Learning to engage in prayer

Prayer is a fascinating subject. When a news anchor interviews a family who has just gone through a tragedy more often than not the last line they say is something like, "Our thoughts and prayers are with you." Being one of an overactive imagination and curiosity, I wonder if they really mean that.

Jesus was confronted with a question by those who were closest to him. "Teach us to pray," they requested. Here lies one of the first counterintuitive thoughts of prayer -- that it can be taught. Prayer does not happen naturally. Like most things life-sustaining, it must be taught to engage in it. As a baby has to be trained to eat, to walk and eventually to balance a budget and pay the bills, so, too, prayer is taught.

Two of the most essential instructions that Jesus gives in the Sermon on the Mount is that prayer is to be authentic and intentional. He gives a prohibition, in my own paraphrase, saying "Don't be like the hypocrites who pray to be seen or like the Gentiles who babble on and on and on hoping to be heard."

A hypocrite is literally an actor, one who dons his mask stepping out onto the stage of his world to play a part. Ironically the audience is not the one the hypocrite is praying to but everyone who happens to see him.

Jesus teaches that prayer is to be authentic. Prayer is to be a real conversation with the weaver of your inward parts. Prayer is not a fake conversation but one rich with authenticity.

The Gentile of Jesus' example prayed by heaping up words and phrases almost with the hope that the more words that were used the greater the chance was the prayer was heard. Kind of like the lottery -- the more tickets you buy the greater chance you have to win. In this example so many words get used that eventually they lose their meaning and just became nonsensical babble.

Jesus says prayer is to be intentional. It is not just a commotion of accumulation but an activity in which the mind is engaged and words are intentionally spoken.

God is interested in a real conversation with the authentic you. He wants to know directly what's in your mind and in your heart. Be real. Be intentional.

Pray.

Rob Hurtgen is a husband, father, minister and writer. Read more from him at www.robhurtgen.wordpress.com.