Today I want to really encourage you from my own struggles of developing a lifestyle of prayer.
Though I had a great love for music as a kid—thanks to my parents!—I really was not musically inclined at all. My singing voice was terrible—the choir teacher in junior high hated me. And when I started playing guitar as a teen, my rhythm was so bad I couldn’t even play with other musicians. I was a very slow learner of music theory. It reminded me of math and I hated math. I had a vision of what I wanted to sound like. Basically any of the great blues guitarists (Gilmour, Santana, Beck) but I really struggled to even play in a way that was pleasant to listen to.
The only thing I had going for me was this: a persistent desire. I just wanted to be able to play beautiful melodic guitar solos. I practiced incessantly as a young adult. After at least 30 years of on and off playing I finally got to a place where the music flowed. I don’t remember doing anything different but, for some reason, a myriad of elements came together and it started to work. I’m definitely not looking to quit my day job and go on the road ha! But, when I plug in and play—I am in heaven! It’s pure delight.
Up to this point in our 100 day pursuit I’ve given you a lot of important spiritual truths and suggestions and motivations. I hope all this is helping. What I want to remind you of today is that having a deep prayer life is not something you learn in a week or a year. It will cost you everything you have and it will take years before you come to a place of it being pure delight.
I’m not good at this
As soon as I became a Christian in 1989, I wanted to know how to pray. It hit me early in my walk that, if prayer was the means of knowing God, then—I needed to learn how to pray. My desire to learn led me to read books on prayer, go to prayer meetings, and constantly practice praying.
Now, just like music didn’t come easy to me, prayer also did not come easy. I was so inconsistent. Condemnation really whipped me and I wouldn’t feel welcomed by God. I’m such a feeler that any bad feeling would make it hard for me to pray. I also admit I was just lazy. Prayer often felt like hard work. I didn’t have much of a spiritual vocabulary so my prayers were pretty basic “caveman cries.”
Occasionally, and gradually more and more frequently, I’d have a really amazing sweet time of communion with God. The presence of the Spirit would carry me along; it felt like I could pray for hours and not run out of words. These times weren’t always dramatic encounters with God but sort of mini encounters. They were times I felt near to God.
Ruined for life
Well, these little mini encounters and touches ruined me. They were so exhilarating that I couldn’t help but to desire more. In fact, when I felt far from God, I was almost lovesick in my longing. I just wanted to come near and experience His embrace. I’m not talking merely about just “goose bumps” or feeling the presence of God physically. Sure, that’s part of it, but it’s much more intimate than that. It’s an awareness that God is near. Somehow I knew that every word I prayed, every thought in my mind, was heard by God. In those moments I felt more alive than any other time of my life. It was like stepping into the exact purpose for which I was made.
But then I’d wake up in a bad mood the next day and be prayerless for 3 days. I’d oversleep. Or I’d fall asleep in prayer. I’d try to pray and just hit a wall and quit after 8 minutes. Sometimes I’d close my eyes to pray and feel utterly afflicted. My mind was racing all over the place. I couldn’t sit still. Ah! Why is this so hard!
Very slowly the delightful mini encounters in prayer became more frequent, and I had fewer and fewer prayerless days. Gradually prayer became a delight 30% of the time. Then 50% of the time. Then 70%. Then, even when prayer was hard, I still felt a measure of joy.
Be patient
To those of you who are young and undeveloped in prayer, I want to say this: be patient. Anything worth anything doesn’t come easy—and a deep relationship with God is the most worthy thing we could possibly pursue! If it’s not flowing and you are up and down—be patient. If you just feel like prayer is not your “gift”—be patient. If other people seem to be getting it way quicker than you—be patient.
Just like my guitar playing clicked at a certain point and became a delight rather than a frustration, the same thing happened with prayer. I really can’t explain it. It wasn’t that I learned some deep secret. It wasn’t that I was doing something wrong. My prayers were just choppy, unmelodic and strained. But after a time they began to flow.
Pure delight
The Lord is my witness, I’m not lying or exaggerating, but telling you the honest truth—spending time with God is now a pure delight. It is the highlight of my day every day. Even when I go on vacation all I want to do more than anything is find a quiet place to commune with God. It’s not just that “I feel peaceful doing this spiritual exercise.” I’m hearing the voice of the Lord and that voice lights up 1000 lights within me!
I hope this doesn’t at all sound like boasting. I’m not trying to boast. In fact, if anything, I’m confessing I’ve been inconsistent and lazy and not good at prayer for years and years. I’m sharing all this to encourage you—yes you who feel like spiritual weaklings—you can have a deep relationship with the Lord. If someone as weak, pathetic, fickle and melancholy as me can find depth in God, then you can too!
Don’t stop
So be patient. I don’t, of course, mean passively patient. I don’t mean to be patient in the sense that you don’t bother trying to pray and just wait for a future day when it suddenly clicks. No, no, no. Listen—I say this with tears—many Christians never develop a deep prayer life. It doesn’t just one day magically happen. It comes through persistent practice.
Even if you’re terrible at it—don’t stop. Even if you are labeled by your church as the “least likely person to have a deep prayer life”—don’t stop. Even if prayer is your least enjoyable thing to do each day—don’t stop.
Make a decision that prayer is the most important thing to learn this side of eternity. Don’t stop until it clicks and until it becomes a pure delight. It will happen if you don’t give up.
And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. — Galatians 6:9