Pray However the Hell You Want

Pray without ceasing.

So if your boss is giving you a negative performance review, get on your knees right then in front of him or her and pray that they have merciful and unharsh words to say instead? If your girlfriend or boyfriend says that y’all “need to talk,” pray right then that he or she will have nice things to say, there will be no fighting, and that neither of you will go to bed angry?

What the hell does it mean to pray without ceasing? Do we interrupt major moments of our lives to stop, bend the knee, hold our hands together interlocked, and say words in the midst of whatever is presently, in the moment, giving us cause for anxiety and fear?

Of course not, right? Yet even still, I still don’t know how to nonstop pray every waking second. And neither do you.

The greek word for without ceasing in Thessalonians isn’t, actually, without ceasing. At least how we understand it. What it means instead is a recurring prayer. 

To recur is to repeat. To recur is to come back, again and again and again. To recur is to not throw in the towel when things get really hard, and to not give up even when your ‘recurring’ prayer seems to not work the way you want it to.

Yet even then, let’s talk about what it means to pray. And let’s start by talking about crappy ways to pray.

I remember when I was at my modern-but-leaning-presbyterian church as a wee little lad and we were being led in a general prayer by the head pastor. Yet, I couldn’t focus on his words. I was distraught. Why, you ask? Because I peered out and looked at the other congregants, and many of the other kids my age had their eyes open. Clearly, they did not care about doing this prayer thing the right way. Clearly, they were not as serious about faith as I was. 

Yikes. I’ll leave the irony to you. 

Suffice to say, it seems we are so hung up on how not to pray, how not to do this or that, that we don’t even bother trying to pray in our amateur and unholy manners. 

However, it does seem clear that Jesus had a kind of prayer He seemed to like. 

In Luke 18, we are given a sample of how to not pray, but also how to pray.

The first guy knows all the steps: he knows how to bend his knees, how to interlock his fingers, how to impress those in the crowd who are also holy and righteous and faithful so that they think he too is holy and righteous and faithful. In fact, he’s so good at this that midprayer he notes how the guy next to him has no idea how to do it, and how he is psyched that God made him nothing like this guy.

The second guy doesn’t know how to do anything. He’s crap at this. And he’s really nervous. And scared. And worried that God will be mad at him, and that all the mistakes he’s made will prevent him from being heard by God. He won’t even look up at God. And the only thing he even asks of God is to grant him mercy.

Who was justified in God’s sight? The arrogant, pompous ass who used a conversation with God to humiliate a man praying beside him to prop up his own ego and entitlement? Or the humbled, nervous and openly shaking man of many sins, who knew of his own brokenness and neediness before God, and asked solely for mercy?

Another good idea of Jesus’ in regard to prayer is found in Matthew 6. Here Jesus is inclined to say that His Father, our Father, likes when a prayer is not done in public. Or, at least, not done for public gain. 

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” 

This dichotomy is mentioned again, where presenting prayers with pride and assurance, with a clear agenda of how you want things to go and how you want God to respond, is lambasted by Christ, but when prayers are presented to God in secret, in the quiet place, and without expectation or agenda, only humility, with “fear and trembling,” God likes to reward.

So then, I say, pray however the hell you want.

But wait, you just showed how Jesus ripped the Pharisees a new one for praying the wrong way. Why would I then be entitled to pray however the hell I want? Can you even use the word hell flippantly along with the word prayer? 

To answer the latter, I think so, yes (maybe I will repent for it later). But why should we pray however we want? Because the thrust of the wrong way to pray illustrated by Jesus is a prayer that isn’t real. It isn’t for relationship, it isn’t for connection, it isn’t for union.

It is for ego gain. It is for public gain. It is for the sake of pride. 

God hates pride. 

But any prayer, and I mean any prayer prayed earnestly and humbly, whether outlandish and ludicrous, humble and needy, and entirely unassured of how God will respond? These prayers will always be heard by Our Father in Heaven. 

Sometimes we think of God and how we pray to Him as if he were a genie, a la Robin Williams (RIP, sorry Will Smith), bestowing to us whatever we want if we pray the right way, live the right way, do all the churchy and spiritual things the right way. 

This is definitely not true.

Alternatively, many of us unfortunately think of God as an all powerful tyrant, occasionally bestowing grace and mercy to some, but usually irrationally smiting and condemning others for the most trite of mistakes. He is as rude, fussy, narrow-minded, and legalistic as we are, as my favorite sinner and saint Brennan Manning eloquently says. 

This is not the God of the Word, this is not the God revealed to us by Jesus. 

Peter in one of his letters says we should cast all our anxiety on Him, for he cares for us.

I’m going to let that sink in for a second.

All of your anxiety. All of my anxiety. All of the chaos of the 2016 election and its fallout, all the housing insecurity, all of the social media nonstop stream of why-can’t-you-be-cool-like-they-are comparison stress. From the littlest, most petty of requests that your boss doesn’t give you too bad of a performance review to the biggest requests, that your tio or tia, mama or papa doesn’t get deported for being the wrong skin color, the wrong class, and on the wrong side of the border.

Our ABBA Father hears it all. This doesn’t mean that He omnisciently or omnipotently answers all prayers of request, that all of the evil of this world that run rampant will suddenly end in a blink of an eye with a whisk of God’s almighty hand. 

But it does mean that every word you tell Him, every tear your cry, every laugh you recall, every insecurity you feel, and every shortcoming, every sin, and every trace of darkness within you, if brought to Him just as you are, scars and all, is heard, affirmed, and blessed by God.

We are here to be in union with God. That’s why Jesus came into this world and bore our flesh (and, in turn, sin). So that all of the beauty and joy and triumph we all experience in this world be shared with Him, along with all of our failures and all of our sin and all of our tears and all of our darkness. 

For He is for us, not against us. He is God with us, Emmanuel, the Son of Man and Savior of the world.

So then, go, and pray however the hell you want. Your Father in heaven would love to hear from you.