Prayer was originally meant to be easy, the opening of the heart to God as a friend. Why, then, has it become an item of confusion, a process that is uncertain, vague, even feared?
Prayer was originally meant to be easy, the opening of the heart to God as a friend. Why, then, has it become an item of confusion, a process that is uncertain, vague, even feared?
“[Some people] come out of a tradition that focuses on extemporaneous prayer. From the youngest ages, God is a father, someone you can talk to in your own words. A lot of people don’t come from that tradition,” says Mark Galli, managing editor of Christianity Today magazine and co-author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Prayer,” (Alpha Books, 2004).
“There’s a whole series of inadequacies,” he says, with addressing the creator of heaven and earth, the God of the universe. People feel that anything they say “can feel paltry, ineffective. If suddenly I found myself in the presence of the United States president, what would I say?”
Galli adds that some feel they have no right to talk to God.
“There’s a lot of confusion about what prayer is. Some people feel like they may be able to talk to God but don’t have any right to ask him anything.”
What would pastors, prayer warriors, or others involved in a prayer life say to people who are facing such issues? Galli would say “They have a misunderstanding of who God is.” God will listen to the babblings of anybody, he says. “There are no qualifications to talk to him. I can be the most sordid sinner and still have the right to address him. That’s the rules he set up beforehand. There are no pre-qualifications, classes you have to take, or behavior you have to exhibit.”
On the other hand, he cautions, to deepen that connection and make it fruitful, one can’t just be a “hardened, obdurate person who doesn’t care what God thinks” and expect a prayer relationship to flourish.
“It’s my main priority in life. If I don’t have a prayer life, I feel like I have nothing,” says Susan Shull, prayer coordinator for the Yale Seventh-day Adventist Church in Virginia, United States. “Books help me keep more focused and inspired, but ... the main thing is to pray. To make it complicated usually means to put off something that’s very simple.
“Many go to prayer seminars and read books, which is good, but we need to spend time praying and less time learning how to pray.”
Some people never consider the fact that God said he wants a relationship with them, and longs to communicate with them. They “never consider praising God” in addition to asking for things, Galli says.
“God wants that expression of friendship. He designed us for communion with each other and with Him. God earnestly wants to hear from us,” says Dr. Gerald Winslow, vice president for Spiritual Life at Loma Linda University Adventist Health Sciences Center.
“We can’t inform God about anything. So we don’t pray to inform God except to inform God about our willingness to be in touch,” he adds. “It’s important to ask God for what we need—Jesus teaches us that—but not because God doesn’t know.” Prayer changes things, Winslow says. “The possibilities are open, mainly because we are more accessible to God.”
Derek Morris, senior pastor at the Forest Lake Seventh-day Adventist Church in Apopka, Florida, talks about the prayer life of himself and his wife. “I’ve learned a lot about prayer with my wife. We walk every morning ... when we walk, we pray. I think we’ve grown up with stereotypes that we have to be kneeling in a certain place and we recite certain things. But if prayer is really opening our heart as with a friend, we have a three-way conversation—my wife and I. It’s very natural, it’s a conversation.
“We need to start thinking outside of our boxes that we’ve made. [Because] God didn’t make them.”
Does this include telling God how you feel? Some may think they can’t or shouldn’t be honest with God. “Who do we think we’re fooling? He’s God. He reads us like a book. It’s for our benefit that, just like in a relationship with a spouse or friend, we are authentic, transparent, honest,” Morris states.
“In my relationship with my wife, while there may be times where she’s frustrated with me ... she’s going [to tell me about it] in the context of love. So it’s not going to be abusive. So is it appropriate to scream at God? I think he can handle our screaming.”
As a whole, people have a “longing to connect with deity, with something that’s more than just mundane,” says Morris. “Down through the generations, even in different cultures, people have sought, ‘how do I connect with God?’” explains Morris, who gave a week of talks on “life-changing prayer” at the church’s world headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland in March.
Lonnie Melashenko, speaker of the Voice of Prophecy, a long-time broadcast ministry of the Adventist church, says he was inspired by a pastor. “Glen Coon once conducted an ‘ABC’s of Prayer’ in my Camarillo, California church when I began my ministry. I shall never forget the simple basics of prayer, which he presented: Ask. Believe. Claim.” He says the condition to answered prayer is to “ask; then believe; then claim by receiving. Simple as ABC.”
For those who do enter into a prayer life, but feel like their prayers are not answered, Shull says, “God answers in His time. When we think prayers aren’t answered, it’s an especially critical growing time for us, a waiting time that can be discouraging. But we need to make it positive. Many times it’s when God is teaching us the most.”
With the plethora of information available on the topic, there is hope for those who have trouble knowing how to pray. Galli says there’s help for people who want to overcome that “sense of an awkwardness.” He also suggests not trying to hide feelings from God. “To go into God’s presence and pretend [those feelings] aren’t there, you may as well lay your cards on the table.”
“Just do it and keep it simple,” Shull adds.