Prayer

When first think of prayer, I think of the disciples coming up to Jesus and saying "Lord, teach us to pray". I am not a biblical scholar. I am not an ancient historian. But I believe that the disciples, being good Jews of roughly the age of 16-19 (still a crazy concept for me to think about), had prayed before in their lives. They have probably prayed hundreds if not thousands of times in the synagogue, but the only thing recorded they ask Jesus to teach them is to pray. They are asking to relearn something that they've been doing for their entire lives. "Lord, teach us to pray".

Prayer is a discipline that I have not always been good at in the past. My prayers were scarce at best. My prayers would either be right before dinner (sometimes), right before a test, or when things got really really bad. My pastor once talked about this and joked around saying sarcastically "Wow! It was so bad you prayed?!" The congregation got a kick out of that. But it's true. A line from the movie Cable Guy reminds me of this where Jim Carrey's character says something to the extent of "Funny how you only call me when you need something!"

Lord, teach us to pray.

Even though I thought I knew what prayer was, I never realized the power of prayer. I never understood that when we pray, we have access to the power of God! The power that raises dead people, heals the unhealable, calms the storms that are bigger than ourselves, etc. Like that's crazy! We have access to that?! Why would we not pray?!

Lord, teach us to pray.

Since then, I have begun to practice the discipline of prayer. I am constantly learning more about God through prayer. One of the biggest things that I pray for when I pray is to break my heart for what breaks God's. If I'm in a band and I decide to do my own thing, play what I think sounds good and not what the music tells me, then the music sounds terrible. Only when I line my playing with the playing of the rest of the band does sweet music come about. When we pray in line with the prayers of the Father, sweet music that changes lives comes about. But when we don't pick up our instruments, music can't be made at all. We need to pick up our instruments (pray) and play along to the music that changes lives.