Obstacles to Prayer, Part 4 – Final Installment
Wow! I can’t believe it is Wednesday already. I know how disheartening it must be to come to this blog day after day only to find the same post up as the last time you came by. Sorry to cause this trouble for all of you who just can’t seem to make it through the day without reading my blog. Now that I’ve apologized to my mom, on with today’s post.
This will be the last installment in my discussion on obstacles to prayer. It has been so enriching for me to take this evaluative look at prayer. My personal prayer life has been blessed simply by turning the microscope on myself and highlighting the areas that I need to work on. Someone mentioned to me that discussing difficulty in prayer on a minister’s blog may not be appropriate. What are people going to think about you if they log on and read about what trouble you have with prayer? My hope is that they read this and think, "Wow, he’s normal!" If they don’t think that, they are clearly more mature than I am spiritually and clearly qualify to make any remarks of critique they see fit.
The fourth and final obstacle:
- Confusion over my own identity
This obstacle has less to do with the practice or discipline of prayer and more to do with how I view myself. Prayer has an amazing way of connecting us to the Spiritual world that exists above and beyond the physical world. If I am a citizen of that Spiritual world, I want to connect to it in a way that reminds me of who I am and that allows me to relive some of the Spiritual heritage that I have experienced. If I forget that I am a citizen of that Spiritual world and start to live as though I am a citizen of this physical world, my desires to connect with the Spiritual realm subside and my desires to connect to the physical world thrive.
When my children were younger and we were driving them to school everyday, we started a ritual where we would tell them as they got out of the car, "Remember whose you are!" The answer that chimed back was always, "God’s!" I wanted my kids to remember every day as they went into the foreign territory of secular education that regardless of what happened in there, they were God’s first and foremost. For several years it was our family motto, so much so that when we left our work in Columbia, MD one of our close friends prepared a display of that phrase in a nice frame for us.
My prayer life has the potential to be the same connecting force as this little family ritual. It isn’t about sending a message into the mysterious unknown hoping that someone is standing by the other end of the air vent to hear my plea from below. It isn’t about intruding into God’s space and interrupting Him as he skillfully guides the cosmos. It is about calling home to reconnect with my family. Not only do I need to call home to keep the relationship going, I need to call home to remind myself about where I come from and where I am going. Forgetting those simple principles causes me to get distracted and allows me to focus on things that don’t really matter.
Yancey speaks of this in the book that we are reading in our Biblos group. One of the examples he gives is of Daniel, who prayed three times a day with his windows open facing Jerusalem. It was so important for Daniel, who experienced great success in Babylon, to remind himself and others that he isn’t Babylonian. He belonged to God, a child of Jerusalem, and he longed to return to the kingdom of his citizenship.
How easy it is to get distracted by the physical, the here and now! My hope is that I can embrace prayer as the link connecting me to the only citizenship that matters. Besides, who wouldn’t love a country with such an open immigration policy!
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Brad Palmore
On behalf of myself, and your mother, thanks for giving me something new to read this morning.
Put me in their your mom and Randy!
“Confusion of my own identity.” The thought that immediately sprang to my mind is that of my own self-esteem. I think, I really do, that it is easier for me to pray effectively at times when I feel good about myself. I can approach God in prayer, knowing He is all-powerful, all-wise, and all-loving and can accept, as much as my mortal mind can encompass, that He loves me and cares about my communication with Him. But if I am at a low point in my life and have a low opinion of myself at the moment, it’s hard to accept even that God loves me. After all, if I am so unworthy of…..whatever…..here on earth, how in the world could the ruler of the universe not see me the same way I’m seeing myself. I’m very much revealing some of my majorly human, mortal thoughts here, but I can truly identify with your major premise of “confusion over my own identity.”
Someone mentioned to me that discussing difficulty in prayer on a minister’s blog may not be appropriate. What are people going to think about you if they log on and read about what trouble you have with prayer?
In my opinion, one of the biggest obstacles to Christian brotherhood and fellowship, the thing that stops us from being intimate and accountable, is the false notion that other Christians are better than we are. We see everyone else in their nice clothes with their Sunday masks on and think, “How can I, with all my flaws and problems, ever relate to these perfect people? How could they do anything but reject me if they knew the real me.”
So instead of opening up to each other and asking for and receiving help, we struggle on alone.
I think ministers and other church leaders/servants are especially vulnerable to this mindset. It is probably one of the reasons we see so many “falls” within the clergy. IMO, the more real and authentic a minister is the more effective his message, his ministry and his witness. I am much more able to relate to and accept teaching from one who knows the same broken streets that I must walk.
For James: You have echoed
what has been in my heart many, many times. I appreciate knowing someone else
sees and feels these ideas, as well. Many of us live our lives feeling like we are second or third-rate Christians because we know we are not perfect, we know our sins and imperfections, and how often we fall short. And we see everyone else around us who seems to have it all together and fear and even expect rejection…..on all levels. Our Christian masks that we put on before every service or church function are as real as our ties and jewelry.
Meow: Our Christian masks that we put on before every service or church function are as real as our ties and jewelry.
And they reveal just as little about what a person is truly like or what they may be going through.
One of the things I think we as Christians need to learn and develop is transparency & authenticity. Of course those will also require acceptance and tolerance. Until we embrace and cultivate that kind of attitude the enemy will continue to defeat us one-on-one, undefended and alone.
I’m sure you were just sitting around waiting for something to come along.
I know exactly what you are talking about. Around the turn of the millennium I suffered from pneumonia three times in 18 months. It was in that cycle of illnesses that I realized that I often determined how close I felt to God based on how I physically felt. Really sick, couldn’t find God. Felt great, God was every where. Odd how much we interpret through our physical eyes.
I love the whole “He’s just like me” feeling I get every time I read about Jesus being tired, stressed, pressured, etc. I’d say He was a pretty good minister.
The funny thing is that I think everyone thinks this. I think we all walk around wishing we could be authentic with each other. Since no one is saying that, we keep walking around and keep it to ourselves.
I had a severely lop sided group of kids signed up to go to Uplift last year. All seven were boys. All the girls said they wanted to go but they didn’t want to be the only ones going. Finally one gave in and signed up on her own. Final group total was 7 guys, 7 girls.
So, who is going to be the one who breaks the authenticity barrier?
Not me!!! I know what you guys would think of me if I told you what I’m really like.
Sadly, those of us who ARE open and reach out in times of trouble are often misunderstood and viewed as whiners or emotionally unstable. Or sometimes we get uncomfortable with someone who always seems to be emotionally needy and start avoiding them. Not to say that we never step up and act like brothers and sisters in the Lord. We do. But sometimes we don’t. There are issues on both sides, that of being authentic in reaching out AND of being receptive on the other side. We all have opportunities to do both.