Conversation is communication between two or more people. It can be verbal, it can be written, it can be a gesture. It always involves at least two people giving back and forth in the message being conveyed.
Some people are good at conversation. They know how to listen and how to inject statements that further the conversation along. Others are not so good. They’re too busy thinking of what they want to say to really listen to the other person. In such instances, the conversation is not so much an exchange of ideas as it is two people talking with the only thing in common being that there is a similar topic, but no real progression in the conversation.
Then there are the conversations when one person is speaking while the other person is at best distracted or, at worst, completely uninterested in what is being said. There are few things more frustrating than to be talking to someone only to have them say, “I’m sorry. Were you talking to me?”
There are times our prayer life is more like the immediately preceding paragraph. It seems that we talk to God, but we never hear from Him. We assume He’s listening, but we can’t really be sure. If our prayer life is one-sided, it can become frustrating, discouraging and counter-productive.
So how do we turn it around? How do I go from praying to the ceiling and go to having a conversation with God?
What is Prayer?
Put simply, prayer is talking with God. It is our way of telling Him what’s on our hearts and minds (keeping in mind that He already knows our hearts and minds, which we’ll look at a little later on), and it can be a way in which we listen to Him as well.
There is no specific formula for prayer, although Jesus does give a good outline for a prayer in what we call the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-15; Luke 11:2-4). That is to say, the Bible doesn’t set into stone a specific formula for prayer. And that makes sense when we consider that prayer is talking with God.
Think of the way we speak with one another. Our conversations with one another take on a variety of forms and shapes, depending on who we’re speaking to and what we’re talking about. In a parent-teacher conference, our conversations are more formal and topic driven, while catching up with old friends entails a more informal, wide-ranging free flow of information and sharing.
One would think that talking with God should always be a formal means of communication, much like the parent-teacher conference. After all, He is God, Creator of the Universe, Majestic Lord, Holy, Supreme. He is all of that, yes, but He is also Father. The way I talked with my dad when I was growing up and the way I speak to my children today, even though they are all grown up, is a very different way than I speak to a police officer who’s flashing lights are in my rearview mirror as he’s standing outside my car with ticket book in hand. Two very different talks.
The thief on the cross who said to Jesus, “Remember me when You come into Your kingdom” spoke as much of a prayer as is Psalm 119. Both are focused on speaking with God; both are expressing heart-felt faith.
In the same vain, a prayer doesn’t have to start with a direct addressing of God in a flattering term, nor does it have to end with “Amen.” God knows when we’re speaking to Him, and He knows when we’re finished. It’s not as if we’re talking to Him over a walkie-talkie; there’s no need for a “Come in” or a “roger; over and out.”
Just as there is no set formula for prayer, neither is there a set position or posture for prayer. A person can pray while prostrate, kneeling, sitting, standing, walking, even driving. Of course, with the last example, it also should be obvious that a person doesn’t have to have their eyes closed to be an effective pray-er, nor do we have to have our head down. It’s a good idea if praying while prostrate, kneeling, sitting or standing that we bow our head and/or close our eyes, simply because it’s too easy to get distracted by things going on around us.
And I find the best way to keep from becoming distracted while praying is to pray out loud. We can pray thinking, but in my world, it’s too easy for me to see squirrels to chase while I’m doing the silent prayer. It helps to say what I’m saying as if God is next to me in the room or wherever I am. Which, of course, He is.
The simple rule is, prayer is talking to God, and we talk to God just as we would talk with other people.
So, Again, Why is Prayer so Frustrating?
Even if we know all this, there are still things that nag at us and make us think that prayer is a frustrating exercise.
Isn’t it annoying when you’re trying to talk to someone who is engrossed in a television program on something on their smartphone? You need to speak to this person, or you simply want to converse. They act as if they want to hear you, but their mind and their attention is on something else entirely. You’re talking away, when you realize that the person sitting right next to you has no more heard a word you’ve said than if they had been in the opposite end of the house or down the block. That’s frustrating.
In the same way, many times we pray and we feel as if we’re talking to ourselves. At least in the previous paragraph, we can sometimes get a grunt or an “uh-huh,” but when we pray, God doesn’t even give us a verbal assent that He’s at least in the room pretending to listen. It’s not that we don’t believe God is listening, but we walk away from the conversation feeling that it was incredibly one-sided. And that’s frustrating.
James raised the issue of frustrating prayers in his letter. “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasure” (James 4:1-3).
A lot of the times, God is silent simply because we are not where we need to be in our relationship with Him. It’s not that He’s being petulant and refusing to speak to us because we hurt His feelings, but God abhors sin, and the sins of His people result in His discipline (cf. Hebrews 12:7-11; read most of the Old Testament prophets). Our prayers seem to bounce off the ceiling not because God won’t listen or doesn’t’ listen, but because our sins are preventing us from being effective in our prayers.
By the way, the idea of “you do not have, because you do not ask God” should not be taken to mean that God is the ATM of the heavens, and all we have to do is ask Him, and He will be obligated to give us what we want. Notice that James says we must ask with the right motive, and the right movie is not for us to “spend what [we] get on [our] pleasure.” Asking God is not the equivalent of automatically receiving.
