Prayer. Life. Learning.

In my life, prayer has always been a rare commodity.  In my best thinking, it is valued beyond measure but in practice it's hard to come by.  The discipline of prayer is tough for someone like me who wants to work hard, finish tasks and do whatever is necessary to get things done for the sake of the Kingdom.  And in some dysfunctional way, prayer doesn't always fit into this.  What does prayer accomplish?  What ministry task requires prayer?  Does prayer help my paperwork get done, does it make a discipleship curriculum, does prayer give a 30 minute talk?  You see, rarely have I prayed and the perfect talk just miraculously appeared.  Rarely have I prayed and I felt a burst of energy to do administrative work.  I am not saying that it's bad to pray about these things or that prayer can't give you the perfect talk.  But what I've learned is that prayer is not necessarily meant to complete an earthly task.  How narrow minded of me.  Our prayers do the work we cannot do.  Our prayers complete spiritual tasks that we cannot complete.  You see, I cannot produce love in someone's heart, I cannot create Jesus-infused courage, I cannot speak sacrifice into existence in someone's life...but what if my prayers could?   I believe they do.  Not the prayers themselves but what comes with them.  When we pray we admit that, under our own strength, we are powerless to do what is necessary to bring about change.  Our prayers for God's intervention is an admission that our efforts are not enough.  Our prayers are a cry for God to come quickly.
But when we don't pray, what are we communicating?  As we see some success without prayer, how are our souls deceived?  I feel like the worst offender.  I complete task after task and yet I pay less and less attention to my prayer life.
Over the past couple months I've been working to correct this deficiency.  The most recent occurrence in this was with the InterVarsity leaders at SPC where we've been going through Psalm 23 and engaging both prayer and meditation.  We've learned that Jesus is so much smarter than us!  We looked at Jesus' call for us to pray in Luke 18 and Matthew 6, and we also looked at James' thoughts on prayer in James 5 and we've been convicted to pray more often and more consistently.  Knowing that what we want to see at SPC cannot be done through completing a bunch of tasks but only by the power of God, we pray.  Our prayers are our admission that we need Jesus.  Our prayers are are our hopes whispered into the ears of the Holy Spirit.  We pray because we cannot.  We pray because God can.
And the more we pray, the more we realize we need to pray...and so we pray.