Engaging Scripture

Five steps from lament to hope – Advent Psalms of Lament, Part 5

This week I welcome guest blogger, Jeff Byerly. Jeff is my pastoral colleague, friend, ThD classmate, and traveling partner! He and his wife Tasha have two daughters, a son-in-law and new grandbaby!

Are you ready for another Psalm of Lament? Open a Bible to Psalm 12. This time I want to show you a simple pattern of a psalm of lament. It involves five simple steps, and we will cover them as we read.

I selected this psalm because it is such a good psalm for us to consider within our current societal mood today (Remember zeitgeist?).

Step 1 – Turn: ¹Help, Lord …

The first step is to realize your condition—and your powerlessness to change your outcome.

We are often too confused or involved with too much pain to effectively handle our desperate situations.

So our first consideration must be to TURN our attention to God for help. The next thing for David in this psalm is to present his complaint.

Step 2 – Complain:

¹… for no one is faithful anymore;
    those who are loyal have vanished from the human race.
²Everyone lies to their neighbor;
    they flatter with their lips
    but harbor deception in their hearts.

Listen to this accusation. Can you hear the honesty in David’s sorrow?

If his accusations are true, then David is obviously without the resources to change the situation. He offers his honest feelings from his own appraisal.

In fact, we might agree with him.

David asks God to do something about it.

Step 3 – Request:

³May the Lord silence all flattering lips
    and every boastful tongue—
⁴those who say,
    “By our tongues we will prevail;
    our own lips will defend us—who is lord over us?”

David provides his suggestion—a realistic suggestion for God to handle. In effect, “Silence their flattering lips—Take away their pretense! Silence their boastful tongue—Put them in their place! Bring your justice to bear on this societal problem.”

Hmmm, we might want to make that same request in our world today!

The question we might consider is: Will God actually care enough to do something about this?

Step 4 – Seek Justice:

⁵“Because the poor are plundered and the needy groan,
    I will now arise,” says the Lord.
    “I will protect them from those who malign them.”
⁶And the words of the Lord are flawless,
    like silver purified in a crucible,
    like gold refined seven times.

The answer is YES! God is always just in his actions! God stands up for the oppressed and cares about righting wrongs.

Apparently, David’s concern is a matter of how these behaviors affect the poor and needy! Since God is concerned with justice, he seeks to protect them.

This highlighted phrase is a reminder to the reader that God does care for their situation. They are not alone; he is present; and he is aware.

As a result, we too can trust in God’s protection.

Step 5 – Trust / Hope:

⁷You, Lord, will keep the needy safe
and will protect us forever from the wicked,
⁸who freely strut about
when what is vile is honored by the human race.

So, let me ask you: How do you feel now?

Laments are designed not only to lift us out of gloomy situation—but to lift us above it—to give us a renewed perspective … if we follow the pattern of Psalms of Laments:

Turn – Complain – Request – Seek Justice – Trust / Hope

Consider that you can write your own psalm of lament. Turn to God. Find a complaint. Make a request. Observe God’s just ways. And embrace the hope that emerges.

So let’s conclude by recognizing for a moment that we are in Advent. We have been given a Messiah who provides us with hope.

As we begin Advent, perhaps we can cast off our gloom as we turn, complain, request, seek justice, and hope for the future we are in.

It’s the beginning of a journey that ends in Bethlehem with a Savior.

He is the hope of the nations.

He is the hope for when things aren’t going right in our worlds.

²²Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
²³They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
²⁴I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.”

(Lamentations 3:22-24)

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How to have hope amidst evil in the world – Advent Psalms of Lament, Part 4

As we continue studying the lament of Psalm 137, the psalmist recalls the vicious attack from Israel’s enemies that led to Israel’s captivity. The Babylonians had laid siege to Jerusalem to cause widespread starvation. Eventually, they breached the city walls, looted their treasure, scorched their buildings and homes.

They slaughtered the old, the young, and the infirm with sword and spear, and arrow. Women would be violated and become victims of rape. As a sign of total triumph, they took small children from their mother’s arms and thrust them to the ground, killing them.

This is what you did in war. It was a powerful psychological tactic that would prevent the victimized country from raising an army for revenge anytime soon. Additionally, it would terrorize parents into submission.

Finally, the survivors were shackled and marched into exile. The Babylonians were notorious for moving their captives around to mix the various people groups into new settings with other captives, again to subjugate them and keep them from revolting.

Now perhaps, we can understand Psalm 137 verse 9 a little better. The psalmist is crying out for vengeance: “God, look at the evil that was done to us, and repay them with the same punishment that we received.”

