The Problem With Prayer

By now you should know that our St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series. (This post first written in 2006) GO CARDS!! These boys were huge underdogs and they pulled it off. It’s a great American story. Little 5 foot nothing and a hundred and nothing pounds Eckstein wins the Series MVP. It’s what dreams are made of. It’s what lets me still cling, in the deep recesses of my brain, to that dream of Olympic glory (of course I’ve had to change my sport to archery). Did I mention GO CARDS!?

This dream, this championship has been a very long time coming. It’s been 24 years. Most of the people on MySpace were not even alive last time the Cards got the ring. It was a can’t miss moment for any St. Louis sports fan.

And that’s the problem with prayer. We don’t see it as a “can’t miss moment.” We do it so regular. It’s ordinary. We rarely see change…and when we do we usually chalk it up to something other than the prayer. We don’t expect anything from it, so we get nothing from it. It’s our duty, so we do it, check it off our list and move on through our day.

My brother has been a Cubs fan his whole life. He ruined his young, impressionable son by teaching him that in “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” the line is “root, root, root for the Cubbies.” Every April his hopes are high and by May it’s usually just another loooong summer. On the outside he still talks trash, but on the inside he is almost afraid to hope.

It’s that way with prayer. I’m afraid to dare to believe. What if I decided the Bible was really true? What if I decided I really believed prayer worked? What if I totally went for it? What if I really prayed something that I really believed God wants? What if it didn’t happen?

So I take the chicken approach. I pray that God’s will be done in a situation. Don’t get me wrong, I want God’s will. Praying for things that are not God’s will are a waste of time. But what we all tend to pray is the type of prayer that is a safety net so that whatever happens I can say my prayer was answered. Then I don’t have to wrestle with anything. I don’t have to deal with maybe missing God in how I prayed. And, I don’t have to deal with the fact that God’s answer may not be the answer I think he should have.

I watched The Game with friends last night. Brian is not what I would call a baseball fan. He’s what I would call a Cardinals in the post-season baseball fan. But he was really into it…yelling at the players, wearing his brand new Rolen jersey and throwing his cap in appropiate moments. But almost as soon as the game was over his response was “So what does this mean for us? How will this affect our lives?” And he’s right. It doesn’t. It will give us stuff to talk about. That’s really it.

And that’s the other problem with prayer. It’s too irrelevent. We would never say that out loud. We would probably never even admit that to ourselves. But if it wasn’t, wouldn’t we do it more? It’s like if I couldn’t make my house payment, but had a money tree in back yard…only I didn’t go pick the money off to make the payment and was just satisfied knowing the tree was there. Who would do that? Well….us. Have you read the Bible? Do you see what it says about prayer? Then let’s do it. Pray boldly. Pray the risky prayers. Pray to a God who loves courageous expressions of faith. Pray to a God who will not leave you hanging. Each prayer is a can’t miss moment. Just pray