Dear Rehoboth,

This week’s scripture is about prayer. Don’t worry I’m not going to spend this time this morning trying to convince you to pray more. I think we need to, but that’s like saying we need to eat better. We all know it, we don’t need someone to tell us. But, rather, I want to encourage you to pay attention to your prayers this week. And since you are paying attention to your prayers, try not to pray differently. I want us to pay attention to what we actually pray for and about, not what you think God wants us to pray about. After you pray, I want you to think about what your prayer says about God. That’s it. What does my prayer say about God? 

Prayer is one of the most intimate things we do. We have unspoken prayers lifted up every week because to say them out loud would be too much, or too painful, or maybe too embarrassing. To hear someone pray is to get a glimpse at who they believe God to be. To pray to God for forgiveness only makes sense if we believe that we have done something to warrant forgiveness from God and also that this God, we are praying to forgive. Maybe more succinctly when we pray, we are articulating a theology about God. I encourage you to think about what you are praying and try to see what that may say about God. Then you have to ask yourself if that’s truly what you believe about God. If not, why do you pray for those things? I think we will begin to notice that our prayers paint a much more clear picture of God than any creed or explanations. Because as I said, our prayers are powerful and intimate. 

I don’t want us to stop there. I want you to also think about what you are not praying for. What have things been left out of your prayers? Which groups of people have been left out of your prayers? Do we stop praying for healing because we are not sure that God can heal this illness? Have we not prayed for God to help us find a job because we don’t think God cares about our jobs? Have we not prayed for our leaders because we don’t think they deserve God’s blessing? The things we don’t pray about say just as much about us and the God we believe in as the prayers we pray.

In this passage, Jesus gives us a glimpse at the God he prays to. Is it the same God we proclaim and pray about? This scripture illuminates God to us. It teaches us about the God we have. Maybe we too can teach the world about God through our prayer lives. Maybe instead of telling people about God, maybe we should teach people about God in our prayers if you don’t want to dive too deeply into your prayer because you are afraid of what you might find (which is the exact reason to do it) but tear apart my prayers this Sunday. What and who do I pray for? What do my prayers proclaim about God? They are not perfect, we don’t always say the right things out loud, but I hope my prayer life is another opportunity to spread my beliefs about God. 

Thank you for letting me ramble on prayer this morning. Please let me know about your prayer life. I want to hear if you have anything to say on the subject of prayer as theology. Or maybe you are more interested in the scorpions and the snakes. I want to hear it all. Please keep this conversation going.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Lee