When you need to get from point A to point B, a five-hundred-dollar beater with a full tank of gas will win out over a hundred-thousand-dollar car with an empty gas tank. Sure, the expensive car is nice to look at, but it lacks the functionality of doing what it was intended to do, which is to transport you from where you are to where you want to go. Aesthetics may draw the eye, but dependability is what anyone who’s sat on the side of the road waiting for a tow would prefer when their spiffy new ride decides it needs a nap, and after sounding like a slot machine that just hit the jackpot, warning of catastrophic software failure, it simply dies.
Prayer is dependable because prayer works. There is nothing
else we can pursue in terms of spiritual growth that comes close to spending
time in prayer and in the presence of God. Are there things that seem more
attractive to the eye? Most assuredly, but window dressing won’t get you far,
and more often than not, those who insist this new thing is better than the old
way of doing things never experienced the power of the old way, nor did they
have any interest in doing so.
You can’t really monetize a workshop on prayer the way you
can a workshop on the secret mysteries of binding and loosing. If ever anyone
tried, it would be a very short workshop. Thank you for coming. Take your
seats, and we will begin. Just pray! Be consistent, be intentional, be honest,
and be open. That concludes our workshop. By this point, at least half of your
attendees would avail themselves of the money-back guarantee if one were
offered, and if it wasn’t, the requests would be plentiful.
The reason so few focus on prayer is that it’s such a simple
concept that it’s impossible to make merchandise of it. Their purpose isn’t to spiritually
grow and mature those in attendance, it’s whether or not they can eek out a
profit, and there is no profit in prayer save to the individual who devotes
himself to it. It also takes away from the aura of indispensability that some
individuals wrap themselves in. You don’t need someone holding your hand when
it comes to prayer. You don’t need them to guide you, nor do you require their
input when it comes to being alone with God.
When Christ’s disciples asked Him to teach them to pray, the
entirety of His instruction can be comfortably read in less than two minutes.
It’s a weeklong seminar. What are we supposed to do with the other six days,
twenty-three hours, and fifty-eight minutes? The power of prayer resides not in
the theory, but in the practice of it.
Lord, teach us to pray. “Get alone with God, and do it.” But
there’s got to be more. Some shortcut, some hack, some special incantation that
no one else is privy to. “There isn’t. Don’t be a hypocrite about it, don’t
pray so others might hear, just find somewhere to be alone and pray.”
Anyone showing up to a course on prayer nowadays would likely
leave an unfavorable Yelp review if they showed up and that’s all they got for
their $249.99.
From the beginning, God’s intention was to have fellowship
with His creation. Ever since Adam and Eve were in the garden and God walked
among His creation in the cool of the day, His purpose was not to be an
absentee landlord as some proffer, but to commune, have dialogue, and make His
presence known.
If you seek Him, you will find Him. If you humble yourself
before Him and entreat Him in prayer, He will make His presence known to you.
The simplicity of prayer has remained as such because complicating it adds no
benefit. The only time men attempt to complicate prayer is when they have
something to gain by claiming they can unravel its mystery, thereby projecting
an image of authority they do not possess.
It’s like offering someone a six-week immersive course on how
to boil an egg. In order to get someone to bite, you must first convince them
that they’ve been doing it wrong all their life. Water, fire, egg, and six
minutes on the boil? Is that how you’ve been doing it? Well, let me tell you
you’ve been doing it all wrong. If you want to do it the right way, of the
eight odd billion people roaming the planet, I alone know the right way to boil
an egg, and for a small fee, you can know it too.
But why do you charge for the secret of how to boil an egg
the right way? Because otherwise, there would be no perceived value to my
wisdom; therefore, it’s not about the fifty bucks that made their way into my
PayPal account, it’s about you seeing the value of what I have to teach. I’m
doing you a favor by charging you money for something so simple and intuitive
that a five-year-old can do it blindfolded.
The following may be a letdown for those who are looking for
an edge or for a way to game the system, but there is nothing you can do to
bypass spending time in the presence of God and still achieve the same results.
If that’s what we’re angling for, our hearts aren’t in the right place to begin
with, and before we can grow in God, the heart condition must be dealt with
first.
Prayer places us in a position where we feel the presence of
God. Nothing else does that. If that was the only thing you knew about prayer,
it should be enough to make it a priority and the focal point of your spiritual
walk. It has been said that prayer is the highest calling, and given that it’s
the only way by which we can have intimacy and fellowship with God one-on-one,
I tend to agree.
The only cost to you is time. You don’t need a workbook, a
spreadsheet, a pie chart, or a starter kit. Make time for God, for it is time
well spent, and the greatest investment you can make in your spiritual growth.
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea, Jr.
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