1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Rom 12:1-2
There’s a transformation that occurs through prayer. Not so much in the world around me but in me. In fact through daily prayer, my entire view of the world gradually begins to change. What I once thought was a priority become’s trivial and what was once trivial becomes consuming. For example, when I worry about bills I’ll pray for job stability. But as I pray I find myself thinking about all those who don’t have jobs. Then I end up praying for the unemployed and asking God to show me what I can do to help them. You see- transformation. Concerns on how the world affects me become prayers for how I can affect the world. But I’m ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning.
There are two fundamental pillars of lifelong truths I first had to surrender before I could ever experience even minimally effective prayer:
1. I had to in some way be willing to accept the possibility that there is a God, and
2. I’m not him.
With just the same recklessly shallow level of commitment I bring into most relationships, I decided to find out by giving prayer a shot.
I had seen the classic Rockwell style portrayals of children kneeling at their bedsides with chins raised and ridged hands pressed palm to palm so I figured that’d be a good start. First though, I had to go outside and smoke a cigarette. I wasn’t sure exactly what would happen if I tried to pray and to be honest, I was a little paranoid. I figured, I better smoke now cause I don’t know how long I’m gonna be in there.
Then knowing my hands smelled like cheep burnt tobacco I went in my bathroom to wash up. I also washed my face, brushed my teeth, brushed my hair and straightened my shirt- I really had no idea what was going to happen and wanted to look presentable you know, just in case!
Finally, with a nagging sense that I was mildly delusional I took a deep breath then went into my bedroom and closed the door. I turned off the lights and assumed my position with both knees down, both hands pressed, fingers pointed like ten rockets to the sky and eyes firmly shut as I began speaking loudly, “..Um! I uh.. I don’t know if your there or here or whatever!” “I gotta talk to someone though and it’s just me here so if you’re listening that’d be great.”
I continued on finally lowering my voice till eventually speaking somewhat normally as though I was just journaling, “I got these problems in my life with alcohol and bills and jail. You know, like, my life is just a mess. I don’t know where I screwed up but it’s getting pretty bad down here and uh, I could use some help.”
And let me take a minute in this story to tell you how even now I can remember what was on my mind as I spoke. I had envisioned a giant brick wall in the front of my head. It was like some kind of barrier built between me and God. And I felt like I was trying to talk over or through this massive obstacle. Then the realization came to me that this was my wall. I had built this wall over the last 35 years. I felt discouraged. I thought, ‘What am I supposed to do? There’s this fortress style wall here that took decades to build and now it has to go.’
So I literally just envisioned myself reaching out to that wall and taking one top brick down. That’s what this prayer would be, one brick. And each prayer afterward would just have to be another and another for however long it took.
I continued in that same prayer talking about my failed goals, lost years, sin, my financial debt and my torn romance. And as I prayed, my posture began to loosen. My hands dropped down and my knees began to hurt so I got up and just sat on the end of my bed still talking with my eyes closed.
I began petitioning God for answers with statements like, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with my life.” I shook my head and raised my voice in accusation. My hands began to gesture and my eyes opened until I was speaking freely as though to someone directly in the room with me.
I began getting emotional as I went from explaining my frustrations and fears to actually being frustrated and afraid. I began feeling overwhelmed as tears filled my eyes and broke, streaming down my face. By now I was pleading with God almost demandingly saying, “I can’t do this on my own! I need you to be here, right now! I read your damn bible and you said you’d be here!”
I began to panic as though I were drowning. I went back to the floor but this time I was lying down with my face in my hands as I sobbed, too wrecked for words. It was in a complete emotional collapse. Time began spinning as I poured everything out in tears and screams until I had nothing left but to mutter into my hands, “I need you.. I just need you.”
What happened next is neither supernatural nor mystically extraordinary. In fact, it was the opposite. It was just a sense of warmth as I lay trembling on my bedroom floor. Something like a blanket being laid over me. A quiet sense of calm and protection covering me.
And somewhere deep in the center of my chest it felt as though something painful had finally let go. Or maybe I had finally let go of it, I don’t really know. But I can tell you this; it wasn’t surprising or frightening. It was just a simple and perfectly natural understanding. That was it. Every chaotic day of my life throughout my whole existence was suddenly answered with a single simple revelation- God is.
I began to laugh a little and cry normally now in a sense of relief as I said, “Thank You, Lord, thank you.”
Praying continued like this in almost full hour sessions for the next few weeks but I never did see that wall again. It’s as though God had seen me take that first brick down and blasted the whole thing with his fingertip. I still have the occasional full emotional breakdown in prayers from time to time which I’m thankful for but usually I just keep an ongoing dialog open while making sure to set aside three or four times a day just to stop in a more formal prayer.
All that being said, the transformation from who I was to who God makes me still continues with each prayer daily. I go to God when I’m confused. I go to God when I’m relieved. I go to God as a student and a son looking for instruction or love. Sometimes, I just go to God while sitting alone just so I can relax and be still. It’s a new sense of life summed up in the Latin term, Coram Deo, ‘living in the presence of God’.
In fact I think it was a few weeks after that first prayer that I was walking with an old friend of mine who asked, “But John, how do know God is real?” To which I answered in plain honesty, “He told me so.”
John, your passion for the One Who Saves, is so exciting! Thank you.
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