Conversation is an art. Even with God. When I first set myself to seeking Him with all my heart, my prayers were awkward, like a person on a first date.

Over time I have noticed a change I did not expect.  My prayers begin to resemble those recorded in the Bible. I find myself lingering long over sentiments about God’s awesomeness, holiness, mercy, great deeds — and similar things I used to pass over quickly in Paul or Ezekiel as the obligatory, overly pious, and slightly boring prolegomena to the interesting bits in prayer.

More of my dog-walking time than ever is taken up thanking Him. And I didn’t realize how many things He has done for me until I started “counting them one by one,” as the old hymn goes. If thanksgiving is pleasing to God, it is energizing to me. It’s not for His sake but for ours, turns out, that He bids us “enter His gates with thanksgiving.”

Like Moses and Daniel, I find myself wrestling more on the basis of God’s Name (His glory or reputation). I am also thus emboldened to ask more vehemently, because I stand on better footing. The contents of my prayers has changed too. I like the joke about the 6^th grader who handed in his completed geography test, praying, “Dear God, please make Chicago be the capital of Illinois!” But I don’t ask for those things so much anymore because I know better, being a parent myself.

The most interesting change in my prayer life is, unfortunately, ineffable. It is as if the Holy Spirit takes over at some point and does the praying. This is my favorite part, because I still don’t know how to pray as I ought.

Because he was too blind to see it himself, Pharaoh’s servants screwed up their courage to tell him:

“How long shall this man [Moses] be a snare to us? Let the men go, that they may serve the Lord their God. Do you not yet understand that Egypt is ruined?” (Exodus 10:7).

We tend to be the last ones to see our own ruin: “Strangers devours his strength, and he knows it not; gray hairs are sprinkled upon him, and he knows it not” (Hosea 7:9).

There is a Christian institution I know that is the last to see that it has become a “horror…a reproach, a byword, a taunt” (Jeremiah 24:9). It continues to pipe out cheery newsletters, healing its wound lightly, “saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace (Jeremiah 8:11).

When I asked an insider why they don’t stop business-as-usual and call a week of prayer and fasting, he said they didn’t want the matter to spread beyond the boundaries of the community. That’s very different from King Josiah’s style (2 Kings 23), or Moses’ (Numbers 14), or Nehemiah’s (Nehemiah 9), who called for public, sackcloth-and-ashes repentance.

Esther also knew better than to make a move without insisting on three days of a fasting back-up (Esther 4:16). Zipporah averted her husband Moses’ ruin by quick, godly thinking (Exodus 4:24,25). And even an evil man in Luke 16 had the good sense to take drastic action to avert his ruin.

“A little folly outweighs wisdom and honor” (Ecclesiastes 10:1). It is a commonplace that “more is caught than taught.” Who will be attracted to the Lord’s kingdom when in the time of testing of our faith, we prove that we don’t believe a word of it?

It’s funny how we’re always thinking about the things we should be taking on for God, when it may be more to the point to think about the things we should be letting go. Who among us trust Him enough to let go of worry about tomorrow, about money, about our appearance, about being socially “okay”? We voluntarily drag this ball and chain all day long, and then drag it into bed with us. It would be heroic if it weren’t mutinous.

I have tried both — doing things for God and letting things go. It’s easier to do something for God than to give up some pet fear. Easier but ridiculous, when you think of it. As the Lord said through the Psalmist: “If I were hungry, I wouldn’t tell you” (50:12).

Jesus invites us to go to His redemption center and make exchanges, and it’s a pretty good deal: Give Him our tomorrows, our cash flow problems, our okayness issues, our kids’ futures. And our end of the bargain is to deal with what’s on our plate today (Matthew 6). Day-size is doable.

Think about something you’re not giving up. Some fear you keep in a secret pocket and stroke when nobody’s looking. Kill the little darling, this instant. And if you can’t bring yourself to kill it, hand it over to Jesus and He’ll do it. Take his light load in exchange for your heavy one. His shoulders are broader than yours. 

I wonder if we are the new Deists. I was thinking about that as I considered the Fourth of July ink that will be spilled again over the question of whether — and which of — our Founding Fathers were Deists and not really Christians. My dictionary calls deism religion “emphasizing morality, and…denying the interference of [God] with the laws of the universe.”

