Learning How to Pray: Caleb Adcox

As long as I have been a Christian, I have had a strange hangup with any sort of routine, repeated prayer. In a way, it almost seemed to reflect poorly on my faith that I would need to make myself pray at certain times, and even worse to recite a prayer that was already written. I was convinced that, if I really loved God enough, I would have no need to make myself pray. I simply would always have something I both wanted and remembered to pray about. As a result, I really didn’t pray much for the first decade or so that I was a Christian. To this day, consistent prayer time is one of the routines I have to put in the most work to maintain, and is far too likely to get dropped when something else comes up. In reality, I will always have a reason not to pray. And most days, if I am depending solely on my personal desire and commitment to pray, those reasons are going to be very convincing. It is a basic fact of human life that we need some degree of structure and routine if we intend to commit to anything. And yet, I still wrestle with the fear that my prayer is not personal enough unless it comes completely organically.

But where does this fear come from? Are we not in fact given the exact words to pray when Jesus teaches His disciples the Lord’s prayer? It is, in every way, incredibly simple. And yet I have managed time after time to convince myself I was doing it wrong, that it couldn’t really be this simple, or that I was missing something. In short, I simply could not accept that God could be good and loving enough to be accessible. 

It is, just by the very nature of the activity, a blessing to be able to pray; to enter into God’s presence and to be seen and heard by Him. It is an outpouring of grace for God to allow sinful, broken people to live in communion with Him. Prayer is not the means to an end, by which we convince God to give us what we want, or even an exercise in godliness designed to make us less sinful and more holy. Rather, it is simply the act of drawing near to and opening oneself up to God. When understood this way, it stops mattering what you say or why you say it. You stop feeling the need to pray “well enough” or to “really mean it”. Prayer becomes simple. Your list of confessions and prayer requests cease to be the goal of your prayer, but rather an object in that prayer. When prayer loses its performance, when you stop demanding that all your prayers be a unique and heartfelt plea for God’s help, you are left with the simple and honest request: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

This prayer, often dubbed “the Jesus prayer”, is commonly taught in monasteries, as well as some churches within more liturgical denominations. It is often repeated throughout prayer, as a means of centering one’s focus on the prayer at hand. However, useful as it may be as a tool for promoting prayer, it is also a prayer in and of itself. In one sentence, the Jesus prayer praises Christ as lord, tells of the hope of the Gospel, implores God to be merciful, and confesses a state of sinfulness. Those twelve words, as innocuous as they may seem, are at the heart of what it means to pray. 

And yet it is still hard. I know how to pray, I know why I should, I even have exact words if I can’t think of anything. And yet, all too often, it still feels like I should be doing more, doing better. I know how to pray, but my pride will not let me accept a grace that I have not worked for. Surely, I think, it would be better if I “earned” it, if my prayer was a result of my incredible, unmatched love for God. I convince myself that, because I am not the one making the prayer happen, it doesn’t count.

But we are never the ones making prayer happen. No matter how much we love God or how badly we want to pray, it is always Him who draws us into communion with Him. This is why we are taught to pray “Holy Spirit, teach me how to pray,” and “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.” God has called us all into simple and complete obedience to His commands. But we will not achieve this obedience by our own actions. Rather, it is by allowing God to teach us how to live in prayer that we can be sanctified.

Caleb is a joy to be around. Filled with the Holy Spirit, he is always ready with a dad joke, a smile, or a word of consolation. He is a senior at LA Tech this school year studying Business, as well as a third year member of our Wesley Discipleship Team. We are so blessed to have him!