Prayer

I have struggled with prayer for as long as I have been a pray-er. Every day, thousands of days, I have prayed and trudged through the minutes until the amen. I used to pray with worship music as my backdrop. I would pray and pace the for floor every day and most of the time I think I enjoyed it because the music helped me to feel close to God and it helped to sort of stir the passion for the subjects of my prayers. For the past several years, I have ceased with the accompaniment and more often than not, I start my day, after having spent a brief chunk of time with God, more dry and frustrated than when I woke up. Last week, as I was parking my car at work, I had a thought that I think may solve 20 years worth of problems. It's so simple.

I don't pray so that I can feel close to God. I pray because the Bible says to pray. I don't pray so that I can feel connected to Him. I pray to be obedient. I have looked at prayer as a chance to have an emotional encounter with God. The better and stronger the emotion, the more validated would be the closeness of my relationship with Him. I do think that God wants to have close and intimate relationship with us, and I'm sure there are times when that intimacy will be expressed through strong feelings, but I bet our obedience matters more to Him than our emotion.

Sometimes, the feelings may follow the prayers. Probably, they won't more than they do. This takes some pressure off. I don't need to create times of intimate connection with God every day, at least not in the way that I have been trying to. My job is to pray with an obedient and humble heart. That is all. If the close feelings come, great. If they don't, they don't. My relationship with God will not be so fragile as to fall apart in the dry or quiet days. I guess I have been going about this all wrong for most of my life. How did I miss something that was right in front of me?