Some time ago, I wrote a post called “Why I’m Not Praying for You”. It was sort of a reaction to hearing “I’m praying for you” tossed around all the time where I work.
I guess my reaction to “I’m praying for you” being bandied about like a limp Monday morning greeting was in part due to a personal conviction about four things below:
1. Prayer for others is humbling work. It is tough, you get no thanks for it, no one knows you care enough about them to engage in the discipline of prayer on their behalf (unless you tell them so), and it is also an intimate thing. Provided that someone really means it, the idea that someone is taking a concern of mine before the Lord’s throne can and should be a very moving proposition. As one who struggles with depression, I cannot help but take an “I’m praying for you, Dixon” very seriously sometimes when I hear it.
2. Prayer for others is hard work. Again, when someone says “I’m praying for you,” I’m assuming they are engaging, on my behalf, in a pretty tough spiritual discipline. If there is anything I hold true and dear about the practice of prayer, it is what a chapel speaker at DTS, probably in 2004 or 2005, taught, which was to consciously mean everything you pray. None of the rote cliches or song lyrics, but true, conscious, from-a-deep-and-vulnerable-place-in-my-heart experience. Doing that ain’t easy (which is probably the reason my own personal prayer life is so anorexic).
3. A promise of prayer for someone else engenders hope. This one is sort of tough to wrestle down, as who’ll ever know if you’ve been praying for someone? But do you really want to give them the false hope of community (not to mention that of the mountain-moving power of God on their behalf!) if you aren’t really bearing those burdens for them? Think long and hard about that.
4. Prayer for another creates community. We can take the easy way out and promise it (while not actually doing it) or we can be people who cherish authenticity in all that we do and… either pray when we say we’re praying, or break the habit of promising something we aren’t delivering. I for one love the power of prayer with regard to community building, yet I don’t pray as often as I’d like-so I just say, “I’ve been thinking of you” or “You’ve been on my mind”. I feel like it has roughly the same value in edification, even if not the same power before the Lord.
Now I’m a lazy bum.
I’ve ditched class both days this week and haven’t done my homework in two.
Our place is a mess, and my (bath)room is even worse.
Yet somehow the balance of what I have implied to people about my spirituality (how often I pray for others) feels very authentic; put differently, the amount of personal piety I have and that which I project to the world feels about even.
I’m a lazy bum, and I’ve just given you four reasons why I’m not praying for you.
As an old song says, “I’ve been looking in the mirror/and I think it needs a change”.
Have you noticed it too?
What everyone’s saying