True Prayer

I’ve noticed (again) as I return to a somewhat predictable schedule in my life that when we find our routines upset one of the first things that suffer is our prayer life. Not that we stop praying, but we become distracted by our disorganized lifestyle and our prayers lack the fervor they once had and sometimes our time is also limited. My prayer life has suffered during this move and as I move back to the schedule I once had, I ran across a reading in the Mar/Apr issue of Pray! Magazine that hit me right between the eyes. In part it reads: “No Christian exercise has so many counterfeits as prayer. While all would seem to practice prayer, few actually know it in truth and experience. We may say prayers, sing prayers, read prayers, and hear prayers, and yet not really pray.” Those words were written by John Robinson in 1625. He was the Pilgrim pastor who discipled a band of believers who boarded the Mayflower in 1620. Now, here’s my comment. Supposing Robinson is correct (and I believe he is), how much more difficult does our current lifestyle make communication with God? Not that God is any less accessible, but we have so many more methods of prayer and devotion and do they truly facilitate prayer? Robinson goes on to say “just as we learn the manners of our friends and increase in affection toward them by conversing with them…so it is with God.” What he is speaking of is nothing more than relationship. However, I see people in our day drifting away from true relationships in order to establish networks. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, each of these replace true relationships with a false sense of relationship we call networking, where it’s easy to have many “friends” without truly knowing any of them. Let’s take care we do not substitute a real relationship with God for the routine reading of prayers, devotions, and Scripture.