Talking with God: Why is it so hard?

I was going to end the subject line of this blog with "Why is it so hard for me?", but a Google search convinced me that maybe I'm not the only one for which talking with God is a challenge. Anyway, this is an area of my spiritual life that I have left unchallenged for far too long, so I am taking it on and talking about it. Speaking of Google, I will say that it is a great place to find answers to many things political, physical, and educational; however as far as spiritual subjects go, it seems to deliver far more questions than answers.  But I digress...

I must first credit my pastor, William Attaway, with spurring this little "talking with God" quest; since he has been discussing the topic of prayer in a series of sermons focused on Mark Batterson's recent book, "The Circle Maker". With that background, let's proceed.

Prayer is hard for me as well, but as far as "Talking with God", that's only half the story—or half the conversation in this case. Before you talk to God, you have to listen. Stephen Covey provides some useful insight on this concept in his "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People"; specifically in Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood. God is a supreme being—oops, make that THE Supreme Being—so you don't approach him the same way you approach someone you encounter in a sports bar. God's part of the dialogue is found in a book that most of us are familiar with—The Bible. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I have been attempting to create a Bible-reading habit; this has really helped the "understanding" part. Over my (many) years, I have read many familiar portions of the Bible as part of topical studies, however, reading the Bible for the purpose of understanding the big picture of God is an entirely different, and much more difficult, endeavor. An initial foray into this subject quickly reveals what is required as a first step to understand God: a penitent and obedient heart. The Bible describes in detail what this entails if we take the time to read it and apply it, and it becomes clear that we must understand the nature of God before we approach Him in prayer. In the process, we also discover the reasons why prayer is so necessary.

In the beginning, man was created to obey and commune with God, and live a very satisfying life in the process. However, man disobeyed God, and the communication became a helluva lot (literally) more difficult, not because God turned away, but because man did, mostly out of shame. This works the same way today; if our interests and priorities pretty-much exclude God, we don't really want to hear what he has to say about them. Until we are aligned on that part of the exercise, then and only then can we be prepared to ask God to change our heart in such a way that we are receptive to further instruction and dialogue.

The 1977 George Burns/John Denver movie "Oh God!" is a nice little feel-good comedy about an all-accepting God who wants everyone to love everyone else and live happily ever after. The messages are not all bad, but they are humanistic in nature: God doesn't get involved in the details; He's got a lot on his plate. God is looking after us; we don't need to bother seeking "His will". Just treat your fellow-man justly, and you'll be fine. We don't need to spend a lot of time fretting about the details. Pastors (and apostles) exhorting us to commit ourselves to seeking to hear and understand the deeper meaning of His Word simply want to control our lives. Jesus was good; Mohammed was good (really?); Buddha was good; whatever.  If only it were that simple.

Any message that we don't need to get all wrapped up worrying about our relationship with God in order to be blessed by Him is misguided and dangerous. Prayer is important and necessary. Yes, God knows our heart, and He already knows our needs and concerns, but he wants us to talk to him about them. But not doing so sounds more "reasonable" and "rational", right? There are 7 billion people on the planet; what makes us think that any one of us is special and worthy of God's individual attention?  I struggle with this as well, because from human mindset, it kind of "makes sense". 

By relegating God's role to that of "prime mover" only, we don't have to question why bad things happen to good people, and vice-versa. "Stuff" happens; move on and get over it. This can lead to a life void of meaning and purpose. Who wants that. God wants us to care enough to ask, seek, and challenge Him for answers.

At the end of the day, it's a faith thing. Reading the Bible and praying daily (i.e., "without ceasing") is the only true path to fulfillment and happiness. In "The Circle Maker", Batterson challenges our conventional beliefs regarding prayer. He presents 12 "Prayer Maxims". Check them out. One of my favorites is "100% of the prayers you DON'T pray WON'T get answered".

My faith is still a little—no, make that very—rough around the edges, so I don't pretend to be there yet, but I'm working on it, and I encourage you to do the same.