Prayer

As a Christian minister, I'm not supposed to say this, but I'll say it anyway because it's true: I have a really hard time with prayer. It rarely feels like anyone is listening. 

I've been reading Stanley Grenz's beautiful book, Prayer: A Cry for the Kingdom, in which he highlights how central Jesus' relationship with the Father was. Jesus often withdrew from everything and everyone just to be alone with God. 

I don't have that kind of inner life. Instead, I have a voice inside my head that usually wants to tear me down. I usually prefer distracting myself to prayer so that I don't have to hear that voice.

I can think of a couple of moments in my life, though, when I felt like God was listening. Years ago, when I was at Bible college, my Dad had been kidnapped in Haiti. I was at an all-school prayer meeting and I think I heard God tell me, "He's not going to die. I have more for him to do." I know I felt a sense of peace. A couple of days after that, my Dad was released.

On another occasion, someone I knew was trying to do great harm to my reputation and to the Bible college where I work. I came home one day and asked the Haitian lady who cooked for us to pray for me and she prayed big, bold Haitian prayers as I wept. 

Later on, I fell asleep and I dreamed that I was in front of a government building. As I walked around to the back, I could see men in ski masks carrying boxes out and loading them into a big box truck. In the dream, I knew they were thieves and that if they saw me, they would kill me. Suddenly, they turned around and started walking toward me. I had nowhere else to go so I crawled into the shadow of the building and prayed that they wouldn't see me. They ran right by me, as though I had been made invisible. I woke up knowing that it would be alright and it was.

I don't know why God makes his presence so elusive or why prayer is so hard for me. But I'll keep praying, hoping that one day, I'll find the life that Jesus knew in the Father's presence.