Why I Pray

1. Without hope.

For over a decade, I believed that I was lost to God. I won’t describe the whole reason for that. But one sliver of the reason was that a voice without a body told me that I was going to hell.

I’ve had a history of hearing voices, and in past decades I was hospitalized for a disorder of the mind that relates to hearing voices. But now that I’m in my right mind, one of the puzzles of my life has been to sort my experiences from when I was homeless and fleeing a vast satanic conspiracy. I put my supernatural experiences from that time into piles. I try to discern what was from God, what was from madness, and what was from evil.

Even as that voice shattered me, I didn’t believe that it came from God; I believed that it was demonic. But I believed that voice because what it said mirrored the upheaval that I had at that moment experienced for weeks and months, and it matched what I saw about myself as I looked back at my life.

In the years after I heard that demonic voice, I would sometimes dream that God had forgiven me, and that he had welcomed me into his good grace. In those dreams I was overjoyed. Nothing else in my life has made me that happy. But then I would wake up, and I would not believe the dream. I groaned under the weight of that hopelessness.

For most of this decade-plus of heaviness, I could not bear to read the Bible in any depth. I could not bear to step inside a church. I could not pray; prayer felt like trespassing.

2. Hopeful.

Within the last two years, I’ve taken steps back to hope. The journey back started with loneliness: I wanted to date. My computer dating service seemed to match me up with Christians. This was a problem. One beautiful woman rejected me after I explained to her my dismal beliefs about myself. I had to confess them to her. I couldn’t build a relationship on pretense about who I was.

I started going to a church so that at least I wouldn’t have to explain to these Christian women why I was un-churched. The teaching at that church was almost always very good, and it got me re-interested in scripture. At first, my reading was topical – I would search the Bible on a topic when the teaching had provoked my curiosity about it. Eventually, I started reading the Bible more methodically. I started reading it to read every book from Genesis to Revelation, as I’d done several times when I was young.

In the meantime, I changed churches. The change came with a blessing.

In my new church, which is Episcopalian, we celebrate communion every Sunday. For months, I didn’t take communion. This was because I remembered reading that it is a poor idea to take communion when you aren’t right with God. And I still felt outside of God’s grace.

But that changed. The story of the prodigal son affected me. I came to believe that I was the prodigal son. I was a man who had squandered God’s blessings and God’s gifts, but, like the prodigal, I came to my senses and made the long journey home. I believed that I could be welcomed back like the prodigal.

One Sunday, I went forward to take communion. When I returned to my pew, I had something like a vision. Looking up at the architecture of the church, I had a sense of its alive-ness – its alive-ness through generations of believers who had worshiped there and in the wider Episcopalian church, of whom I was now a part. I strain to put into words a vision-like experience that came without words.

I’ve described the moment when I heard a voice that convinced me that I was lost. The lead-up to that voice was long, and it came like pronouncement of guilt and sentence after trial. The lead-up to my vision-like experience that caused me to believe in God’s mercy toward me also was long. But it was like a verdict of acquittal.

3.  Hope, not assurance.

I don’t believe that my salvation is a sure thing. I accept what the apostle Peter says, that salvation is something that we grow into. (1 Peter 2:2.) This is not the teaching of my former church; it is not mainstream in modern America. But it accords with my reading of the Bible, and it’s supported by other reasons personal to me.

4. The fruit of hope.

Sometimes I marvel that I don’t rejoice more for having the belief in sure damnation lifted from me. And it’s true that, intellectually, I realize that any trauma that I might suffer will be more bearable because of my new hope. This has yet to be tested by adversity.

But my spiritual life now flows as if a dam has burst. I have zeal in my spiritual life – the zeal of someone who thought that he was lost to God, but who has discovered unexpectedly that that isn’t so.

I study the Bible at length. I read, generally, twelve chapters a day.

And I pray. I think that I pray a lot by most standards.

When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God is an excellent study of the admirable Vineyard Christian Fellowship Church. Author and anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann tells that Vineyard members are encouraged to pray for at least half-an-hour every day. Some do, some don’t. Some pray more. Prof. Luhrmann describes a woman who is admired for her ability in prayer; that woman prays for three hours a day.

At first, I would interleave my prayer with my Bible study: read a chapter, then pray for five minutes or so, then read another chapter, etc.

Now I study the Bible and pray in discrete chunks of time. I read three chapters in the morning, and then pray for half-an-hour. I read nine chapters at night, and then pray for an hour to an hour-and-a-half. My evening goal is an hour; usually I go longer.

This hasn’t been going on for very long, but already I sense changes.

Some changes are physical. At first, I prayed largely in my chair. I couldn’t bear to kneel for the whole time of prayer. My legs couldn’t take it. They can now. Part of the reason for that is that I’ve learned to shift kneeling positions. Another reason is that my knees and ligaments and ankles have better stamina from practice.

Some changes are changes to how I pray. I’m learning. I used to check my watch often to see how long I had prayed and how long I had left to reach my goal. (And I said "sorry" to God for watching the clock in the middle of this manifestation of his grace to me – the fact that I could pray.) I watch the clock much less now. (Sometimes I still apologize when I do.)

I learned about ACTS from Prof. Luhrmann’s book. ACTS stands for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. Some teachers teach that those are the four components of prayer. At one time, I tried to divide my time of prayer into four chunks devoted to each of those categories. I still use ACTS, but flexibly. I go among those elements in my time of prayer.

Lately, the C in ACTS has also meant Conversation. I talk to God about things that happened during the day and about parts of the Bible that I don’t get.

Sometimes, the S stands for Silence. I wait in silence for some guidance from God about what to pray for and how to pray. This time of silence is normally brief.

Sometimes I remember hymns in my heart as I pay. Sometimes I sing them out loud.

Sometimes, I pray the same prayers that I have prayed before, pretty much in the same way. More recently, I worship God and pray in new ways for my church, my president, my relatives, my friends, my clients, strangers, enemies, and myself. I pray for the living and the dead.

Bible study is important to my prayers. The Bible gives me ideas about what to pray and how to pray.

5. Gratitude.

I’ve been blessed. I’ve known hopelessness; this new hope is God’s grace, and it is a wonder.

I can look back on my lost years and see God’s grace in them. They have made me more grateful and they have grown my faith and my knowledge of God.

James 4:8 says "Come near to God and he will come near to you." (NIV) In Sunday worship and in my private devotions, I strive to come near to God, trusting that he will come near to me.