating every part of my life as another opportunity to prove I am good enough.

For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.

Romans 8:15 (KJV)

I don’t want to turn prayer into a new version of the same problem. Three distracted minutes shouldn’t become another entry in the list of reasons I am apparently a failure. I need to keep returning to God, including when the prayer is awkward and I lose my train of thought.

Which, as you may have gathered, happens quite a lot.

Jesus made time for it

The example in the Gospels is hard to ignore. Jesus repeatedly withdraws to pray. Before choosing the twelve, he spends the night in prayer. In Gethsemane, he prays through distress. He speaks to the Father while people are asking things of him and while the work is difficult.

And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God.

Luke 6:12 (KJV)

In Mark 1:35–38, he goes to a solitary place early in the morning. The disciples find him and tell him everyone is looking for him.

And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.

Mark 1:35 (KJV)

There is always someone looking. There is always another thing that could fill the time.

I don’t think I can read that pattern, claim to follow Jesus, and keep treating prayer as the thing I might fit in once all the more urgent jobs are finished. The jobs will keep arriving. I know that from experience.

I can start with the things already on my mind

The instruction to pray continually in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 makes more sense to me when I think about an ongoing relationship.

Pray without ceasing.

1 Thessalonians 5:17 (KJV)

There is time set aside to pray. There is also bringing God into the day I am already having. Asking for guidance before a decision. Being thankful when something works out. Admitting when I have handled somebody badly. Praying for another person while I am thinking about what they are going through.

My notes keep circling back to direction. I feel stuck, I want to know where I should be going, and I remember how God has helped me before. Then I attempt to work out the whole route myself.

I don’t expect prayer to produce a complete project plan. I do want to stop leaving God out of the process of asking what he wants from my life.

The next time I catch myself going round the same concern, I can bring that concern to him. Say what I am worried about. Ask for help. Listen. I already have the subject of the prayer; I need to actually pray it.