But Jesus says, “I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by My Father in heaven” (Matthew 18:19). And again, “You may ask Me for anything in My name, and I will do it” (John 14:14). That sounds pretty convincing at first glance. But consider that asking “in Jesus’ name” is not a magic incantation like “abra cadabra” or “hocus pocus.” Rather, asking something in Jesus’ name is the act of placing ourselves under His direction, submitting ourselves to His will. When we ask in Jesus’ name, we are trusting Him to provide our needs and to equip us to do His will. We are acting as His servants on His behalf. Even better, “in Jesus’ name,” we are yielding ourselves to Him that He may work His will through us. Beyond that, we fall into James’s asking with wrong motives.
So, to get back on track, sometimes our prayers seem ineffective simply because we are not where God wants us and needs us to be. We come in prayer expecting that which we should not expect, and the result is our prayers seem ineffective.
An interesting passage in Daniel gives us another reason why prayer may seem frustrating. Any study of the book of Daniel reveals a man who was earnestly seeking to know and do God’s will. From our first introduction to Daniel, we find a man (with his three friends) who are committed to the ways of God, even when God’s will contradicts everything else around them. By refusing to defy God’s dietary plans, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were blessed with God’s favor. As a result of Daniel’s persistent faith and obedience, he was placed in ever more important places of importance in the Babylonian kingdom.
It should come as no surprise that God heard and responded to Daniel’s prayers. In Daniel 9:20-23a, the Bible says, “While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and making my request to the Lord my God for His holy hill—while I was still in prayer, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the earlier vision (cf. Daniel 8:16), came to me in a swift flight from the time of the evening sacrifice. He instructed me and said to me, ‘Daniel, I have now come to give you insight and understanding. As soon as you began to pray, an answer was given, which I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed.’” Notice that Gabriel said he was sent with an answer as soon as Daniel began praying.
Now consider the next encounter with “the one who looked like a man.” Daniel had been praying for three weeks with no answer coming to him. We pick it up in Daniel 10:12-14: “Then he continued, ‘Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before God, your words were heard and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia. Now I have come to explain to you what will happen to your people in the future, for the vision concerns a time yet to come.’” We see from this passage that sometimes the prayers are not answered as quickly as we expect because spiritual warfare is hindering the response.
The issue here wasn’t Daniel’s lack of faith or misdirected desires. Rather, it was that Daniel is where God wants him to be, and Satan wants to defeat the will of God at every turn. In Luke 18:1-8, Jesus tells a parable to His disciples. The reason for the parable, according to verse 1, was “to show them that they should always pray and not give up.” The parable was about an unjust judge who, because of a woman’s persistent plea for justice. The judge finally tires of the woman’s constant pleas, and finally does what she asks. The lesson Jesus brought to the disciples. “And will not God bring about justice for His chosen ones, who cry out to Him day and night? Will He keep putting them off?” (v. 7).
Persistence In prayer is part of the “ask, seek, knock” instructions found in Matthew 7:7-8 and Luke 11:9-10. The idea in these words is to keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking. The trouble in our world, though, is that we are becoming less and less patient. We are becoming used to instant results and we become easily distracted. So we ask God once or twice, maybe even three times, and after that, we lose interest or figure that God just really isn’t into this particular prayer. Remember that God’s timing is always perfect, and that sometimes the answer to a prayer is due to spiritual warfare that prevents the answer from coming to us immediately.
Prayer is Very Much a Faith Exercise
There are other reasons why our prayer life can be frustrating, but the key to transforming it is to focus not on the negatives but to key on the positives.
Instead of thinking that God isn’t even listening, the faith statement is that God does hear our prayers. The writer of Hebrews understood this truth. “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (4:16). John writes, “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of Him” (1 John 5:14-15). Because we have this confidence, we can pray with assurance in the knowledge that God does hear and that we aren’t just talking to the ceiling.
The fact that God hears us also means that He will speak to us. Don’t assume God “speaking” will be a powerful, deep voice that has great reverb, but listen to the still, small voice. Pay attention when you’re praying and a Bible verse suddenly pops into your mind. Listen to the question that comes at you from out of nowhere and seemingly has no place in the direction your prayer is going in. This is the voice of God as He guides us through His word, as He redirects our focus and as He comforts us with His presence.
Instead of thinking that God isn’t going to answer our prayer, the faith statement is that God does answer our prayers. Just remember, though, that the answers in life can be yes, they can be no, and sometimes they can be wait. I covered this in more detail in a previous blog (“Why Does God Say, ‘No’? – July 24, 2017).
The faith statement must always be that God really does care for us (why else did He send His Son if He didn’t?) and that He genuinely wants what is best for us. Just remember that what God thinks is best for us and what we think is best for us is not always the same thing.
Conclusion
Trust in God. Let Him act and don’t give up on Him. “Ask, and you will receive. Seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be open to you” (Matthew 7:7, emphasis my own). And remember God’s words to us through His apostle Paul: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but bet transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:1-2).Transform our prayer life by letting our minds be transformed by the Creator of us all.
© 2018 Glynn Beaty