We pick on the house church of Mary mother of Mark because they had prayer meetings and then didn’t expect God to answer their prayers (Acts 12). “You’re out of your mind,” they told poor Rhoda when she said Peter had gotten out of jail and was at the door.

I’ve been to prayer meetings like that. I’m not the only one, apparently: “Prayer meetings constantly tend downward, to become either intellectualistic Bible studies or anxiety-sharing sessions where religious arguments break out. Christian people and their leaders are ready to do almost anything except get down to praying with power an authority in the name of Christ” (Outgrowing the Ingrown Church, C.John Miller).

A Deist is not just someone who calls himself a Deist. A Deist is someone who calls himself a Christian but thinks like a Deist thinks. He believes that God exercises a general benevolence from a distance. He mistrusts “enthusiasts” (18^th century word) or “fanatics” (21^st century word) who pray as if God is involved in every detail of his day.

Talk about “Left Behind.” Our church lost-and-found closet is overflowing with unclaimed items, mostly Bibles. (Gosh, the owners must be using their other Bibles for daily devotions.)

But that’s nothing. Then there is “escheat.” That’s unclaimed money the government is holding because you forgot to pick it up, forgot it was yours and you were entitled to it. These resources sitting in mothballs while you scurry frantically to make ends meet include the following:

Uncashed checks and money orders, non-refunded deposits, bank accounts and safety deposit boxes you forgot you had, insurance and retirement benefits, abandoned stocks, matured and unredeemed savings bonds, undelivered tax refunds, unclaimed trust fund payments, unpaid retirement benefits, unpaid distributions to creditors, lost securities accounts, unpaid Social Security, of VA benefits. A conservative estimate puts it at $30 billion owed to 80 million owners, held in the “protective custody” of the government.

But that’s nothing. Then there are all the unclaimed gifts Christ purchased for us at the cost of blood. Some of these we haven’t claimed because the churches we belong to don’t tell us we are entitled to them. But come on, we have Bibles (if we get them out of the lost-and-found) and we can read for ourselves. There is more of the Spirit to be had. There are gifts waiting to be claimed (1 Corinthians 14:1), wisdom for the asking (James 1:5), mountains waiting to be moved (Matthew 17:20), harvest waiting to be picked (Matthew 9:38), Revival that will come if we get on our knees.

Zelophehad’s daughters would not have gotten a square inch of the Promised Land if they had not asked (Numbers27). “You do not have because you do not ask” (James 4:2). Come and get it.

Yesterday we remembered a hero from Iwo Jima. Today let’s not forget those who landed on the beaches of Normandy 64 years ago, a brave act that led to the liberation of Europe. On June 6, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked the nation to join him in prayer:

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity. Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph. …

You can read and hear the entire prayer at The American Presidency Project website.

I like the way we Christians constantly exhort each other to more faith, and flagellate each other for our lack of it — and then ridicule the person who has too much.

A friend of mine, who has proved sober and honest in all my relations with him, told me about a prayerfully sought healing in his prison fellowship that brought much rejoicing among the brothers.

But of course, you can’t always trust an inmate.

Yesterday I was at a party at which a couple told me the following story: They were stranded with a transmission fluid leak in the poverty-and-crime-infested Port Richmond section of Philadelphia, where nothing of value, left on the street, will not be soon snatched up. They would have needed one of those funnels with the curved necks, and there was no place near from which to purchase one.

He was a new Christian. His wife-to-be was already a strong believer. She said to him words to this effect: “If you really believe in Jesus, like you say you do, you will pray with me now, and pray specifically for the right kind of funnel.” So they did. And when they rounded the corner, there was one sitting in the middle of the road.

Tell me, why shouldn’t I believe that?

I think the Muslims have the right idea.

Not that I will be converting anytime soon. But I have discovered the value — the soul cleansing and re-aligning power — of stopping whatever I’m doing several times a day to lie prostrate on the floor and pray away “stinkin’ thinkin’” that has accumulated like corrosion on a car battery.

The habit began spontaneously and evolved gradually, and I will not elevate it (or debase it) to a law. I will not do the prescribed ablutions, I will not perform the obligatory two to four rituals in the course of each Salaah, I will not count how many times I’ve done it. I will remember that God is not impressed by babbling, I will be grateful that our God is close and not remote, exalted like Allah but approachable like your Dad.

