Starting with Prayer and Moving on...

Prayer.

It is something I have struggled with since adolescence.

As a child, it really wasn’t hard to remember to pray. A prayer before bedtime and at meals became a part of routine. But as I grew older, it became les and les a part of my life.

I have never been able to get in any sort of an effective prayer schedule.

When it comes right down to it, I have never really been able to get on any sort of an effective schedule at all. It is one of the weaknesses that most disturbs me, and I think it is one of Satan’s strongest footholds in my life.

I think I may have found a way to pray more often, though. Written prayer.

I don’t pray often largely because I am ashamed of the lack of spontaneous eloquence that so many of the leaders in churches seem to possess. You ask my pastor or my dad to pray and you get this beautiful, almost poetic entreaty. Me, I just have the “Lord, I have need of this and this and this. In the name of your son, amen.”

Writing, though, gives me an opportunity to collect my thoughts, edit the thing if necessary. I can write in a poetic manner, and it serves me well sometimes. Slowing down enough to write out the things I am thankful for, the things I need, the things I want; it gives me a chance to get somewhere near that articulate expressiveness that so intimidates me.

Writing will help me be more willing to pray on a regular basis.

Then arises the problem of remembering to pray.

My problem here is that I fear suffering.

In the middle ages, it was relatively common for devout Christians to ask God for suffering in their lives to bring them into a better understanding of Him and His Glory. They often got what they asked for, too.

But I don’t want to suffer, so I fear asking God for reminders to pray, because those reminders so often come in the form of suffering and loss that drives us back to Him. After all, you would have to be crazy to want to suffer, right? Right? *sigh*

The Bible says “rejoice when you undergo persecution because of Me.” Not if, when. If we, as Christians, are not suffering for Christ, are we really being good Christians? I want to say no, but both my hear t and my head tell me that if I am not suffering, I am not living as I ought.

I want the suffering that I go through as a single, college-age Christian male to be enough. I am a stranger to the world of today because I think sex is something that needs to wait for marriage. I won’t let myself go party, take a girl home for a one night stand. I don’t know if I could take a girl home for a one-night stand if I wanted to, and it tortures me. I can’t get a date from someone I’m physically attracted to. I fear dating a non-Christian because of my weakness in the face of temptation and the presumed willingness of someone who does not have that same desire for abstinence as I do. I don’t mean to say that non-Christians all sleep around, but I don’t want to have sex before marriage, no matter how healthy and committed the relationship is. And I don’t really want to date a Christian either. We’re boring, anymore. All we want to talk about is the will of God. I’m writing an essay on just how much the ‘hyper-spiritual’ Christian annoys me, as someone who is not as much of an extrovert. I don’t feel that I lack terribly in my faith, but there is a guilt when I am among the ‘born again.’ I have had no epic conversion experience. There is not particular moment I can point to where I became a Christian. I have always wanted Jesus in my heart, as long as I can remember. How am I supposed to sway a non-Christian towards the faith? I don’t know where they are, really. Tim Keller says there are three things pastors have to preach to: the will, the head, and the heart. The will is the emotion, and the head is the intellectual aspect of the message, and the heart is really knowing it, deep in your soul. I can have a complete intellectual and empathetic grasp of where a person is, but having never been outside of the church, I cannot know, in the deepest part of who I am, what a person is going through.

Man, this is getting to be a long post. Oh well.

Suffering is a problem for me. My fear of it is a weakness, or at least I so perceive it.

Maybe my suffering as a single, 21-year-old male without any reasonable dating prospects is enough, but I really don't think so. There is so much suffering, real physical and emotional suffering, out there in the world, that I cannot believe that this is all I have to go through. Does it pain me? obviously. But I cannot, and will not allow myself to be broken by it.

The problem is, maybe being broken is just what I need.

But I am an American man. A man who cannot show weakness. The rugged individualist, who needs no one else. After all, isn't that what I'm supposed to be? And as such, I cannot allow anything to break me. it wouldn't fit the image I have of myself. And I fear being broken. Wait, I can't fear that! I'm not supposed to be afraid of anything.

Blast. I sound like an angsty teenager. Blech, catharsis.

And that's what is on my mind today.