Top Stories

�ing Honest in Prayer”

  It sometimes happens that people find their prayer life getting dry and they have a hard time seeing God in their daily life. What follows are two insights into prayer that I learned from a minister I respect. 

  First of all, begin your prayer with gratitude.  This is one of the easiest ways to jump-start your spiritual life.  Why is this?  Well, left to our own devices, we often focus on the negatives in life.  Many of us are in the habit of routinely solving problems. As a result, when we look back on our day, we automatically focus on what went wrong and what needs to be fixed. But concentrating on our problems can make us overlook our blessings. And if you feel that you don’t have much to be grateful for, try looking at smaller, everyday blessings. How good your most recent meal tasted. The comfort of your own bed. Safe drinking water at your fingertips. To be grateful in prayer, all you have to do is recall a simple blessing, savor it, and tell God that you’re thankful.

  And second, be sure that you’re being honest with God in your prayer. What happens when you tell a close friend only what you think they want to hear? Or if you hide from them the things you’re really struggling with? Usually what happens is this: over time your formerly warm relationship grows cool. Soon it becomes overly formal or even distant. Something similar can happen with our spiritual life. Many faithful Christians feel uncomfortable sharing certain feelings with God in prayer, like frustration or despair. But God has been dealing with such emotions for as long as the psalms.  Psalm 13, for example, begins “How long, O Lord?” And yet, people still resist sharing their raw emotions with God.

  Not being honest with God in prayer will have consequences. We’ll start to feel distanced from God. You may have heard the saying, “If you feel that God is distant, guess who moved?”  Even though God already knows how we’re feeling, it’s important that we share our innermost thoughts and feelings, because when you get right down to it, God wants to be in a relationship with us that’s deep, not casual.  Few things make a relationship feel more distant than only sharing small talk instead of real feelings.

  Even after Jesus taught his disciples to pray the Our Father, they still had more to learn about prayer. When the Lord’s time of being physically on earth had ended, the early Christians probably said to the disciples, “Teach us to pray.” Prayer is not something we learn once and for all. We never “master” how to pray.  We always remain open to whatever God wants to reveal to us. And we continually work at being honest with God about our feelings.  Any deep relationship depends on that.