Imperfect Prayers
As I reflect on Sunday's sermon, and as I reflect on prayer, I think about my own feelings of insufficiency. Is there anyone who approaches a perfect and holy God and walks away saying, "yep, nailed it."? Well, maybe. But my guess is that more often than we care to admit, we experience feelings of guilt and inadequacy.
Are you a creature of habit like I am? Our brains actually love completing patterns, so when we create a pattern and complete it, we are rewarded with dopamine. It is for this reason that I love the idea of having predictable patterns. I say the "idea" because we all know that the work of creating patterns is hard. I love the idea of getting out of bed and working out at 5:30am. I hate actually getting out of bed. I'm sure you understand. But, once I've completed my desired pattern, I feel great.
When it comes to prayer, we combat both of these. Creating and fulfilling predictable patterns is hard AND we tend to feel insufficient, killing that dopamine reaction that fuels our habit formation.
I absolutely love that we talked about pressing into Holy Spirit dependency before talking about our posture, pattern, and practice of prayer, because the good news that fills the cracks of our weaknesses is the Holy Spirit. Romans 8:26 says, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”
Paul confesses in his letter to the Romans that we ought to know what to pray for, but the fact is that we actually don't. And this is ok, because here's my favorite part: "but the Spirit..."
We're in good company when we feel our confidence in prayer recede, but we are also free to persevere and practice our patterns of prayer because the "Spirit himself intercedes for us." Isn't that amazing?
I'll share with you an example of a predictable pattern of prayer that I will be working to make a habit in my life. I like to take a quick afternoon walk whenever possible after lunch, so I've decided that when I walk, I'll use that time to intercede in prayer for at least one person. My prayers won't be perfect, so I'm so glad they don't have to be.
-Heather
Heather Garrett leads Regen's Prayer Team. She and her husband Holden live in Girard with their daughter Chloe and dog Myles.
