Vital Signs - Saturday, February 22, 2020
The best bit of advice I’ve ever heard about how to pray was this: keep it simple, keep it real, keep it up.
Jesus warns us against getting over-complicated in prayer. Instead, we are to keep it simple. To go into our room, close the door, and spend time with our Father. Jesus models this simplicity with The Lord’s Prayer, a prayer that was just thirty words long in its original language and takes approximately thirty seconds to read aloud. Jesus reminds us that prayer is the most natural and simple thing in the Universe.
If you’re new to faith, you will probably have all sorts of sensible questions about prayer.
There are very few rules for Christians when it comes to prayer. Yes, of course we can pray in the shower, or while driving our cars. We are not required to close our eyes, to adopt a particular posture, to dress in a certain way, to wash ourselves ritually, or to use a fixed form of words simply to be heard by God. Some of these things can on occasions be helpful. The writer of Hebrews is clear that God’s presence is freely available to us all at any time, in any place, through Jesus.
God invites you to pray simply, directly and truthfully in the full and wonderful weirdness of the way he’s actually made you. Take a walk in the rain. Write your prayers out. Sing. Sit in silence in a forest. Go for a run until you sense God’s smile.
How ever you choose, just simply spend time with God today in a way that is joyful and life-bringing for you.
“Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus,”
Hebrews 10:19 NKJV