There’s nothing magic about the choice of fifteen minutes. Praying for any interval four times every day could turn a life upside down. And is prayer four times a day for everyone? I don’t know. Nor do I know whether it is in fact even possible for everyone to carve out four prayer times a day. I really do believe some individuals’ lives are too complicated and demanding. But, I also know that those individuals are rare. I’m hard-pressed to think if I know one such person.
If God is a maybe, or even just a good idea, then it makes sense to pray a little in the morning and whisper prayers here and there through the day. But, if God is God, and if the God is interested in being in communion with me, then the only thing that makes even a particle of sense is to pursue him 24/7, to drop everything to enjoy that sweet, delicious honor.
Even presenting ourselves with the prospect of such a radical prayer practice will pose questions wanting honest answers. I asked a friend what would stop her from trying to spend time alone with God at set times through the day. Her answer: “I would have to want to. I would have to think it was important—more important than any other thing.”
Why Prayer?
I’ve got a truism that I’m almost certain is actually true. Here it is: If there’s a frequent refrain in the Bible, a word or theme that shows up over and again, chances are it’s downright central. Or, more simply put: If anything is in the Bible more than twenty times, you can bet there is a reason for it being there.
For example, the Bible is chock-full of verses that proclaim our God is greater than all other gods, greater than kings and rulers.
Frankly, these verses never made sense to me.
I mean, why would the Lord of all creation, the Ruler of the heavens and the universe, the God, even bother to state anything so patently obvious? I don’t say to the thumbtack on the table: “I am far above you. I’m wiser and stronger, more dexterous and agile, in short, a better human being.” So why would God compare himself to gods made out of brass and terra cotta, or even mortal flesh?
I don’t take on the thumbtack; there’s no contest. Why would God take on a president or Queen Elizabeth?
But he does take on other “gods.” He goes out of his way to say he outdoes “kings” and “rulers,” and his Holy Word repeats it like it means something. But what might that meaning be?
I don’t think God is comparing himself to actual flesh-and-blood prime ministers and presidents. Rather, it seems to me that he is taking on the real gods we worship, the gods we give our very selves to, the gods we live and die for. He’s saying, “I matter more than even these.”
Let me name the gods we worship, all the things in life we deify. Silly gods: hockey, buffalo wings, and YouTube; serious, staid gods: education, status, and security; secret gods: fraud and pornography; subtle deities: self-image, personal best, and winner; churchy gods: morality, self-righteousness, and pride; old-fashioned gods: sloth, lust, and greed.
These are not our incidentals, harmless pastimes; rather,they are the objects of our worship and self-sacrifice and dedication. If that seems extremely stated, we can do the math; run the numbers; calculate the time we give to all these things and then compare that with the time we spend with God. We can evaluate their relative importance in our lives quite simply, just by going without them for a month.
Or, another telling exercise: we might write down 8:00, 8:30, 9:00, 9:30, 10:00, and each half-hour through the day until bedtime, and for each time write down what we have done, and in the margin, write who was god of that half-hour. God is not God of our lives if he is not God of our half-hours.
Time is the thermometer, the indicator of priorities of the things we value. So too, time used differently can alter who and what will rule our days. There’s a well-kept secret of time management that doesn’t get much press. It’s this: If every morning you take five minutes and jot down what you will do with each half-hour of your day, that one small practice will actually change the things you do with time.
Time. It’s the one thing every blessed one of us is given in exactly the same amount. Donald Trump has no more minutes in his hours than you’ve got in yours. Oprah Winfrey has just seven days in every week she lives. Barack Obama gets 365 days every year, and once every four years when he gets an extra day, you get one too.
Jesus tells us: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). Where you put your minutes is very likely where you put your heart.
I believe that the first step in acknowledging God as our truest treasure is showing up to pray. Every day. Even if it’s raining. Even if it’s not. Even if you have a hundred other things to do. And here’s the astonishing surprise: You start to like this daily prayer. You start to need it. You start to miss it when it isn’t there. You start to love it. You begin to treasure your time alone with God. It becomes the best-tasting, most melodious, harmonious, exciting, satisfying part of your whole day. You crave it, you can’t get enough.
And guess what else? You don’t end up living in a cave somewhere. You don’t get voted the Hermit Saint. People appear from the most unlikely places; your life gets richer with experiences and happenings, relationship and blessing. You seek first the kingdom of heaven and God’s righteousness. You put your treasure where your heart is; you say, out loud, in a big, bold, outdoor voice: “I will have no other God before you. You are my God.”
You come to God in prayer—and you would be very well advised to hold onto your hat.
How Can I Do It If I Don’t Know What It Is?
And yet, what is prayer? That one short word is asked to cover a multitude of mysteries. Prayer is worship. Prayer is sitting down with God, abiding in his love, filling our minds with images of him. Prayer is being in the presence of the living God and being acutely aware of how unlikely and astonishing that is. Prayer is resting. Prayer is wrestling. Prayer is the most outrageous and transforming thing that we will ever do, but often we reduce it to a wave, a knee bend, and a please and thank you. Prayer is, most simply put, being consciously in the presence of God. In a very true sense, prayer is being, not doing. It is less an activity than a location. (It goes without saying that we are in God’s presence all the time, but being aware of this reality is another story.)
And yet prayer is not all peaceful and serene. I have been considering starting a campaign to abolish the term “quiet time.” True, we prepare our hearts to receive God by quieting ourselves—stillness really is the place where it all begins—but what pervades our prayer times is often anything but quiet. There will be moments that are holy, soft and gentle, but so many others that we will experience as monumental and imposing, riveting our full attention. And, it must be said, we are guaranteed there will be times when prayer is dull and vacant, parched and dry as dry can be. These times will be interspersed with encounters with God we find to be enlightening, shocking, and in the end life-changing.
Prayer involves every aspect of our being: thought and reason, emotion and desire. This conversation with our Heavenly Father will encompass all of life. And it will surely touch our deepest beings, joining in rich paradox happiness and sorrow, satisfaction and disappointment. Prayer knows how to hold the contradictions of our lives in one brilliant understanding.
“Come
