What’s it like for you to pray? I don’t think we ponder that enough, at least, I don’t. And that’s a shame because prayer is one of the things that believers should do the most, right along with reading your Bible, so it’s something that should be heavily considered.
A few years ago, I had a non-Christian friend who I spent quite a lot of time around suddenly ask me why I prayed over my food before eating, and what I prayed about. It was an odd question, so I told her, then asked why she brought it up, and her response kind of struck me a little dumbfounded. She said, “It looked like you were in pain, and a little angry.”
Three years later, that hit me. In the place I was at the time in my relationship with God, that facial expression could only have been revealing how I felt about prayer, about God, and about myself. That’s why I think it’s important to reflect on how we approach prayer and the other necessities of a relationship with Christ, it provides a good example of how our relationship is progressing or stagnating.
To put it in a human perspective, it’s like finding yourself dreading to speak to your best friend, your boyfriend/girlfriend, or your spouse. The feelings that come along with the actions you’re meant to take in a relationship are indicative of the health of that relationship. But it’s not the feelings you get that are the problem, it’s when you don’t try to fix them that issues arise.
Before I go too much farther, I want to clarify a few things because one of the things that bothers me about bloggers and podcasters is when they discuss a deep and difficult subject like this but only from one angle, leaving readers and listeners confused about what’s right and what isn’t. I do not mean that you should not pray or read your Bible just because an emotional desire to do so is not there, or because your emotions are in turmoil. Regardless of your feelings, pursuit of a relationship with God is a choice that must be made—I’ve mentioned this before and have a whole blog post on it here: nathanielgevans.net/blog-1/when-motivations-gone.
I’m not even talking about the mindset we must approach prayer and Bible study with, though the Bible does discuss that in many places, and I’m willing to analyze both of those topics. I’m talking about an introspection regarding your emotional and mental health that should be ongoing as you pursue God. I’m talking about self-counseling, and therapy if necessary, like you might do if you’re struggling emotionally with your spouse in your marriage. I’m talking supporting your choice to follow God with the emotions that come from loving the God who loves you.
Okay, now we can jump into things. It’s a fact of the matter that we devote energy to the things we desire; we even impart some of our emotional wellbeing into those things. An athlete puts energy and emotion into his/her sport. That’s why it’s devastating when they lose a tournament. A reader puts energy and emotion into stories—that’s why they are able to empathize with fictional characters. A musician to music, an artist to painting, etc.
The Bible does confirm this in Matthew 6:21, “For where your treasure lies, there will your heart be also.” You devote your heart to the things you consider treasure. With devotion of the heart comes emotion. When you give your loyalty to someone or something, your heart and mind work together to establish rewards for your actions and punishment for your inaction. That’s a really brief and simplified version of how hormones are expressed via brain rerouting.
There are a million ways to describe how that works, but it’s most easily done in a relationship context. When you devote yourself to a person, to making them happy, to enjoying time with them, your brain secretes hormones that support those actions, your emotions follow along with the loyalty and love you give them. That’s where the idea of heartbreak comes from: when you’ve spent time and energy into developing pathways for those hormones to be secreted, suddenly being in a position where you’re no longer experiencing those feelings due to a breakup creates pain from that loss.
There’s so much truth and wisdom in Matthew 6:21, just that short sentence, that I could probably break it down and explain it out over a novel length, but I’ll keep it short by breaking down the reverse. If your heart’s not in it, it’s not something you treasure. If you’re only doing something just to do it, because you’re supposed to, required to, expected to, you don’t care about it.
That’s going to hurt some people. But it’s true, no matter how much you rebel against it. There are a lot of people out there who have a relationship with God but don’t treasure it. There are a lot of people who go to church, read their Bibles, pray every day, but don’t really mean it. There are people who can talk the talk all week long, but their feet just don’t move. I know. I was one of those people. I was one of those people for so long that I never truly experienced what a relationship with God was until I was 22 years old.
Here’s the big breakdown of the point I mean: do you truly appreciate, love, and desire your relationship with God? Do you know the emotions that were likely running through the minds of people when Martin Luther oh-so-dangerously declared that people don’t need to go through a priest to speak to God, to learn from God? I don’t know them, but I can imagine: there was likely unbridled joy. I’m sure many stopped to pray without ceasing knowing that God could hear them. I bet many tore up their Bible translations they were suddenly allowed to read from how much they studied it.
In that regard, how do you treat your prayer time, your Bible time? Is it something you rush through because you need to do it? Are you merely performing the physical acts out of an obligation? Or are you devoting your heart to it like it’s something you treasure?