In Isaiah 13, we find a prophecy for the Babylonians, “Wail, for the day of the LORD is near …” (Isaiah 13:6) Here is the point of Isaiah’s prophecy: God does remember! The Persians will invade 70 years later and fulfill the prophecy against the Babylonians.

So, if God remembers, that also means that God will do something … in his own way … in his own time … according to his majestic providence.

In other words, the exile would not last forever! As painful as the experience of exile would be, there was a future hope. The people of Israel would not be consumed. They would survive (or at least their next generation would survive.)

It’s probably not exactly what you or I would hope for. Yet, the exile would be necessary to help them find a collective meekness and become less pretentious in their devotion toward God.

Ultimately, they would learn faithfulness during these 70 years. And then they will go home!

So, let me ask you: Now, how do you feel?

Isn’t hope rising within the depths of your being?

Aren’t you considering what it means to trust this kind of God?

This psalm of lament becomes a new song to orient Israel’s grief and focus on hope. It becomes the rallying cry for the collective community of Judeans in captivity … as they sing a new song!

This is the power of lament! To change sorrow into hope!

Lament provides us with an appropriate response to the evil we see in the world.

In the next and final post in this series, we’ll look at another psalm of lament to help us respond to the disconcerting world around us.

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How lament provides empathy in our despair – Advent Psalms of Lament, Part 3

In the first post, I mentioned the zeitgeist that we seem to be under—with things beyond our control.

It’s always been this way, but for some reason, things seem worse now—much worse!

In the previous post, I asked, “How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land?” I’m talking about Psalm 137, a song of lament written about Israel’s exile in Babylon.

To make matters worse for these captives, some of their prophets had assured them that they would live in peace. Of course, after these events, everyone realized that those prophets were false prophets.

We too may have listened to the voices of well-meaning prophets.

They’ve told us how our version of God is supposed to work when we are put to the test. We may have always been taught: “God’s got your back.” “God will bless his children.” “God’s will can never be frustrated.”

So where does that leave us? We feel abandoned by God.

We can feel like God is a million miles away, like Israel’s exiles we’re sitting by a strange river, 700 miles away or more—across a large desert; without any hope of bridging the distance between us.

You have entered a foreign land that reminds you continually of your desperate situation.

What are you going to do now?

One of the beautiful aspects of a lament is that it often provides empathy in your despair. And yet, an even more beautiful feature can be realized when the psalmist points us toward God in verse 7:

“Remember, LORD, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell.“

When we focus on God, we recognize some things:

We are not alone. And we have never been alone.
God is present even in our despair, even when it seems we can’t reach him.
God is aware. We can know that our situations do not escape his notice.

In the next post, we’ll continue following the psalmist’s lament, learning how lament brings us hope in the middle of our pain.

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When life is bitter pill – Advent Psalms of Lament, Part 2

As I mentioned in the previous post, we will turn our hearts toward lament in order to turn our heads upward toward God’s perspectives. Now we begin by looking at Psalm 137. Please read it, then come back and continue this post.

Isn’t that just some of the most uplifting prose and beautiful imagery to be recorded in Israel’s memoirs and our Scriptures? {Wink}

Consider just the first line: “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.”

We will get to some of that imagery soon enough, but let me ask you: How does that psalm make you feel?

Laments draw attention to what’s wrong in our worlds! They present our pain, confusion, and anger with raw intensity.

So let’s unpack this psalm to see what is going on.

Perhaps you didn’t catch it, but the psalmist is not in Israel, but instead dwells in Babylon, sitting by rivers—the Euphrates, or perhaps the Tigris.

He is not on vacation! He is not visiting his relatives. He is a prisoner or hostage of war!

He has been relocated about 700 miles away from his home.

Everything that is familiar to his life in Israel is being de-programmed in order to become a good citizen of Babylon.

So in this opening to the psalm, the psalmist longs for his home—and he thinks about Zion’s hill.

What is the cause of such weeping and mourning?

Up on Zion’s hill, we find the Temple, (and now for the psalmist, it is in shambles, because the Babylonians have completely destroyed it.)

The importance of the Temple cannot be over-estimated, for it was not only a place of worship, but for Israel it was where one would locate YHWH himself—within the Holy of Holies.

The psalmist is lamenting the fact that his seasonal trips to Jerusalem to visit the Temple are no longer going to take place—in other words, he is not only removed from his home, his family, his people, and everything familiar, he is especially cut off from his God!!! He is 700 miles away, sitting by the waters of a strange river in a strange land.

