Making Prayer Feel Immediate

How do you root yourself in prayer in the moment?

How do you make prayer real and present and almost tangible?  Whether we want to admit it out loud or not we all face the issue of our prayers feeling very etherial.  We feel as if we are praying, but losing the immediacy of the moment.  Not in a begging sense, but in a sense of our presense there with God.  That we aren’t dialing up a long distance phone call, but rather turning to a person present in the room with us.

Often we place that at the feet of “not feeling near to God” or “not feeling God’s presence” but it is much more a reflection of our hearts, our intentions, and-quite frankly-our attention spans.  Our prayers often feel hollow and ineffective because, well maybe because they are.  We are rubbing the genie lamp but nothing is happening.  We keep asking God to fix this, and do that and yet never see His presence at work and continue to feel a widening distance between ourselves and His heart.  

So we come back to the heart of the matter-our heart.  At the end of Psalm 139 David pulls out this well known line.

23 Search me, God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
    and lead me in the way everlasting.

It is a beautiful verse.  It’s a well known verse.  And…it can actually be a puzzling verse.  Seriously.  

Doesn’t God know my heart?  Doesn’t know what I’m thinking?  Doesn’t God what has happened, is happening, and will happen?  If that’s the case then why pray at all?  And why pray about something that God already knows.

This is what I mean about rooting ourselves in prayer.  Making prayer real and tangible in the moment.  Over the past weeks I’ve asked the question, “How do you root yourself in prayer in the moment” and I’ve heard many incredible answers.  Sometimes it’s a place and time, writing prayers out, reciting verses, etc.  

The most unique that I heard, and quite frankly that I’ve stolen, is reciting the first part of Psalm 46:10, Be still and know that I am God.  But you do this several times and each time you repeat it you omit the last work of the sentence.

Be still and know that I am God.

Be still and know that I am. 

Be still and know that I.

Be still and know that.

Be still and know. 

Be still and.

Be still.

Be.

Try it next time you pray.  If you’re like me you’ll find yourself completely focused in the moment.  Your thought will go from scattered to centered (a minor miracle in and of itself) and you will feel rooted in the moment.

David did something similar here in Psalm 139.  He asked God to search him and know him.  God already knew David, that much is very clear.  So why is David wanting to be searched and known? Because David coming along for this ride.  This isn’t self-examination and self-help.  David isn’t doing this on his own.  He is rooting himself in this moment with God.  He wants God to reveal the pain, the struggle, the anxiety, the sin, the goodness, the love, and the care.  He wants God to turn him inside out while David stands there and watches.  And in the watching he is vulnerable and revealed. 

Prayer is the ultimate act of vulnerability.  Praying to God is not trying to convince God of anything but is rather an admittance that God transcends us.  He is above and beyond us and yet loves us to be here with us.  So we pray.  But we get off track.  We lob up requests and walk away waiting for our will to be done.

That’s not being rooted in prayer.  That’s being rooted in ourselves and our world.  Not that we are trying to do evil and trying to bend God to our will, but that’s what happened when our focus is continually pulled in all the directions that it can be pulled in.  Jobs, money, school, kids, sports, hobbies, responsibloiitles, etc.  None of these are inherently bad, but we get so wrapped up in them and spend so much time around them that they do begin to pull our hearts from God and we don’t even realize it.  It’s why David pleads with God to reveal the offensive ways in David.  Did David not know his own sin?  Do we not know ours?  I contend that we don’t.  The overt stuff?  The stuff that we know we shouldn’t be doing and do it anyway? Of course we do.  But what about allowing factors in our lives to come before God? Greed? Selfishness? These tend to sneak up on us and they grow as we slip further from rooting ourself in God’s presence.   

David wanted God to dive into his life so that David could be there to watch.  David gave permission for HIMSELF to be in that moment as God did those things.  God didn’t need David’s permission.  He doesn’t need yours.  He doesn’t need mine.  But we can ignore him and push him off as long as we can run for.  We ignore him.  Lob up a few prayers from the balcony on our way out or pray that God blesses our double bacon cheeseburger and large cheese fries. But is that the worship of a God we see as supreme?

Root yourself in prayer.  Desire for God to know you.  To pull out your deepest thoughts.  Yes.  There may be pain. The may be joy. There may be anxiety. There may be shame. There may be laughter.  But what you’re asking God to examine with you and for you is already there.  Covering it up and hiding it doesn’t mean that it isn’t.  As we examine our hearts with God he molds and us shapes us.  He makes us into more of what he wants us to be.  What is it that he want to make you into?  I don’t know.  But God does.