Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Dropping Formulaic Prayers

So often when I pray I end up in the "God, I praise you for..." or "God, please help me..." or "God, I'm sorry for..." trap. But then the other day I realized that when I talk to my friends, even though I might compliment them or ask for help or apologize for something, I also do a lot more. In fact, if all I did were those three things, I can't see how our friendship could really grow very deep.

My friends and I talk about what's on our minds. Sometimes we laugh or complain or remember good times together. And sometimes we don't talk at all all, we just hang out.

So, since I want my friendship with God to grow deeper, I've started trying to relate to him in a more balanced way. Rather than getting caught up in my typical formulaic prayers, I've started talking to him about the dreams I have, the stuff that frustrates me, the things I'm struggling with or concerned about and where I'm hurting and what I'm hoping for and what I'm thinking or planning or remembering.

Think about it for a few minutes. Let us know some of the ways you connect with your friends that we could add to the spectrum of ways we communicate with God.

4 comments:

David Carnahan said...

One of my favorite examples of real prayer comes from the movie - The Fiddler on the Roof. In that movie, Teviah (sp?) is constantly talking to God. The movie starts out where he is talking to God about his horse, "Did you have to make him lame like that?". He is one of my favorite characters because life is real and he acknowledges the difficulties all the while talking to God about it, something I aspire to.

Kirk Jordan said...

Drinking a beer with God. Hmm. I like it.

SRL said...

Let me start by saying I hate washing dishes... least favorite thing to do so I almost always chat o the phone while I am doing them as it makes the time go faster. I used to spend that time in prayer... guess I should go back to that. Something about making dirty greasy things clean reminds me of God cleansing me... go figure

Deseree said...

I LOVE Tevye! God and I sometimes have those kinds of chats. It helps me to appreciate God's sense of humour.