Teach Us to Pray

When I was young, I thought like a child, I spoke like a child, I acted like a child, I prayed like a child. As I grew, it became apparent that I needed to change. This monologue while kneeling at my bed was not working. Surely there had to be more to prayer than this. How else could believers do this for years and years? It was so utterly unfulfilling. When I earnestly asked others, those whom I thought would be able to bestow wisdom, I had less-than-inspirational assurances that God would make known to me what to do in the right time and to just keep up with the uncertain monotony that typified my days.

It's only been over the last year and a half that God has helped me to understand even a speck of the mystery of prayer. Indeed prayer is powerful. But we must not continue this monologue before the Almighty. Truly He seeks to have a relationship with us, and He wants that relationship to grow into maturity through sanctification. How do we break through our lens of selfishness, our lens of sinfulness? How do we bare ourselves before our Lord? For me, that freedom has been revealed by those who taught me to write. It is possible to write that which my spirit cries out to God in earnestness. I do not fully understand this mystery, but I shall glorify my God. I can write in prayer that which I would not even think to say when praying. I am not encumbered by my tongue. Nor am I encumbered by this self-centered vale. There is freedom in the Spirit by Christ Jesus for any who truly seek it!

In prayer, we ought to refine our focus. We must not be focused on ourselves or the world, for that is idolatry. We must focus in Him who called us to Himself, called us to freedom, called us to repentance, called us to faith, called us to new life, called us to holiness. When we focus on what we are doing, on what the world is doing, we are choosing not the focus on Christ. We are making a decision that this is more important to us. God does not love the prayers of the long-winded or of the eloquent for their many words or the beauty of those words. God hears the prayers of the meek and the humble, of those whose focus is set solely in Him.

Do not pray to yourselves, as you have no power apart from God, from whom all power is given. Instead set your gaze toward heaven and set your hope in Him. Be defined by your Savior. Live in Him, walk in His ways, pray as He teaches you. Not to us, but to Your name be the glory.