prayer

Download a full manuscript of the talk. Download the Discussion Guide. Download a guide to Spiritual Practices.

 

If there's a more complex and confusing practice than prayer, I'm not sure what it is. Just about everyone prays at some point in our lives. It's a natural human response - especially in times of crisis - to reach out for someone bigger than we are. But at the same time, so many of us feel that our prayers are ineffective. How many of us in here could admit that prayer has been something that frustrates us? That we can't focus, or we feel ineffective?

Wouldn't it be kind of nice to have some sort of Prayer Hotline?

Our problems stem from our assumptions about prayer. Our culture reserves prayer for times of crisis - who can forget that in the wake of 9/11 even secular businesses hung signs that read "Pray for America"? When loved ones are sick, even more mundane scenarios - praying when we need a job or promotion, before a sports game, when we didn't study for a test.

Our prayers assume that God is out there, up there somewhere doing something else, and we have to get his attention.

We tend to treat prayer like a magic spell: if we say the right combination of words while assuming a proper posture, then God will hear us, notice us and come down to us. But it doesn't have to be that way. There's a better way to pray, a better way to engage in what God is doing in our world.

We can use prayer to order our lives, to take control of our schedules and submit them to our King...

Download or listen to the full talk for the rest!

Podcast: Download (1.9MB)