VIBRANT PRAYER LIFE
WHAT MAKES OUR RELATIONSHIPS STRONG? Do we nurture our connections with empathy and interest, or do we assume that friendships always pick up from where they were left off? Do we only have friends who accept friendship on our terms? If so, we need to examine how equitably we have treated others.
Aristotle once said, ‘Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit.’ This is a truism that also applies to our relationship with God, our Father. He loves it when His children talk to Him spontaneously with the confidence that He is with us all the time! So we cannot expect to enjoy an intimate relationship with Him if we only want Him to respond on demand and on our terms.
How then can we have a vibrant prayer life? First of all, it’s not about learning to chant formulaic prayers, or praying with grandiosity and wordiness. Instead, Jesus taught us how to prepare ourselves to approach God (Matthew 6:5-8). In fact, it was so important that He emphasized each verse with, ‘when you pray’.
When you pray and engage God, lay your heart bare before Him (v5). What other people think of you don’t matter when you approach God; He is an audience of One. Secondly, keep it private (v6) and know that what you share with God from the private chambers of your heart matters to Him. Third, cut to the chase and lay bare your secrets, shame and struggles to God (v7-8). Give Him your version of what you are feeling and experiencing without fearing that He will find fault with you!
In fact, we cannot experience spiritual growth and intimacy with God without working on building a vibrant prayer life. Therefore, it helps to remember two enduring truths about prayer.
Firstly, prayer is a relationship and not a ritual. At the same time, persistence is important. But to be persistent does not mean we need to repeat our prayers over and over for them to be effective. To be persistent means to pray continuously while letting the Holy Spirit lead us into greater focus and understanding of our struggles.
Secondly, we pray to our Heavenly Father, and not just to anyone. Jesus taught us to begin our prayer with “Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be Your Name”. These are not magic words but they frame our mental perception of God as One who is all-powerful and all-loving. This is important because we might not have positive experiences with our earthly fathers, or we might have lost them at an early age.
That’s why when we say, “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done”, we acknowledge that, no matter what, His ‘good, pleasing and perfect will’ (Romans 12:2) will come through for us. We may not know exactly what He will do but we can trust the Father’s heart and His unshakeable interest in our lives. His generosity is not what is nice to enjoy but it’s what we need. Therefore, when says, “Give us today our daily bread”, we are in fact asking Him to give us what we really need because it is often buried deep inside us!
Furthermore, know that any heart-to-heart connection with God will invariably expose old injuries, unhealed wounds and even godly desires that are hidden in the heart, numbed and locked away. Even when we are unaware of the dis-ease that lie in our hearts, when we pray, “Forgive us of our debt as we forgive our debtors”, we give God the permission to rehabilitate our hardened hearts.
Just like how we practice health-promoting behaviour to stay healthy, we need to guard our spiritual health by being mindful of unhealthy fight, flee or freeze habits we resort to that can impede our spiritual growth. James 1:3 reminds us that when we feel tempted, we should not think that God is tempting us but like any good teacher, He uses even negative life experiences to build our spiritual muscles and disciplines. At the same time, we are told that the way to fight temptation is not to run from it but to submit ourselves to God. By default, this will create resistance to the devil, and drive away the source of temptation from us. For that reason, we pray, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one”!
No matter how many birthdays had come and gone for you, and no matter how long you have known Jesus, a vibrant prayer life will change you and help you discover so much more that God has in store for your life!
This is a summary and reflection based on a virtual BIR Session held on 11 June 2022.
