Only 1% Of Christians Know How To Pray Like This

• Let’s be quiet for a moment. Let’s be still right here in the quiet of this place or wherever you are listening. I want you to be honest. Deeply, terribly honest with yourself and with God because I believe he’s here. I know he’s here. How many times have you closed your eyes, bowed your head, and spoken words only to feel as if they hit the ceiling and fell lifeless right back at your feet? You’ve done your duty.
• You’ve said your peace. You’ve listed your needs, your worries, your God, please. And yet, when you said, “Amen.” Did you feel any different? Was there an echo? Or was there just silence? That, my friend, is what I call the crisis of the empty prayer. We have confused talking to God with meeting with God. We have exchanged a living dialogue for a religious monologue, and our spirits are starving for the difference.
• You see, prayer was never meant to be a one-way street. It was never intended to be you alone in a room reciting a list into a heavenly void, hoping somehow somewhere someone might be taking notes. That isn’t prayer, that spiritual loneliness dressed up in holy language, and the father’s heart breaks over it.
• He didn’t create you for a monotonous recitation. He created you for communion, for conversation. From the very beginning in the garden, it was the sound of his voice and the sound of man’s voice walking together in the cool of the day. That was the original design. Somewhere along the way, we’ve settled for so much less.
• We’ve built beautiful cathedrals and learned beautiful phrases, and we’ve lost the simple, staggering truth that the God of the universe desires not your polished performance, but your presence. He doesn’t want your words first. He wants your ear. Think of the most important relationship in your life. What would happen if you only ever spoke, never listened? If you only ever demanded, never paused to hear the heart of the one you love. It would wither.
• It would become a burden, a duty. And isn’t that what prayer has become for so many? A duty, a box to check. I’ve prayed today, but did you meet with him today? There’s a canyon of difference between the two. This is why your prayers feel powerless. This is why you don’t see the hand of God moving.
• It’s not that he is inactive. Oh, he is always moving. It’s that we are not in dialogue with the movement. We are speaking our script while he is orchestrating a symphony. And we haven’t paused to hear the music. We pray for doors to open. And all the while he is whispering, “My child, I am the door.