Ch. 6 – Interrupting Heaven (The Practice of Prayer)

I hope there is coffee in heaven. Some jokingly have called it the nectar of the God’s. Surely there will be coffee in heaven. I say this because coffee is almost always my precursor to prayer. I like to just sit alone with God and drink a bit a coffee before I start to pray. Just sitting and sipping, saying nothing. Sometime I pick up a book, mostly the Bible (but not always) and I start to read before I pray. Sometimes I finish the last drop, tell God thanks for the coffee, that I love Him, and then I begin my day. Sometimes, I make a large pot coffee and let God know we got a lot to talk about before I begin my day. And then sometimes, I oversleep or my morning is interrupted by life and there is no coffee, there is only a quick “Lord help me with my day” as I am running out the door. I tell you this because I think too many people look at prayer as a duty or as a religious act that one needs to check off before they begin their day. But that’s not what Jesus taught us and that’s not what the Bible shows us.

Prayer is simply talking to God. It’s communication with the Creator. And Jesus never put a time limit on it. He never laid out a specific posture or place we should pray. He just said when you pray, pray like this…. “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. ¹⁰ Thy kingdom come,..” Wait a minute! We’ve turned this example of prayer into some type of magical prayer formula to recite too. So look at how the Message Bible explains this prayer:

Matthew 6:9-13 (MSG)

^7-13 “The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They’re full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don’t fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need. With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply. Like this:

Our Father in heaven,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right;
Do what’s best—
    as above, so below.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.
You’re in charge!
You can do anything you want!
You’re ablaze in beauty! YES!

Doesn’t even sound like the Lord’s Prayer does it? And that’s the point, it’s just a real conversation with God about stuff we should be praying about.

So for the most part I enjoyed this chapter on prayer, but I took issue with a couple things. First, he doesn’t mention Paul’s explanation of how to pray— 1 Thessalonians 5:17 “Pray continually”, Paul says. Ortberg probably doesn’t include this because he might see it as a level of advanced prayer for those who have been praying awhile. I don’t see it that way. And I’ll explain why in a moment. The second issue I had was his recommendation to start out slow if you have never prayed before. Specifically his advice was to keep it to five minutes a day. Some days 5 minutes may be all you have time for but some days you might need 50 minutes. This is true whether you’re a beginner or you’ve been praying for years.

Let me explain: Orberg defines prayer as “talking to God about what you’re doing together”. I love that definition. That definition helps set the context of what prayers should be about, “what you’re doing together” with God. Think about what you are doing together with God. For me, I’m loving my wife. I’m raising family. I’m leading a church. I’m coaching. I’m leading a youth group. I could go on and on, but for me—I’m doing all of life with God and for God. I see all of my responsibilities in life as something I’m doing with God. Therefore, I talk to him about all of them. When I get up, when I’m driving down the road, when I get home, before I go to bed, whenever and wherever is always a possible prayer moment. This is what the Apostle Paul was talking about when he said “pray continually”. This type of praying isn’t just for the advanced pray-er, it’s for the novice, and it’s for anybody.

Think about it this way: look at all the different ways we communicate with the people we know—a phone call, a text, an email, facebook message, instagram. Oh, and we still get out the pen and paper too. For instance, when we want to tell someone we love them or we want to thank them, we’ll write a hand written note or maybe post-it note on the fridge or bathroom mirror. These are all short and simple ways we communicate to others we love. They don’t take a lot of time. Sometimes less than a minute or perhaps even just a few seconds and yet they communicate enormous amounts of information and feelings.

Now if you only communicate with someone through text or facebook and you have no real face time, then the relationship will stay really shallow. How do you think your spouse would feel if they never got to talk to you face to face. A real relationship has face time conversations…conversations over dinner, or on a walk, or those close the door conversations we need to talk. You know what type of conversations I’m talking about. You need these same type of conversations with God. These are the conversations Ortberg was getting at that we need to take time for. And his recommendation to start with at least 5mins a day is very doable. Start making time for face time, prayer time with God a priority.

Two last words about this chapter and prayer, INTERACTION and NOURISHMENT. These are the two words I circled on p.96. You need to see your prayer time in light of these two words. First INTERACTION, your prayer time is interaction with God and what’s going on in your life. It’s not a ritual of the same old words and thank you’s over and over again. Finally NOURISHMENT, just like God’s Word, prayer nourishes your soul. It contains those spiritual vitamins that are good for your eyes and helps you see things more clearly.

Now, time for some more coffee.

Java-llelujah!!!

Jason