As you probably know by now, the focus of my 100-mile journey is prayer — for Manna Cafe, for our city, and for the people who call this place home. I’ve also spent time praying about my own life and future and other random things. Still, you might wonder how a person could pray for roughly three hours a day for 10 days without running out of things to say. There was a time I would have questioned it myself. In fact, there was a time it would have sounded like an exhausting, grueling thing to do! So allow me to share what I’ve learned about prayer the past decade or two.
Surprisingly, prayer has very little to do with certain things we often associate with it, such as closing your eyes, adopting a certain posture, or using religious-sounding phrases. Prayer simply means communing with God the Father. I like this definition: Prayer seeks “a connection with an object of worship through deliberate communication” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/prayer). In other words, prayer is an intentional, back-and-forth exchange between you and God. You can pray while curled up in your favorite chair or while changing the tires on your car. You can pray while lying down with your face to the floor or while walking, running, or doing the dishes. You can pray through your tears, laughter, frustration, confusion, or delight. The goal is simply to tell the Lord whatever is on your heart in an attitude of humility and trust.
And here’s some very good news for all my fellow introverts: prayer does not necessarily involve spoken words. What a relief for those of us who have a limited capacity for noise! Spoken prayers are wonderful, but they aren’t mandatory. This is because prayer should include plenty of listening. Think about it: a healthy conversation requires that both individuals take turns. If you do all the talking, the other person is required to do all the listening, and this is unbalanced. If you babble like a magpie every time you pray, you’ll never hear the Lord’s voice because you’ll be too busy filling up the silence with noise — and because He doesn’t tend to shout or interrupt. This is why we should probably spend more time listening than speaking. After all, God is much smarter than we are. He has more of value to say.
Are you ready to spend some time in quiet, contemplative prayer? If so, I’d love for you to join me on Tuesday. Meet me at 7:50 at the Burt Cobb rec. center on Franklin St. We’ll leave at 8:00 sharp. Email me at Vicki@MannaCafeMinistries.com and let me know you’re coming.
Until next time: may the love of God be made complete in you.
Talk to you soon!
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