Stop Drinking Decaf

Praying is one of the hardest things for me to do. I feel like I never know quite what to say and how to say it. And I know how "un-Christian" this makes me sound, but sometimes I find praying boring. It feels like I'm praying to nothing, because I can't feel or see God and He doesn't always talk back. Plus, my prayers are kinda wimpy - they look something like:

Dear God,
Thank you for this day and all the people around me. I pray that tomorrow will be a good day and that everything goes well. Thank you for all the wonderful things around me. 

In Jesus's name, 
Amen.

And that would be my simple prayer. I prayed that prayer for a long time, and sometimes the words would change a little, but not much. Sometimes I would ask for something here or something there, but it was for silly, petty things. If this was all praying was, how could people spend hours doing it? I found it tedious and dull. And hard to do. As soon as I would start a prayer, my mind would wander and I would get distracted, thinking about other things, like what I had to do the next day and what homework I hadn't done yet. How could my divine God be so colorless to pray to?


That's when I realized, God is VERY uninteresting to pray at, but he's exciting to pray to. Instead of actually talking to God, I was praying at Him. I needed to take a step back, look at the Divine Creator in all of His splendor and talk to Him. Solomon encourages us not to rush into God's presence with words, which means instead of rushing ahead and praying a quick nothingness prayer, we need to come forth and talk to the Lord. When I first attempted to "pray", I failed because I was just running through my words. It took me a while to figure out what praying actually was. Now my prayers go longer then they used to, by quite a bit more time. I tell God everything, instead of just surface details. After all, He does know any and every detail about me and my life.

Talking to absolute silence and emptiness is hard, trust me I know. When I sit around and pray, it can be strenuous because I feel like I'm praying to nothing, even though I know the Lord is listening to me. My old youth pastor gave me a good idea when I told him I was struggling with praying. His advice was to find a chair and face it. Imagine there's God, in all His mighty, sitting in that chair. I find that when I'm actually talking at the chair that God is "sitting in", my prayers come easier. The words flow better when I'm talking to God and not praying at Him.

Sometimes praying seems tough, but when you really start talking to God about everything, it doesn't seem so tiring. Instead, it seems easy and good, like you're getting together with an old friend and talking about everything that had happened over the years you hadn't been together. So get up, and talk to the Lord; stop praying at Him and start talking to Him. In other words, stop drinking decaf, and bring out the caffeinated tea leaves.

Here's a good verse on prayer:

"Pray continually." - 1 Thessalonians 5:17

My challenge for you is to break out the caffeinated tea, set up your two chairs, face the Lord and have a long chat with the one who created you and knows the stars by name. Lastly? Pray continually.