Episode #263 Permission to Pray Badly: Embracing the Learning Journey with God – Unforced Rhythms of Grace

Hey friend, I wanna give you permission today to pray badly. That's what we're talking about in today's episode. I have found for me and for a lot of other people, there can be this pressure that we put on ourselves to be able to pray and kind of perform for God in our prayer life at a certain level. To be skilled like somebody else, to have a similar flavor, to have eloquent words. There's so many different stipulations and really judgements that we can put on ourselves when it comes to our prayer life with God. And I don't believe that there really is a way to pray badly, unless we're overtly trying to manipulate God or do something sinful in our prayer life.

But when we're genuinely coming to God and wanting to talk with him, wanting to connect with him, wanting to receive his good work, his transforming work in our lives, and hear his voice, those are all good prayers that God delights to answer. And so I just wanna take the pressure off. I hope there's some freedom that you're experiencing and that you'll continue to experience to try things. To pray differently, to experience conversations with God in a new way, because that is my regular experience. I am often experiencing new things in my conversations with God and he invites us all to experience that.

We're in a season right now of learning to bike ride with my kids. And I remember that it was hard to learn how to ride a bike. The wobbling, the falling, the scraped knees, the trying things again. And it has me thinking that our prayer life is kind of like that. It's a skill that we're learning. It's a form of connection with our God who loves us, that we're always growing in, not a test that we're passing or failing.

Real prayer, real connection with God, really hearing his voice and talking with him, is something that we learn. We see that even in scripture with the disciples who literally walked with Jesus. In Luke 11:1, “Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” (Luke 11:1)

So both John the Baptist and Jesus taught their disciples to pray. But their disciples were Jewish men. These followers grew up in a culture that taught them that they were God's people. They went to church. They already knew how to pray. In Jewish culture, they would pray at very minimum morning, noon, and night. And still, as they spent time with Jesus, they asked him to teach them how to pray. Now that's part of what we're practicing here. They had prayed all their lives and yet somehow there was something about the quality and quantity of Jesus's prayers that caused them to see how little they knew about prayer.

Now that's liberating to think about prayer as a learning process, not as an end destination, not as a pass fail test, but to question and to experiment, even to fail and try again, because that's what happens when we're learning something.

And so thinking about this opportunity to be learners in prayer and this visual of it being like riding a bike reminded me of another passage of scripture. And so I'll read for us from Matthew 19:13-15. In the New Living Translation, it says, “One day some parents brought their children to Jesus so he could lay his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples scolded the parents for bothering him. But Jesus said, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children.” And he placed his hands on their heads and blessed them before he left.”

The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who come like children. There's so many images that this brings up for me. The ability to learn. Kids are always learning. The world is huge and exciting, and there's so much to learn and experience. The child likeness, the boldness, the courage to come near to Jesus and to receive his ministry for them. He blessed the kids as he carried on in ministry.

I believe God offers the same to us today to come to him as childlike learners, eager to grow in this aspect of our connection and to receive his ministry to us as we do it.

And so I invite you to explore some new things as you talk with God today. And here's a question you can take to him:

God, what childlike quality do you want to restore in my conversations with you?

Have a good talk.

And if you've been encouraged by this content, please share it with a friend and help them grow in their conversational relationship with God too!

Connect with Jen on Instagram