a book about prayer for people who don't read books about prayer

"Many of the folks in my church were raised in a variety of church settings--Baptist, Catholic, Nondenominational, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran--but found themselves at a place, like me, where their prayer lives were floundering.

Strangely enough, their staggering toward prayer has been because they are people of profound truth. In other words, they haven't struggled because they've become less interested in God or less desirous of following Jesus, but the opposite. They continue experiencing God in various ways, but the only framework for prayer that they've known has been loaded with vacant banter and trite expressions. This collided with the core of who they are. To be people of integrity, many of them felt they had two options: one, pray to God with the same familiar rehearsed lines and old clichés; or two, don't pray at all. From one angle, you could say their "lack" of a prayer life has been noble. In this book, I will show that all they needed was for someone to come along and brick the roads they were already traveling. And, in the process, we will rediscover a means of interacting with God that is truthful, live-giving, and holistic."

- Kyle Lake, in his book (RE)Understanding Prayer, A Fresh Approach to Conversation with God

This is from the introduction of the book I just started today, per Matt's recommendation. I love what Kyle says here about how sometimes people who are struggling with understanding prayer or feeling like they have an "authentic" prayer life are not doing so out of blatant opposition or lack of interest in God, but often times what they have been taught about prayer feels awkward and contrived, and while they experience God in real and powerful ways in other areas of their lives, "prayer" seems to allude them.

I remember being in a fifth-grade girls Bible class in Sunday school when I was growing up and the teacher's objective for the class was to teach us girls the proper way to pray. God bless her soul for her effort - she had a heart to help us - but what came out of it, at least for me, was a legalistic view of right and wrong prayer which still haunts me to this day.

While now I can recognize that I don't need a thorough grasp of King James English to talk to God, and that God is closer than the air I breathe and knows my needs before I can even express them, I still struggle with talking to him in a real and relatable way. In the back of my mind, I sometimes fear that by being forthright and honest, I may be approaching him too casually and that childhood fear of God smiting me dead or turning me into a pillar of salt for my disrespect still gets the best of me occasionally.

Like Kyle mentions in his book, this fear and lack of understanding of what a thriving prayer life could look like has, at times, manifested itself in a total lack of prayer in my life. As he suggests, one view of this approach could be that it was noble to not pray at all than to pray in ways that feel fake - more than anything, I want to be real and genuine with God, not putting on airs. On the other hand, a lack of prayer life has, at best, left me feeling guilty and, at worst, left me ill-equipped and wide open for temptation and sin.

During our Beth Moore bible study the other night ("Living Beyond Yourself") Beth mentioned what she feels are important parts of her prayer life - Pouring Out: Confessing Sins and all anxieties, worries, fears, frustrations to God; Pouring In: God filling us with his truth and the Holy Spirit; and Pouring Through: living a life in the Spirit, sharing the "fruit" with others. I loved this lesson so much, because I finally caught sight of what has been missing for me. Sure, I pour myself out to God - I share everything with Him... I know how to do that much. My problem is that I've been stopping there. I knew there was more to it, but when people say that they sit and wait for God and listen to Him - I just have not understood that, at ALL. Once I could put my finger on that, though - I knew where to focus my attention.

So this is where I am today, reading a book about prayer "for people who don't read books about prayer" because I finally broke down and told my husband: "Look - I don't get prayer. I try. I want to... but I keep coming up short, and I need some direction." Because I'm tired of pouring myself out, and not being filled back up again. Because I'm tired of knowing that the God of the universe wants to have a real and powerful relationship with me, but not having the tools to break through to the next level. Because I love God, and I want to know him more.