One Reality Everyone Needs to Get About Prayer Yet Many Don't

I gotta admit.  It’s a blast.  I love doing this stuff.    When you get engaged with kids in your life, whether it be your kids, your family’s kids, grandkids, whatever lots of good things come.   One of those things is sharing stuff you loved when you were a kid or heck, that you still love.   I’ve been telling Patrick the Lord of the Rings stories. He loves them.  And about a year ago, I shared another great love of my childhood, Schoolhouse Rock.   Does anyone remember Schoolhouse Rock?   Schoolhouse Rock, well it rocked.  

And this week as I thought about prayer, one of those Schoolhouse Rock cartoons just popped into my head.   The moment it did.  I knew it fit.  Here it is.

What does conjunction junction have to do with prayer?  It has more to do with prayer than you would ever think.   It points to the same powerful reality that Jesus is pointing to in the words you’re about to hear.  

If prayer has never worked for you or you’d like for it to become more real, than you are likely missing the very thing conjunction junction celebrates.   You are missing the “and.”   What do I mean?   Here Jesus shows the way.   Let’s hear what Jesus has to say.

Matthew 6:5-13

Lots of people want to connect with God or the Universe or whatever they call the Divine.  3 out of 4 Americans call themselves spiritual.   Now, about half of those want to connect to God, but not so much to church, but they’re still searching.   And in almost every spiritual tradition, you pray to connect to God.   That’s why over 50% of Americans say they do it every day.   But does it work?   Are they really connecting to God?  When you pray, are you really connecting?   How could you connect more?

Here Jesus shows you.   Jesus tells you.  The more you know the “And” in prayer, the deeper your connection to God will be.   How do you know what this “And” is?   Before we look at that, you need to see how first Jesus tells you not to pray.    Before Jesus tells you what prayer is, Jesus tells you what it isn’t. 

First, Jesus says, don’t do this.  Don’t pray on the street corners.  Now, you might think.  Check - got that one down.  I haven’t been praying on street corners lately.  But basically, Jesus is talking praying in public, praying in front of others or really faking it in front of others.

Years ago, I read a quote from the poet KathleenNorris.   She wrote.  Your relationship with God is like a marriage.  The only two people who really know what’s going on are the two people in the relationship.   And if you know anything about marriage, you know how true that is.   A couple in trouble can make it look like they are not in trouble at all.   I remember times when someone said to me.  “Did you hear about so and so, they’re breaking up.”   And the news shocked me.  I’d reply.  “I saw them just a month ago. They looked so happy together.”   And they did look happy, but inside a whole different situation was taking place.     

Well, if you can fake a happy marriage, you can do the same with God.  Years ago, when I lived in New York, I met with a group of pastors, largely from charismatic churches, all good guys, sincere, committed spiritual leaders.  And these Charismatic dudes could pray.  They prayed prayers that peeled the paint off the walls.   But I could hold my own.   I could get them Amening and going Yes Lord, Yes Lord behind my prayers like nobody’s business.   But some days, I was praying in that room, like Jesus and I were so up close and personal. But Jesus and I, we hadn’t been talking much at all.   

And that’s what Jesus is warning about.  You can deliver a good prayer, even a prayer that blesses others, and not really be connected to God at all.   And that’s deadly.  What makes a marriage great isn’t how great you look together at a party.  It’s how you are when no one is looking.   It’s no different when it comes to your relationship with God.   Jesus is telling you.   If you are not having regular times talking to God, just you and God, then you have a show marriage.  It looks real, but it’s not.  It’s not what Jesus means about a real relationship with God at all.

But then Jesus goes in the other direction.   Jesus warns against babbling repetitious phrases like the gentiles.   Now you can think.   I’m not babbling repetitious phrases. I’m good.  But hold on a second.  Why are these folks babbling these repetitious phrases?  They’re doing it for the same reason folks got so excited about that movie and book called The Secret. Do you remember that?   Or if it’s not the Secret, it’s the Law of Attraction or Manifesting Wealth or whatever.  Go to Amazon, you can find thousands of them.   They’ll all give you some spiritual technique.  And why?  So, you can get God to do what you want.  Now, God wants to hear what you yearn for.    But in these techniques, it’s not about God.   It’s all about you.   That’s why lots of them talk about God as some divine force you tap into.   Otherwise, it might sound like those sleazy books that guys write about how to seduce women.   Here, this is how you manipulate God to give you what you want.    And like those books twist and pervert what a real relationship should be.   Those techniques twist and pervert your connection to God in the same way.

