Why God isn't looking for you to pray more

I imagine that when asked about their prayer life, most followers of Jesus would uncomfortably say something like, "Uh, I know that I should pray more…" and then state a variety of reasons why they don't. 

If there was ever a guy in my life who knew how to pray, it was Jeff. 

I met Jeff when he was stepping into a year of home assignment after being a missionary for over twenty years. He had served in different countries in Africa and was most recently coming off an assignment in Singapore. Our church was in transition, and our elder team invited him to co-pastor our church in Atlanta with me. 

At our first staff meeting together, Jeff opened in prayer. I was expecting the customary -- "God, we thank you for this day, and ask that you would be with us during this meeting. Amen." -- prayer.

But once Jeff got going, he prayed, and he prayed, and he prayed. Then, he stopped and opened up his Bible and read psalm after psalm after psalm, and then moved on to Proverbs. Then, he prayed some more. After a while, he created space for other people on our team to pray. When we were done, which didn't take much time, he kept going. 

When it was all said and done, we prayed for approximately forty minutes that morning. I think Jeff prayed for about thirty-five of those forty minutes. When he said, "Amen" my first thought was, "I'm tired." Then, my second thought was, "And I don't know the first thing about prayer."

For the majority of our four years working together, we started every day in the office together with prayer. Most days it lasted forty-five minutes. For the first year, it was really hard. I grew impatient and had a hard time focusing and staying engaged past ten minutes. But after a while, I was able to settle in and grew to appreciate the daily extended time of prayer.  He taught me more about prayer through praying together than he could ever teach me through a sermon, lecture, or seminar.

I don't hold Jeff up as a model on how to pray because he prayed a lot, or because he prayed for a long time. In actuality, I don’t think that God is looking for us to "pray more" just for the sake of praying more. Jesus actually warns against long, showy prayers to try to impress people, or because it's what we think He wants (Matt. 6:1-15). 

 The reason I hold up Jeff as an example on how to pray is because his prayer life was really an indicator of his relationship with the Lord. What God desires from our prayer life is that it would be a natural extension of our relationship with Him. 

 Jeff prayed the way he did because he deeply loved the Lord. In the same way that it would be easy for a spouse to spend lots of time talking to their husband or wife because they love spending time with them, Jeff spent lots of time talking to the Lord because of his genuine love for Him. 

Instead of focusing on praying more because we think that it makes us a better Christian, perhaps we should simply focus on building a deeper relationship with the Lord and trust that our prayer life will grow in the process. 

Therefore, maybe the question to ask isn't, "How's your prayer life?" But rather, "How are you pursuing a deeper relationship with God?"