Why I try to pray right away

Prayer

“Well, how about we pray right now?” My wife looks at me with a stunned expression as these words come forth. We’re in the car, discussing whether or not it would be possible for us all to go to an event at the end of August, one that is a 14 hour drive away. This, naturally, means a long time in the car, overnights in hotels, and, of course, money. So, right there, in the car, at a stop light, we prayed and asked the Lord to provide the means for us to go to this particular event as a family if it were to be his will.

This has been something I’ve been striving to do more and more frequently of late. But why? Because of some pretty serious conviction that set in while reading William Edgar’s, Countercultural Spirituality: Schaeffer on the Christian LifeIn the book, Edgar shares a question Francis Schaeffer posed to his wife, Edith—one that proved to be a defining moment for them:

What if we woke up one morning and our Bibles were changed? What if all of the promises about prayer and the Holy Spirit were removed from the Bible by God himself, not as the liberals might remove them, by demythologization, but really eliminated from the text? What real difference would it make in our lives? (129)

How would you answer this?

And I don’t mean what is the “right” answer—how would you, the person reading this post at this moment, actually answer it? I suspect, if you’re anything like me, and if you’re anything like so many Christians among us, it might not make that much of a difference at all.

And that’s what got me thinking. Cultivating a healthy prayer life has been one of the most challenging parts of my life as a Christian, and the area of my greatest weakness. It’s not that I don’t believe in the importance of prayer, nor do I disbelieve in God’s working through it. On the contrary. I take the God at his word on this, and I’ve seen him answer prayer powerfully and overtly. And yet, when it comes down to brass tacks, I still struggle with this disconnect and prayerlessness can easily reign in my life if I’m not watchful.

The tough thing about prayer is setting up more rules doesn’t really help. You can’t tell someone to pray more better and expect it to go well. You can’t set up an arbitrary schedule, committing in your heart that you will pray every day for two hours a day when you’ve spent most of the last month praying for barely 10 minutes during a week.  stirring “Pray more harder,” doesn’t really help, nor does scheduling prayer times throughout the day (though I’m not against such things). But something you can do that is helpful is simply to pray when it occurs to you to do so. If someone suggests praying, then pray. If someone asks for prayer, do it right at that moment, do it. It doesn’t have to be deep and profound. It just has to be from the heart.

And this is what I’ve been doing since I read this question from Schaeffer; and as a result, I’ve probably prayed more in the last couple of days than in the last two weeks. Why? Because if we believe in God’s promises about prayer, our lives ought to be shaped by that belief. If we see an ongoing pattern of prayerlessness, then we need to ask what we really believe about this?

If we believe God’s promises about prayer, then we ought to pray. If we are to break out of the grip of prayerlessness, the way to do so is to pray our way out. It’s not easy, but if we believe prayer makes a difference, we ought to pray like it makes a difference.

1 thought on “Why I try to pray right away”

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