My kids have walked in on me in this posture in a closed room. So far no one has said anything. If they bring it up, I will tell them it blows my mind how quickly I am moved from the good news of God’s love to an anxious spirit. I’ll tell them how I’m learning to pay attention to my feelings and get back on track by praying “I will trust in your unfailing love.”

If anyone is still in the room by then, I will conclude by saying I’ve been surprised to find God’s commands are not burdens but doorways to life.

After George Müller got his heart into a place where it had “no will of its own in regard to a given matter,” he remained on guard against feeling as a means of decision-making. When I think on how love drove him to care for thousands of orphans, it seems odd that he would not want feelings to reign. A friend of mine who is a philosophy professor would wholeheartedly approve, despite being an atheist; whenever his students begin a sentence with “I feel,” he nips them in the bud. “Think your way to truth,” he tells them, “don’t feel.”

It’s certainly an odd notion, in an age of irrationality and sentimentality, when you’re supposed to listen to your heart, as a pop song goes, and when learning to love yourself, according to an older pop hit, is the greatest love of all. Aren’t all the movie heroes, after all, people who lead with their hearts?

Yet Müller distrusted his own emotions when it came to decision-making, because he knew what the Bible warned, that the heart is deceitful, and dreadfully sick. When emotions are in charge, such that they govern actions, they are more likely than not to extend first to the self, and to others only insofar as they propel one’s self-love. We’ve all met parents, for example, who tell themselves they doesn’t discipline their children because they love them so very much, but who in actuality love themselves too much, and see their children only as extensions of themselves. The heart can be beautiful, the heart makes us human, but the heart is a lousy decision-maker, because its prime object of affection is so frequently itself.

So Müller, that committed Christian and caregiver to lost children, worked to keep his feelings in check. Only then, he must have believed, could he reflect the love of God, which is always borne out in action, not sentiment. It’s been quite often, in my ten years as a Christian, that I have let my emotions make decisions for me, while I told myself that the whisperings of my deceitful heart were in fact the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Ironically, it’s only as I’ve learned to try, at least, to put my own wants in check that I have found my actions more infused with genuine love, as opposed to sentiment, with self-sacrifice, as opposed to self-centered martyrdom, with courage, as opposed to bravado. It’s one more way that He is strong where we are weak, which is something I learned to pronounce early in my Christian walk, but have only recently begun to understand.

Editor’s Note: Here’s a link to Tony’s first post in this series, “A rule of prayer.”

I’ve had reason of late to consider George Müller’s thoughts on prayer. Müller was a Prussian-born evangelist credited with caring for over 10,000 British orphans during his lifetime in the 19th century, and educating a good many additional children. Müller was known for never accepting government assistance, and for never requesting money of anyone. His earnest faith was that if he did God’s will, God would provide. As the story goes, there was a time in the early years of his orphanage when the food ran out. He had the children arranged around the dinner table regardless, in order to give thanks for the food God was going to provide. Soon there was a knock at the door; a bread truck had broken down outside, and the owner offered it to Müller rather than let it go to waste.

Rather than thanking God for what He will provide, I am usually asking Him not to take away what He has given. I wonder if I ever will come close to the assurance that seemed to inform Müller’s life. For some time I have been taken with his guidelines for prayer, which are at once so practical and so difficult to follow. The first thing he did, he explained, was to strip himself of his own will. That doesn’t mean that he adopted a stoic indifference to the outcome, but rather that he got himself to a place where he was willing to embrace the outcome, even if it’s not what he desired.

That, Müller implied, was more than half the battle. It certainly is for me. I am a want-filled creature, hopeful and fearful all at once, and prone to ignore God until something I want or something I fear is directly in my field of vision. How strange, when prayer is so frequently the consequence of our immediate wants, to begin by praying that our own wills be sublimated.

In his exhaustive Civil War trilogy, Shelby Foote writes how Jefferson Davis, upon learning that his young son had plummeted to his death from an upper window, closed himself into a room, and could be heard pacing the entire night, saying over and over: “Not my will, but thy will.” It was a prayer for the ability to submit, I’m sure, as much as a statement of faith. Maybe that’s all our statements of faith ever are, prayers that we might be, if only for a short while, faithful, and faith-filled.