Add this oft-forgotten element to your prayer life.

There are two particular challenges I face when I attempt to pray. Either I have intensely distracting thoughts and cannot listen or I don’t know what to say. In this article I want to show you one element that should be part of your prayers. There is a certain category of words that should be added to your life of prayer. But usually I (and probably you as well) haven’t given much attention or effort to this category.

A Better Way of Thinking

We could think of prayer as a portal to the Presence of God. God is everywhere. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, wrote about God, “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28 ESV). God is always present. I think of the powerful poetic expression of Psalm 139 “if I go_____, you are there!”

Sometimes Jesus-people say about a particular worship service or prayer time:  “God was really present today” inferring there are times when God is absent. This is grossly inaccurate and tells the wrong story about the Living God.

It’s more accurate to say “I was present to God today” or “I wasn’t very present to God today.” Prayer rightly practiced is thin veil we cross in order to experience the present Presence. It’s prayer that moves me from the shade into the warm light of the sun.

What to Say When I Pray

Intensely distracting thoughts or not having words to say beyond trite prayer-cliches can leave one blind and deaf to the present Presence. One of the ways we win against distracting thoughts or meaningless phrases is purposefully adding the element of confession to our life of prayer.

Confession is practice of naming what’s real. It’s about ownership. For me the regular practice of running trims my body-fat and for all of us the regular practice of confession trims our ego and bounds our anxiety.

Because God is always everywhere my prayers never need to inform God. Jesus was quite clear, the Father already knows (Matthew 6).  In this act of confession I become present to the Presence. For too often, the veil that separates me from God is a veil of my own making.

So try this, in your prayer time, when it’s your turn to talk, invite the Holy Spirit to help you practice confession.

1. Name any ways in which you have departed from the Law of Christ. If you ask Him, the Holy Spirit will bring to mind sins that have tangled up your soul.
2. Name any anxiety and desires tugging at your mind. Here is where distracting thoughts meant to keep you from the present Presence serve us well. What or who are we constantly thinking about. Give these thoughts to God like a gift to your father on Christmas morning.  
3. Name the needs. I’ve heard Christians say, “I don’t really prayer for myself” as though this is a sign of maturity.  It pleases the Lord when we confess the problems that are too big for us to solve, the needs too complex for our solving and the hurts we’ve never been able to make whole. Present your requests to God (Philippians 4:6).

Sweet Freedom

In the regular practice of confession offer yourself to God. Be vulnerable and intimate with the one who knows you best and loves you most. C.S. Lewis wrote, “We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.”