how's your prayer life?

If someone were to ask you, "how is your prayer life?" what would be your answer?

Would you answer by saying how long your prayer or how often?

How do you measure your prayer life?

Is it measured by how many people you are praying for or how much faith you are praying with, or how many prayer you get answered?

Some great questions found in John Ortberg's new book entitled, "The Me I Want To Be."

Here's what I know: Prayer is conversation.

Richard Foster says, "Countless people...have such a "stained-glass" image of prayer that they fail to recognize what they are experiencing as prayer and so condemn themselves for not praying."

Ortberg writes, "we can better understand prayer by thinking about being present with another person, and how being with somebody shapes what we say about them.

Sometimes we speak to someone.
Sometimes we speak in front of someone.
Sometimes we speak in the absence of someone.

We all do one of the three if not all three everyday of our lives.

Let's unpack this.

The reality is that when it comes to God we are never speaking or acting in his absence. He is always there - all the time.

You and I both know that when we are driving on the highway and see a highway patrol car, we slow down. We drive differently. Why? Because we don't want to get a ticket.

Orberg writes, "You see, God doesn't want forced compliance. God is so immense that if he were "too visible," people would give forced compliance without expressing their heart. So God makes it possible, in enormous love, for us to live as if he were not there."

This brings us to the goal of prayer: THE GOAL OF PRAYER IS TO LIVE ALL OF MY LIFE AND SPEAK ALL OF MY WORDS IN THE JOYFUL AWARENESS OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD.

So, we can feel free to talk to God about our problems. We can talk to God about our needs.

Let me give you a practical tip here that I have been practicing for years.

Sometimes, as I am praying, I know I should be praying about world peace, missionaries, global warming, war in Afghanistan and all that, but my mind keeps running with:

I wonder how my sermon will go this Sunday
I wonder if we are going to get the air conditioning fixed here at the church
I wonder if the building committee meeting will go well tonight

Here's the principle: I must let my talking flow into praying by praying about what is in me not what I wish were in me.

I don't try to clean up my motives first, as Ortberg writes. I don't try to sound more spiritual than I am. I don't pray what ought to be in me. I pray what is really in me and what is on my mind.

Some good thoughts for a Thursday