Our modern view of prayer in the religion of the institutional church is very weak and one-dimensional. For so many, prayer is characterized by the following fallacious attitudes and beliefs:

Prayer is an event – we “do” prayer, usually at specific times and in specific settings. Over a meal. Before a meeting. For a few minutes each morning. Of course, in a “church service” (don’t get me started here), because it is the “Christian” thing to do, even though it is most often perfunctory.

Prayer is how we get God to work – as in, get Him to work for us. We pray to God to give us what we think we need, but what we usually pray for is really what we want. Prayer becomes a kind a recitation of wants and demands on God to “work,” especially when we are desperate.

Prayer is about us talking “at” God in a one-way communication. Take the “event” thinking and combine it with the “get God to work” thinking, and we have the ubiquitous monologue prayer. We pray our list at our God in a monologue, and when we have completed the list we close the communication and move on to other things. Done. Check. There.

These attitudes and beliefs underscore how little we understand our relationship with our God in the New Covenant era. We have been joined into Christ. Christ by His Spirit lives within us and indwells us at all times. We are now in union with the Father and the Son – He is closer to us than our own thoughts. The purpose of that union is an intimate, love relationship with the Triune God which Jesus said was our greatest responsibility. The Holy Spirit indwells us so that He might commune and converse with us regularly. The abiding life we have with Christ is one in which life flows both ways, like a branch that is connected to a vine and is giving and receiving life.

The closest analog to our life – a dynamic, intimate, preoccupying relationship of continual conversational communion – is the marriage relationship. We see this is the case in Ephesians 5:28-32. “So husbands also ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church,  because we are parts of His body.  For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.  This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church” (emphasis mine).

Marriage is the most intimate of human-level relationships. Yet it is merely a shadow of the greatest of all intimate relationships, the God-human relationship as it is intended to be. No marriage will last long if the communication between husband and wife in any way resembled our communication with our God by what is often called “prayer.” Some of you are thinking of marriage communication jokes right now. Our picturing such jokes in this discussion is indicative of how far off the beam our praying might really be.

Go back to what was written just two paragraphs above: “These attitudes and beliefs underscore how little we understand our relationship with our God in the New Covenant era. We are now in union with the Father and the Son – He is closer to us than our own thoughts. The purpose of that union is an intimate, love relationship with the Triune God which Jesus said was our greatest responsibility. The Holy Spirit indwells us so that He might commune and converse with us regularly. The abiding life we have with Christ is one in which life flows both ways, like a branch that is connected to a vine and is giving and receiving life.“

Prayer is the outflow – the overflow – of this dynamic, intimate, preoccupying relationship we are to experience with our God daily. It is expression of our continual conversational communion with our God that has all the characteristics of deep, warm, open, loving friendship. Give and take. Back and forth. Silence mixed with expression. Listening closely and well. Two-way conversation. Question and answer. Sensing the presence of the other. Paying attention for significant periods of time.

In light of our union with our God, we can see how true prayer is an always on, free-flowing experience that spans our daily experiences. Despite what many misguided minds are saying about God not speaking to us in the present era, our God speaks to and converses with His children. He did so all through the Old Testament record. He did so in the New Testament as well. His speaking with us today was prophesied in the Old Testament and practiced and reported on in the New. He has always been conversant with His people. Since Pentecost, He has indwelt His true children in a life of union and communion. Why would we expect Him to be silent now, when He is the closest He has been to individual humans since the fall of Adam?

Prayer begins in an intimate, conscious, conversational communion with the God Who indwells us. You can know this intimate conversational communion, and begin to seek and experience your God in an loving, dynamic, intimate, preoccupying habit of conversational communion each day. Clear your schedule for more time in communion with Him. More importantly, clear your heart of more of the things crowding out your thoughts of God and impeding your focus upon Him. If you seek Him diligently and honestly, He will let you find Him.

Image via author, Becker Lake, Beartooth High Lakes, Wyoming