That’s why Jesus starts out his prayer the way he does.   Where does Jesus start?   He doesn’t start with you.    In fact, the first word, our, as in Our Father, reminds you, when you pray, you’re not praying to your personal genie.   God isn’t just for you.  God is for everyone.  And if God is for everyone, praying connects you to everyone.  So, when you pray, you’re not connecting simply to God.  You’re connecting to everyone else too.     

And what does Jesus focus the first half of his prayer on?   Jesus focuses it on God.  Now, why is that?   Does God need the strokes, need some positive reinforcement?   No, Jesus is saying.   When you pray, the first thing you need to pray to get is not stuff or a problem solved.  The first thing you need to pray to get is God, simply God.   That’s what the whole hallowed be thy name means.   It’s praying that you experience how wondrous, how amazing, how beautiful this God who created you actually is.   The writer Evelyn Underhill put it this way.   Prayer means turning to Reality.   And everyone needs to connect to reality. 

I just finished reading a book on Quantum Physics.   I think I understood about half of it.  But just that half blew me away.  I’ve been walking around looking at the most mundane things, realizing how strange, how utterly, spectacularly bizarre, everything is, yet at the same time, stunningly beautiful.   And one thing, this quantum physicist wrote really struck me.  He said.  The only thing sacred in science is reality.  What he meant, is scientists scrap any idea, no matter how much they love it, if it can’t conform to what’s real. 

At a deeper level, Jesus is saying the same thing.   The only thing sacred is reality.  And if you want to get in touch with Reality, real prayer will do that.   And you need that.  Because human beings have a terrible tendency to lose touch with the real.   For example, part of what is real is that you are not in charge of the world.   That’s why Jesus asks you to pray.  Your kingdom come.  Your will be done.   Why? You need to be reminded.  Because.  You’re usually praying this.  “My kingdom come.  My will be done.”   And nothing messes you up more than that.  Think about it.  When you’re worried or anxious about something, what’s going on?   You think you know.  You know how it has to be.  You know what really needs to happen. But you don’t know. The same thing goes on when you hold resentment against someone.  You think you know.  You know what they deserve, what they should get.    But ultimately, you don’t know squat.  Look, the greatest scientists in the world, are still trying to totally figure out what this table is, what everything is.  And get this, stuff like this, what we call matter, is only 4% of the universe.  We still have little clue about the other 96%.   Yet still when it comes to our lives, we think we know.  Prayer helps you get yourself out of the way.   And you need that more than you even realize.

Only then Jesus says, can you put the “and.”  Only then can you get to the other stuff, your daily needs, forgiveness, deliverance from evil.   First comes God, and then everything else.  And that “and” is exactly why Jesus asks you to start with that word for God, Father. 

I had no idea how being a dad would change me.   It’s changed me in ways I could never have imagined.   A few nights ago, my son woke me up around 4:30.  He was a little scared.  He wanted me to sit with him until he fell asleep.   And you know what?   I did it.  I was happy to do it, even honored. I realized.  Just me sitting in his room gives him safety, comfort, peace. How cool is that?

And when my son sees me or my wife, when we pick him up at school, you’d think he hadn’t seen us in years.   My son loves being around us.   He doesn’t love it because we feed him or buy him clothes or do stuff.   He loves it because he knows how deeply we love him.  And he also understands that while he can negotiate, in the end, Mom and Dad are in charge.   So, no, he can’t eat candy every time he wants or avoid taking that bath.  But those limits give him security.   He knows.  We’re looking out for him.  We’re doing our best to give what’s best for him.

With Mom and Dad, our son has the two things, he most needs, intimate love, and loving leadership.   But he has more than that even.   He has two people who would lay down their lives for him, who will love him no matter what, on his best days and on his worst. 

Do you see why Jesus use that word, Father?   Jesus is saying to you.  This is the God you need.  And this is the God you have.  You have a God who loves you like that.   You have a God that in Jesus did lay down his life for you.  And when you know that God, the depth of his love for you, you who are God’s beloved child, you realize.  You already have everything you really need.   And so, you come to prayer not to get stuff, but to get more of God, to go deeper into that love, to listen more closely to that guidance, to rest more in this God who is working in your life, in this world, in ways you can’t even see.  And, only after experiencing that, do you come to the other stuff, the daily bread, the forgiveness, the deliverance from evil.  

But you already what you most need.   You know you have a God who loves you more deeply, more intensely, more infinitely than any being in existence.  You are his beloved son, her beloved daughter.   And when you know that, you already have more than you could ever have dreamed.