They are so discouraged that they have given up playing their harps—they hand them on the poplars and stop singing their favorite songs.

How do you feel now? Sorrowful? Confused? Angry? Helpless?

Perhaps the sting would go away if they could find some comfort in their new home…however, their captors were not so kind.

“Hey there, former citizen of Judah, sing me one of those special songs about Zion. You know, one of those songs that talks about the power of your God to vanquish his enemies.”

Ouch! That’s some pretty, nasty smack talk. It’s worse than watching your football team get clobbered and then your opponent getting up your grill to taunt you.

Perhaps you have felt that same sting in some of your encounters in your societal interactions—especially on social media.

Perhaps you feel it at work, with another employee who just became your supervisor, after they landed the job you propositioned for.

Perhaps you see it in politics, after an election when the other side experiences a wave that sweeps over the country.

And some family member at the Thanksgiving table doesn’t want to let it go and they say: “Sing us one of your songs of Zion!” as they taunt you and smile.

Now, how do you feel? Frustrated? Exasperated? Defeated? Hopeless?

We swallow a bitter pill. And if we are not careful, that bitterness can permeate our entire perspective. We can carry that frustration into the other arenas of our lives. Where does that leave us? What are we to do? How can we sing the songs of the LORD in a foreign land?

In the next post, we’ll learn how.

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How lament turns our weariness into hope – Advent Psalms of Lament, Part 1

This week I welcome guest blogger, Jeff Byerly. Jeff is my friend, pastoral colleague, ThD classmate, and traveling partner! He and his wife Tasha have two daughters, a son-in-law and new grandbaby!

What in the world is going on these days?

I remember sitting in my doctoral studies just a few years ago … prior to Covid … and listening to a lecture on various historical periods. The professor introduced a word into our discussions that I had not heard in any previous history class.

That word was ZEITGEIST … a German word that translates as the spirit of the age. Zeit translates as “time” and geist as “ghost or spirit.” Thus, we get a spirit of the age, OR a prevailing societal mood.

In class, we were transported back to the presidency of Abraham Lincoln just prior to the Civil War. Lincoln tried fiercely to hold the Union together, but there was a powerful societal mood permeating the nation’s landscape that no law or presidential action could diffuse. The power of this zeitgeist was too much for Lincoln to divert and the country entered a Civil War.

Consider these words from Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address:

“On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.”

In class, we then proceeded to look at periods of church history through new perspectives as we considered the effects of powerful zeitgeists that would create deep divisions during the European Reformation that would allow for Christians to persecute one another and even allow for deceptive and violent behaviors.

Earlier, I mentioned the pivotal time of Covid. There seems to be a life prior to Covid and a life since Covid and may I say a lingering zeitgeist—a societal mood that makes us question: How in the world did we end up here?

Whether you agree with my analysis about a current zeitgeist or not, I doubt that many would deny the wearisome effects of recent events in our world.

So the question I want to address this morning is: What are we going to do with these lingering wearisome feelings?

As we consider this season of Advent, where we turn our attention upon the work of God through the Incarnation of his Son—Jesus, how do we begin to sort through our diverse understandings through a new lens or frame that reveals the profound realization of “God with us?”

To do this, I want us to consider lament.

What is Lament? Lament is an appropriate response to the evil we see in the world.

Lament is a passionate expression of grief, often in music, poetry, or song form; the grief is most often born of regret, or mourning.

Because laments draw attention to what’s wrong in our world, they often present our pain, confusion, and anger with raw intensity.

Fortunately, for us, we have several Psalms within the Scriptures that are considered as laments. They usually have a similar pattern and often feature some provocative expressions, because they are emotionally charged from the grief they describe. We will look at two such psalms this week.

In any case, laments are appropriate responses to the evil we see in the world—even those psalms that seem more extreme by calling down a curse or judgment upon another. We will look at one like that—categorized as an imprecatory psalm—first.

Lament is an appropriate response because, with lament, we can be honest before God. This gives us a constructive outlet for our misery. We do not need to stuff our feelings. Nor do we need to hide our complaint from God. With lament, people can remove their cheerful masks to uncover the bitter wounds that need to be exposed to God’s presence and perspectives.

When we follow the pathway of lament, we can actually find a better course for understanding and coping with the anguish that we may experience. Our perspective turns from our gloomy and dour circumstances toward a hope-filled future!

