For many months my prayers have felt stale. I would begrudgingly sit at my make-shift prayer station and read through the liturgy as quickly as I could. At times I even created creative excuses to avoid my prayers all together. “I don’t have to do my prayers”, I would tell myself; “It’s too late in this evening”; “I already said prayers when I was at church.” My inward energy was spent more on avoiding prayer rather than entering it.

The more that I skipped my prayers, or entered them in words alone, the more I felt my connection with God slowly drift. My sense of rootedness in God’s presence became dim and I found myself easily irritated. I became more judgmental of others. Temptations crept in. And, underneath all these things, came the voice of shame. I felt condemned as someone merely play-acting the life of faith.

During this time, I would tell myself that I just needed to pray more. I convinced myself that the way to combat these temptations and judgements was to fill my life with prayer. I would go upstairs, say a litany of confession, and diligently move through the liturgy once again.  I would force myself to observe my prayer time and be hyper focused on right forms and perfect phrases.

The good news is Jesus is gracious. Jesus responds to our diligent desire to connect with him. I can’t point to an instance of encounter, or a moment when I felt my spiritual life turned a corner, but over the course of weeks, there became a deepening desire to connect with Jesus. To put it another way: I didn’t want to pray, I wanted to be with Jesus. I didn’t want to read the bible; I wanted to hear from Jesus. I didn’t want to go to church; I wanted to worship Jesus in the company of other Jesus-loving people.  It was this invitation to meet with Jesus that transformed (or should I say re-transformed) my spiritual life.

When I began to see my prayer time as a response to an invitation to meet Jesus, the 10 minutes I spent in prayer became radically transformed. The scripture readings began to take on a new weight. I wasn’t reading the Bible; I was hearing it. And as I read the passages for the day, different verses would stick out to me, lingering in my heart. This lingering wasn’t based on keen theological insight; it wasn’t a matter of noticing and intriguing bit of information; the verse simply stuck in my heart and my soul. My prayers, even those of silent breathing, became a moment where I felt deeply heard, and more deeply held. 

Yes, temptations still come, and anger and judgement can rise within me still. By no means do I now live a perfect prayer life. But such things bear no weightiness anymore. They are met with gentleness of Jesus. If (when) I stumble or fall, I rise quickly, confident in God’s steadfast love and mercy.

Throughout the gospels, Jesus frequently invites people to come to him. Jesus encourages people to walk in his presence, to listen to him and interact with him. This same invitation is made to us today. These words have not lessened over time. With every rising we enter a day in his presence.  Every evening we rest, trusting that he holds the world, and all our cares, in his hands. As Christian people, our faith isn’t a list of doctrines that we keep in our minds. Faith is the active participation in a life with Jesus. As the old hymn declares “He walks with me; and he talks with me.”

What might it look like for you to reclaim Jesus’ invitation for you to come to him? How might you view a time of prayer as a response to be in his presence? This may sound simplistic, naïve even, but as Christian people we believe that Jesus is with us. After all, Jesus says that those who follow him can hear his voice and that his presence will be “at home” in every disciple. These aren’t poetic expressions made for reflections or sermon snippets; they declare the truth we are invited to experience.

Lively and effective prayer isn’t about the book we use or the liturgy we rid ourselves of. The secret to effective prayer is simple:  Will we respond to Jesus’s presence?  For when we pray from a desire to meet the living God, we find our prayers enlivened and our souls renewed.