PRACTICE: Prayer

Imagine the person who knows your history like their own, the friend who sees your fears and doesn’t flinch. Your confidant. It could be the sibling who understands your thoughts with a look — a silent language formed by hundreds of collective childhood memories, holiday traditions, and vacation mishaps. Maybe it’s your spouse: your partner for a lifetime of mountains and valleys. Or, perhaps, your chosen family. The friend who hasn’t been lost to distance or the decades. The roommate who’s never too busy to hear a recap of your day.

How do you talk to them? Do you laugh together? Reminiscence? Do you share your deepest hopes? Plan for the future? Grieve the past? In our most life-giving relationships, conversation holds a sacred familiarity. We know we’ll be met with compassion for our weaknesses. We know there’s reconciliation on the other side of conflict.

Why do we settle for anything less in our conversations with God? 

Burdened by shame and our schedules, we fight the daily temptation to keep our distance. We settle for a few words tossed at the ceiling as we fall asleep. (After all, it’s probably after God’s office hours, anyway.) We feel an inner pressure to make our prayers short and efficient. Pretty and positive.

We make vague requests, unsure of God’s will. We’re exhausted by disappointment and doubt we’ll be met with grace. Stretched relationally thin by shallow connections, we doubt God’s unlimited capacity for communion with us. We wait to engage prayer honestly until we’re holier. Happier. Wealthier. Less angry. More spiritual.

Friends, God has so much more for us.

Prayer is not simply a ritual of the Christian life. It’s the quiet, constant rhythm designed to regulate our hearts and minds. It’s a practice of costly vulnerability, within which we expose our deepest fears and are met by the deepest love. In prayer, we experience God’s steadfast attention toward our longings. We’re given comfort in our mourning; rest in our hurry. Peace in our anxiety. Clarity in our confusion.

Prayer awakens us to the transcendence of heaven, but it doesn’t exist only in the abstract. Prayer is a collective act of history-making, a cosmic tapestry woven by the prayers of God’s people. When the Church — separated by borders and time zones but unified by a shared vision for the redemption of all things — prays, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done,” we invite Christ’s intercession, eternally impacting the unfolding narrative of history.

Prayer is not a transactional exchange aimed at persuading God to enact our will according to our schedule. Quite the opposite.

As we practice prayer, we steadily gain a deeper understanding of God’s rich goodness and abounding love. But the goal of prayer is not knowledge — that would be settling for far less than God’s best — it’s relationship. It’s not control; it’s trust. Prayer is surrender. In prayer, we loosen our hold on our time and our plans — and, in the process, the world loosens its hold on us.

Life is messy. The world is complex and, at times, heartbreaking. We need prayer. Desperately. Constantly. Innately.

Not as a coping mechanism or a Sunday morning must-have but as our daily reorientation toward the things of heaven. Prayer is not a box we check on our list of spiritual practices or a steadfast source of information. It’s the spiritual equivalent of coffee with a dear friend on a Tuesday morning. It’s the King of heaven, hanging on our every word. It’s where we feel God lean into the trials and the triumphs of our day. It’s where we experience the warmth of God’s affection. It’s where we feel His righteous anger toward injustice. Prayer is where God invites us to know Him and be known. To see and be seen.

Through prayer, we transform and are transformed.