For this reason, the first week in the Advent blog series will turn our hearts toward lament in order to turn our heads upward toward God’s perspectives. In the next post, we begin by looking at an imprecatory psalm.

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Introducing the Advent 2023 blog series

If you were at Faith Church this Sunday November 26, 2023, you would see our sanctuary floor lights shining the color now purple, as this Sunday is the First Sunday of the Christian Season of Advent. Why do we use the color purple for Advent?

When I see the color purple in the sanctuary, I think of a purple bruise. A bruise means that, yes, damage has been done, but healing is taking place. Advent is like that. During Advent we enter the pain of penitence, facing our sins, confessing them, and repenting, so that we might experience the healing God wants to bring to our relationship with him, with others, and the world, leading to abundant life and flourishing. During Advent, therefore, we are readying ourselves spiritually for the great celebration of the birth of King Jesus at Christmas.

This week on the blog, I welcome guest blogger Dr. Jeff Byerly. Jeff and I traveled to India together this past March. Jeff will begin our Advent blog series, which is a variety of genres of psalms. Jeff’s psalm(s) will focus on lament, very much in keeping with the “bruise” of Advent.

Lament is holy complaint, crying out to God to wake up and intervene in our lives. See Psalm 13 for an archetypal lament. There are numerous laments in the Psalms. Some lament is quite raw, and we wonder if we are allowed to talk to God like that. Yet there it is in Scripture. Angry, bitter, despairing, frustrated, anxious, depressed lament. Can you imagine the nation of Israel singing these laments as their worship songs? Clearly lament is needed and good. We need to sing them as our worship songs from time to time.

This week on the blog we start Advent 2023, learning about lament.

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Resources for learning how to …Pray in the Spirit, Part 5

This week we have been learning what it means to pray in the Spirit. There are some helpful resources I would recommend.

For the beginning of the day: The Daily Prayer services in the Book of Common Prayer.

For the end of the day: St. Ignatius’ Prayer of Examen. It has five steps.

Become aware of God’s presence
Review the day with gratitude
Pay attention to your emotions
Chose one feature of the day and pray from it
Look toward tomorrow

There are phone apps that can help you with prayer. Centering prayer. Examen apps. Some are silent prayer apps. Some are guided prayers. One that I have used recently that I have come to really appreciate is the Pause App. It has guided prayers for 1 minutes, 3 minutes, 5 or 10 minutes. These can become empty ritual too, if we are praying just to check it off a list. But if we pray with a heart posture of being aware of God, his love, his presence, his heart, we can commune with God.

I especially encourage you to include listening in your prayer. Don’t be like the spouse that just has to-do lists for their spouse. Ask God how he is doing? Ask the Spirit to share his heart.

For some people, it can be very helpful to write your prayers. Maybe start a prayer journal.

I also encourage you to pray together with others. Participate in a prayer meeting. Include prayer in your small groups. Maybe have a prayer partner.

Prayer is listed at the conclusion of the teaching about the Armor of God for a reason. When we are battling temptation, when we are in spiritual battle of any kind, we put on the pieces of the armor of God, and we pray in the Spirit, acknowledging God’s presence. God is there. You are not alone in the battle. His Spirit is with you and in you.

As we conclude this series on the Armor of God, let’s review. First we Stand Firm putting on the full armor of God.

First, put on the Belt of Truth, grounding your life in Jesus who is the embodiment of truth.

Next, strap on the Breastplate of Righteousness, pursuing holiness, because Jesus is our righteousness.

Then we put on the Boots of Peace, pursuing peace with God and others.

Fourth we hold up the Shield of Faith, living with faithfulness despite the temptations of the world.

Fifth, we place the Helmet of Salvation, remembering we are saved from sin, saved from separation with God, but also saved for a life following Jesus and his mission in the here and now.

Then we wield the Sword of the Spirit, immersing ourselves in God’s Word, as we seek to follow the way of Jesus who is the Word.

Finally we Pray in the Spirit, meditating on God who lives with us and in us, depending on his Spirit.

So put on the full armor of God, as you pursue the mission of Jesus in your world!

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What to do when praying seems difficult or impossible – Praying in the Spirit, Part 4

When my wife and I are sitting on the sofa in the evening, and she is talking, I will admit to you that sometimes I fall asleep. Not good. She is gracious. Not necessarily happy about it. But gracious.

I will also admit to you that when I practice meditative prayer, gazing on the beauty of the Lord (see previous post), my mind can wander. You too? Sometimes I fall asleep. So an ancient practice has been very helpful to me: centering prayer. When we practice centering prayer, we are first of all gracious to ourselves. We are human, our minds will wander, and we will sometimes fall asleep. God is also gracious. Don’t beat yourself up. Instead graciously, pushing away frustration or a sense of failure, wake up and recenter on God.

