When I was a child, my parents taught me to say my prayers. They were always good examples of this important discipline in a Christian’s life. We always prayed before every meal and before going to bed. I am thankful for that heritage.
However, later in life, I learned that there is more to prayer than just saying some memorized words. I literally grew up thinking I would get a stomachache if I didn’t pray before eating. For the longest, I saw prayer as a lucky rabbit’s foot to keep bad things from happening.
But my prayer life took a drastic turn during my 30’s and 40’s when God called me into the ministry of worship. I had always loved music, but like many, I didn’t always pay close attention to the words I was singing.
Now, as a worship leader, I saw it as my duty to inspect every word of every song for doctrinal purity and theological accuracy. And low and behold, I discovered that many of the songs I was leading and singing were … prayers.
How could I have missed that?
I got this vision of God leaning over the edges of Heaven, calling over Jesus and the Holy Spirit and saying, “Listen, Steve is calling out to us, only to find out I was just singing some familiar words. There was no fervency, no expectation.
Since that time, my prayer life has never been the same. No more wrote speeches with fancy words. The more I pray, the more I realize that it is less about the person or thing I am praying for and more about getting my heart in tune with the heart of God. When I spend time praising Him in word or song just for Who He is, then He becomes the target of my prayers and turning Him lose in my life by faith becomes the goal of my prayers.
James, the half-brother of Jesus, who by the way was nicknamed “ole camel knees” because of his persistent prayer life, pointed out in chapter 5 the example of Elijah and how he prayed for a drought for 3 and a half years and God granted it. And then he prayed for rain and the sky’s opened up. But listen to how James described Elijah, “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly …”. Did you catch that? Elijah was an ordinary man with an extraordinary prayer life.
It must make one think about what would happen if a hand full of God’s people got that serious about prayer. Ole Camel Knees said it this way, “You have not because you ask not.”
