Jesus Isn't Decaf (By Naomi Meyers)

Perhaps you are never stymied by prayer. Never distracted, disoriented, or discombobulated. Maybe, as you bow your head over perfectly folded hands, your words stream out in a logical, all-encompassing flow of penitence, praise, and petition. Perhaps you mention everything in one well-constructed paragraph, forgetting nothing. Maybe, during your prayer time, your children never get sick all over their bedrooms, the dog doesn’t use the floor as the grass, the phone doesn’t ring, the responsibilities of the day never creep in. Perhaps your mind never wanders. Your thoughts never stray. Maybe you can forget the list of errands, the demands of your job, the soccer schedule, the dinner conundrum and settle into an hour of uninterrupted prayer. If so, you have both my respect and admiration. There must surely be a special seat in Heaven engraved with your name.  

Not so for me. Quite the opposite, really. I am consistently stymied by prayer. After the initial invocation, the words take on a mind of their own either coming out in a jumbled rush or failing to materialize at all. I find myself eternally grateful that God can read my thoughts. If answers were dependent on articulate verbalization, I would undoubtedly receive no response. I am constantly distracted. The smoke alarm beeps its reminder for a battery change. Someone knocks on the door. My cell phone indicates a text, call or email. My thoughts seldom follow a logical pattern. They leapfrog from one topic to the next, jumping back again to add something I forgot to the previous request. My words rarely flow beautifully. My requests frequently trump my praise. And, when I finally say “Amen”–if I say it at all–it’s more of a “to be continued as I remember things I forgot” than a final benediction.  

Admittedly, it seems I should be better at praying. This isn’t my first day. It seems my prayers should be focused and organized and structured by now. Surely somewhere, in all the years I’ve been following Jesus, I should have figured out how to pray the grandiose prayers of the liturgy, the flowery prayers of the prewritten variety, or just the simple prayers necessary in a specific moment. Instead, I find myself throwing an elbow, standing on tiptoe, trying to peek over the disciples’ shoulders, desperately straining to hear Jesus’ response to the request I’ve been making for years, “Lord, teach us to pray…” (Luke 11:1) 

The very request is surprising. Whether from one of the twelve or one of the larger group of Jesus’ followers, it stands to reason those devotees would have already learned to pray by following the model they’d heard Jesus use. They would certainly have heard Him pray. They followed Him closely. Listened intently to His teachings. Walked by His side. Obeyed His bidding. Saw His miracles. Their awe was surely constant, their attention to Him complete. How frequently must they have heard Jesus pray? Yet, much to my comfort, at least one of these devout followers of Jesus Christ, distressed over his haphazard prayer life, felt it necessary to implore, “Teach us to pray.” I’m right there with him. 

My heart echoes the sentiment. Resoundingly. Sometimes my voice does, too. Loudly. Why? Because, just like the brave soul that dared to voice this request centuries ago, I want what Jesus had. Direct connection with the Father. Immediate audience in Heaven’s throne room. Relationship with God that transcends my situations, issues and circumstances. I want to pray the way Jesus did because I want the results Jesus got. Results that came from the power of a relationship with God the Father. A relationship built through the conversation of prayer.

Since the dawn of time, God has sought to be in conversation with humanity. Before sin entered the world, when Adam and Eve inhabited the Garden of Eden, God would come in the cool of the day, seek out His people, and converse with them. Those must have been delightful conversations. No suffering to heal. No sin to repent. No evil to report. What, exactly, did God and Adam discuss? Everything was perfect and beautiful. Yet still, God chose to create relationships through personal conversations with mankind. 

When Adam and Eve chose to disrupt the unblemished line of communication, God still came to talk to them. He knew what had happened. He knew the evil one had tripped them. He knew things would never be exactly the same. God could have chosen then to end the relationship, stop the communication, forgo the intimacy He’d been building between Himself and humanity. He didn’t. Although He had to make adjustments, God never disconnected from humanity. Over and again, as His people rejected Him, tossed aside His laws, refused to keep their covenant, God continued to call them into a relationship with Himself through the conversations of prayer. (Genesis 3:1-8, 4:26)

Jesus modeled this throughout His earthly ministry. Time and again He would draw aside, alone, to pray. His mission on earth depended on those conversations with His power source. Healing the sick, feeding the crowds, casting out demons. These all required a constant connection with the Father. Choosing His inner circle, walking on water, preaching in synagogues. They all necessitated wisdom and power and input from God above. Immediately prior to being asked the question burning on my heart, and apparently the heart of at least one other person in history, Jesus was again spending time in conversation with His Father. It seems to be what birthed the request. (Matthew 14:23; Mark 1:35; Mark 6:46; Luke 5:16; Luke 6:12-13; Luke 11:1-4)

Having gathered with the others to hear Jesus teach, the seeker notices Him slightly aside from the crowd, posture reverent, lips silently moving, obviously in prayer. The seeker waited, choosing not to interrupt the holy conversation. Instead he watched, waited, crept closer to eavesdrop, and attempted to deduce what made the prayers of Jesus so successful. He couldn’t. He’d have to ask. So he did. Waiting until Jesus had finished His conversation with God, the seeker pulled up every ounce of his courage and posed the request, “Teach us to pray.” And, with no hesitation or extensive dissertation, Jesus did. (Luke 11:1-2)

Reiterating words He’d spoken before, Jesus gave them a basic outline for conversations that would build relationships with God. Deep relationships. Lasting relationships. Relationships that would stand in the face of trial, tribulation, and persecution. Because all those things were coming. Dark days were ahead. Temptation would haunt them. Evil would hound them. Fear would weave its web over the hearts of the most devout earthly followers of Jesus Christ. People would fall away. Disciples would turn tail and run. Only those in true relationship with God the Father would remain faithful. And Jesus wanted them to be among the faithful, but they could only be found there if they developed a stalwart relationship with the Father through the conversations of prayer. (Luke 11:3-4; Matthew 6:9-13; John 16:23, 33; Mark 14:27) 

It would almost seem we are living in the exact same times as the seeker who begged to learn the art of conversing with God. The spiritual climate of our society has clearly dipped far below the Biblical standard. We are constantly hounded to call good evil and evil good. We are subliminally conned into believing it is so. We are singled out, verbally flogged, culturally canceled for believing a standard undesirable to the world around us. Yet, in a world of uncertainty, surrounded by a persistent air of fear, know this. Your relationship with the Father built through prayerful conversations will withstand any oncoming social storm. Indeed, it will thrive. (Isaiah 5:20; Haggai 2:20-23)

For several years, I’ve been journaling the spirit of the words Jesus taught us to pray. They are never verbatim. I still get distracted, lay down my pen, mentally go off on a tangent that has nothing to do with the words on my page. It’s still a work in progress. Probably always will be. That’s what relationships are. Works in progress. That’s why it is so important for us to continually engage in conversations with God. Conversations that acknowledge His omniscience, His omnipotence, His sovereignty. Conversations that build a relationship strong enough to stand in the face of monstrous adversity and pray the words Jesus taught us to pray, “Your kingdom, not mine. Your will, not mine. Your power, Your praise, Your glory. In and through me. Today and always.” May we pray those words. May we mean them. May our prayers be focused more on relationship with God than receiving gifts from God.  May we never stop asking, “Lord, teach us to pray!” (Romans 8:26; Matthew 26:41; Psalm 40:8; Luke 17:21; Ephesians 3:20)