What practitioners of centering prayer suggest is that you use a word or phrase of Scripture to recenter, refocus on God. When I have been going through a season of life struggling with anxiety, I might choose the word “peace,” thinking about Philippians 4:6-7, how God promises the peace that passes understanding. Or I might just say the name, “Jesus.” Some people say the prayer of humility, “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

But then there are those times when you’re not just struggling with a short attention span or falling asleep in prayer. Have you ever gone through a phase where it seems that God is far away, or maybe even totally gone? Christians through the ages have called this The Dark Night of the Soul. St. John of the Cross called it Spiritual Depression.

I think our normal human knee jerk reaction in the dark night of the soul is to want it to stop. We can distract ourselves away from having to face it. We can be very afraid of our doubts, our fears, our pain. Especially so when, during those times, we are crying out to God, but he is not responding. There are some, and maybe you have known them, who give up their faith in those dark moments.

Did you know Mother Theresa went through a dark night of the soul? While she experienced visions of Christ in her teens, she struggled with a dark night of the soul throughout most of her ministry. From her journal: “I am told God lives in me—and the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches me soul.”

Jesus in the Garden and on the cross experienced the dark night. Imagine what he was going through when he was on the cross? Denied, Betrayed, Arrested, Beaten, Falsely accused, Nailed to the cross, and God was silent. Jesus cries out “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Some Christians believe that it was through this dark night of the soul that we experience transformation. Ask “what can I learn?” in the midst of the darkness.

One person writes, “During this dark night, God roots out our deepest attachments to sin and self, and the desolation that accompanies that rooting out is overwhelming and crushing. More than just a lack of consolation, this dark night plunges a soul into the abyss of darkness and nothingness, essentially revealing to us what we are without God and preparing us to not only to carry out crosses, but to love our crosses and carry them joyfully in union with Christ.”[1]

One of the most difficult obstacles to overcome in the dark night of the soul is the question “How do I pray?” In those times of spiritual depression, we are often at our least patient, and our minds can wander, totally lose interest, feel frustrated, and discouraged.

The key is to press on. In those dark moments, as in the good ones, it is so helpful to have a guide. I have found over the last three years that my spiritual director is a deeply helpful guide.

Finally, remember what Paul teaches in Romans 8:26-27, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.”

There are also some helpful resources I would recommend, and we’ll talk about them in the next post.

[1] Stimpson, Emily Chapman. Quoted in Ed Cyzewski. 2017. Flee Be Silent Pray: An Anxious Evangelical Finds Peace With God Through Contemplative Prayer. Self-published. Page 148.

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How to have two-way communication with God – Praying in the Spirit, Part 3

More than praying through lists, we were built to commune with God. He doesn’t want us to be like the spouse that just gives him a to-do list (as I mentioned in this post). God created us for communication, for a two-way relational conversation, not just with other humans, but also with him. He created us to be in relationship with him.

I once saw a video of the birth of a giraffe, with its super long spindly legs. It plopped out of its mother’s womb, landing on the ground in a messy pile of legs that looked more like a huge spider than a giraffe. And yet, within a manner of minutes that baby giraffe was up and walking on those legs. Minutes. It is astounding. How could it do that? How does it know to do that? It was built to stand up and walk.

Likewise, as we see with Adam & Eve in the Garden, you and I are created to commune with God.

We studied the Gospel of John earlier this year, and do you remember Jesus’ analogy of the Vine and the Branches in John 15:1-8 (see post here). He says that he is the vine and we are the branches. Just like a branch needs to remain in the vine if that branch wants power to produce fruit, unless we remain in him, we will not have power to produce the fruit of changed lives that he desires in our life and in others’ lives. How do we remain in him? There are many ways, but I believe prayer might be the greatest example of abiding in Christ.

I’ve written often about The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence, so I’m only going to briefly remind you of him. Brother Lawrence was a monk in the 1600s, and he remained in and abided in Christ, by carrying on a conversation with God all day long. He called it practicing the presence of God. God’s presence is there with us, even if we can’t see him. The Spirit lives in us, even if we can’t feel him. So Brother Lawrence worked in the monastery kitchen, and he talked with the God no matter if he was washing dishes, making meals, or buying groceries. But it wasn’t as though Lawrence one day decided to talk with God all day long. He writes that it took him years of practice. Learning to pray in the Spirit takes time!

