So how do I pray, God?
After a lifetime in 3 churches, after reading the Lord's prayer, after praying aloud a thousand times with friends, another thousand times trying to bumble through it with just you, I still don't know how to pray.
How frustrating.
It's not for lack of want. I just don't understand the methodology. After reading Miriam's Prayer and Mary's Prayer and Moses' Prayer, all with formula and poetry, is there some unknown code I need to crack? I long to overhear Daniel's long hours spent in prayer, hunched over the windowsill facing Israel. I long to overhear Elijah's conversations with you up in the mountains by the brook, or John's communiques with you as he walked the hot sand in his camel tunic. The people who knew you and knew how to pray, but their most intimate communions with you unshared and secret, and the silence of such drives me mad.
It's not for lack of want. I just don't understand the methodology. You used James to let us know that when we need wisdom, we should ask you and you'll give it to us. And I am asking for wisdom in prayer. Yet how does such a thing manifest? I balk harshly at rhetoric and worn-out cumbersome words in prayer, yet does that mean I am not giving you your due and deserved awe? And when I pray, what do I pray? You grant what is in your will and do not what is not in your will.
So God, do I have to know your will before I can really pray? If so, than I ask for even more wisdom for that...and I am getting even more frustrated.
God, I am here. I am stirred up and agitated; I want to be able to do this, I want it very badly. I know that the times I approach you rawly in want and in question the more peace I feel after such. If I am disrespectful, show me. I am asking to learn.
I have learned a beautiful thing: that while almost everyone else in the world asks you to be perfect, you know me far better than to ask for such a foolish thing. So here's my two tiny copper coins, here's my mustard seed, here's my most basic possession of willingness. If it takes one hundred prayers to show me 99 wrong mindsets and motives and 1 request that miraculously overlapped with your will, than it's worth the 99 frustrations. I'm willing to make the wrong prayers if you're willing to show me and teach me the right ones.
And God, you know I'm not patient. If you could help me learn stuff sooner rather than later, that would be great.
(Doesn't hurt to ask, right?)
After a lifetime in 3 churches, after reading the Lord's prayer, after praying aloud a thousand times with friends, another thousand times trying to bumble through it with just you, I still don't know how to pray.
How frustrating.
It's not for lack of want. I just don't understand the methodology. After reading Miriam's Prayer and Mary's Prayer and Moses' Prayer, all with formula and poetry, is there some unknown code I need to crack? I long to overhear Daniel's long hours spent in prayer, hunched over the windowsill facing Israel. I long to overhear Elijah's conversations with you up in the mountains by the brook, or John's communiques with you as he walked the hot sand in his camel tunic. The people who knew you and knew how to pray, but their most intimate communions with you unshared and secret, and the silence of such drives me mad.
It's not for lack of want. I just don't understand the methodology. You used James to let us know that when we need wisdom, we should ask you and you'll give it to us. And I am asking for wisdom in prayer. Yet how does such a thing manifest? I balk harshly at rhetoric and worn-out cumbersome words in prayer, yet does that mean I am not giving you your due and deserved awe? And when I pray, what do I pray? You grant what is in your will and do not what is not in your will.
So God, do I have to know your will before I can really pray? If so, than I ask for even more wisdom for that...and I am getting even more frustrated.
God, I am here. I am stirred up and agitated; I want to be able to do this, I want it very badly. I know that the times I approach you rawly in want and in question the more peace I feel after such. If I am disrespectful, show me. I am asking to learn.
I have learned a beautiful thing: that while almost everyone else in the world asks you to be perfect, you know me far better than to ask for such a foolish thing. So here's my two tiny copper coins, here's my mustard seed, here's my most basic possession of willingness. If it takes one hundred prayers to show me 99 wrong mindsets and motives and 1 request that miraculously overlapped with your will, than it's worth the 99 frustrations. I'm willing to make the wrong prayers if you're willing to show me and teach me the right ones.
And God, you know I'm not patient. If you could help me learn stuff sooner rather than later, that would be great.
(Doesn't hurt to ask, right?)
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