How often are you aware of the presence of God with you? In you? Around you? Are you giving time to communing with God, talking, listening, waiting on him, waiting with him?

When I was taking that prayer class as a bible college student, I didn’t learn about that side of prayer. That came later. Only a few years ago actually. What I am talking about is meditation.

I encourage you to spend time with God meditating. Meditation is a scary word. Sounds like something from an eastern religion, right? But Biblical meditation is not like that. In eastern meditation adherents empty their minds.

In Psalm 1, however, we are taught to meditate day and night on God’s Word. The word the psalmist uses is to ponder, think, consider, and even, get this, growl! There is a visceral grappling that happens in biblical meditation.

Consider this viewpoint on meditation from Psalm 27:4,

“One thing I ask from the LORD, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.”

We can spend time in prayer just gazing on the beauty of the Lord. That’s not emptying our minds. That is thinking about how amazing God is. That is asking how God is doing, and listening patiently and expectantly for his answer. Ask him what his heart and mind is about a current circumstance you are going through, or about something happening in the world.

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What I learned in a prayer class about…Praying in the Spirit, Part 3

In my sophomore year of Bible college I took a class on Prayer, and we had to pray for 30 minutes every day. 30 minutes! That sounded impossibly long. My history with prayer as a child and teenager, for the most part was those 5 minute or shorter prayer sessions, where I did all the talking, just like the spouse I mentioned in the previous post.

But those daily 30-minute prayer sessions were now an assignment for class. We had to pray, then record how long we prayed, and we would turn it in for a grade. Seriously. Of course, we could lie about how long we prayed, or if we prayed at all, but that would take serious guts, to lie about prayer.

So the first day I found a secluded spot on campus to pray. I brought my Bible, a notebook, and my watch. I started praying. I prayed for all my family and friends. I prayed some verses from the Bible. I wrote in the journal. It was going great. That 30 minutes all of a sudden seemed doable. I though to myself, “What was I worried about? I can pray for 30 minutes.”

I prayed for some more people I had forgotten. And then I prayed more.

Soon I started having that familiar desire to look at my watch and see how much time was left. But I felt a tension about that. Part of me didn’t want to look down at my watch.

You know how you feel when you’re having a conversation with someone, and they look at their watch? It’s a context clue that they are ready to be done with this conversation, and that can be awkward, especially when you’re not ready to be done. You thought the conversation was going really well, and now you doubt yourself, wondering if they don’t think you are worth their time, or if you said something offensive, or maybe they don’t like you as much as you like them. Likewise, you don’t want to be the one caught looking at your watch because you don’t want to offend the person you’re talking to.

Now imagine you’re talking to God, and you look at your watch. Of course God is going to see you looking at your watch. And you will have just sent an obvious message “I want to be done with this conversation, God.” Yet if we’re honest, we sometimes want to be done with a prayer time. Have you ever been listening to someone pray, whether in church or before a meal, and you felt that tension of wanting the person praying to hurry it up so the prayer time could be done? Some people pray super long prayers, and you want to track with them and pray in agreement with them as they are praying, but you are also struggling, wanting it to be done. It is a tension.

There I was praying by myself, and I eventually got to the point that I felt was a long enough time that I was in the clear to check my watch without being offensive to God. I glanced at my watch, and I was flabbergasted by what I saw. Do you think 30 minutes went by? No. 40 minutes? No. Only five minutes went by! How could that be? It seemed I had been praying far longer than that.

What I learned is that just as improving at human communication takes time and practice, so learning to pray in the Spirit takes time and practice. But know this: praying long prayers does not guarantee that you will have prayed in the Spirit. Praying in the Spirit is about heart posture, about acknowledging God with you and in you. It might take time to practice praying in the Spirit like that.

Little by little as the days and weeks went by in that Prayer class, I learned I could pray longer and longer. In other words, I learned I could increase communication with God, but it took practice. Very much like just about anything that we want to learn and improve. You want to do 50 pushups in a row? Starting January 1, do pushups every day and add one per week. By the end of the year, you’ll be able to do 50 pushups. Prayer is no different. We can practice praying longer.

One suggestion to increasing how long you pray is using prayer lists. Paul says in Ephesians 6:18-20 that he wants the people to pray for him so that he might declare the good news of the Gospel. Pray for people. Pray for all the people in your life. Pray for missionaries. Make a list and pray for people.

But more than praying through lists, we were built to commune with God, and we’ll talk about praying in the Spirit that is communing with God.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash