Do you ever find yourself praying away your circumstances? I do. However, when I look at my “wishes” I often find contradictory statements…  “Please let us have a bigger house so we won’t be so crowded.” Then…“If we had a smaller house it wouldn’t take me so long to clean it.” Or…“May I have a job that is more mentally challenging?” To…”I wish I had an easier job so I wouldn’t have to think so much.” and on and on it goes.

As I drove in to work this morning, my prayers were filled with petitions to God for Him to change a circumstance in my life. But my mind floundered. What would happen if He removed the circumstance? Would that solve the problem and bring me peace? Or would I be bored and complacent?

I thought about this and then Mary, the mother of Jesus, came to mind. If there was ever a woman tempted to wish away her circumstances, Mary was probably it….

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Oh Jesus, come. The world groans for you.

The streets are bloody and the debts are rising. There are riots all around, anxieties about the future, 72-day marriages, 5th grader suicides, political stalemates, crashes of every sort, too-high heating bills, faucets that don’t work, pencils that smear instead of erase, milk that goes sour, teeth that get cavities, and cancer that keeps coming back.

Messiah, come.

Come and bring justice to the perpetrators of evil: The dictators who oppress, the pedophiles who abuse, the rich who swindle, the thieves and murderers and liars and cheaters and addicts… Basically, all of us. Judge us, refine us, renew us oh Lord. Cast our sins into the depths of the sea. Show your faithfulness to us oh God, as you did to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

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As I have been contemplating prayer of late, I’ve found my times of prayer to be growing in both occasion and place.  I find myself before God in prayer as I face a decision that needs to be made, or to ask Him wisdom as I read His word.  Or I find myself offering bursts of praise as I see His hand in a sunrise, or asking Him for grace when I need help with a hard conversation.  But I have also realized there is one place where I’m pretty certain to not be praying:  church.

You’d think this is all mixed up, and you would have a point.  But our church doesn’t have a specific time for congregational prayer.  We have corporate prayer, but I can just listen to a pastor pray over the service or the congregation without doing much of anything other than listening to him pray over the service or the congregation.  We also have prayer over the Word, and prayer over our singing, but again, I find it far too easy to watch rather than pray.

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I have been contemplating prayer recently.  By contemplating, I mean I’ve been thinking much more about prayer than actually talking to God about prayer, which of course would be praying and might just help the whole situation.  But here I find myself, wondering why something so central to this faith we share is such a mystery.

Here’s what I do know about prayer.  It’s hard.  It’s important.  It’s much simpler than we care to make it.  And it’s far more complex than we understand.

I also know that pretty much every Christian thinks his or her prayer life isn’t all that great.  When you ask a Christian if Jesus died for their sins, they will say yes. When you ask a Christian if communion wafers are too dry, they will say yes.  And when you ask a Christian if their prayer life could be better, they will say yes.

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Picture this scenario—You’re observing a cluster of people gathered in your home.  Maybe you’re sitting in a corner chair, or at the base of a stairwell, savoring people you know…friends who are practically family and maybe a bit of family you’re quick to call friends.  Sounds of laughter and familiarity fill the air.  And as conversations settle around a table and meal, you’re touched by the mere gift of presence in the midst of these people.

For some, maybe this picture is too lofty.  It’s a far out dream for community that you’ve yet to experience.  For others, you’ve had glimpses of this communing—nights, or meals, or conversations you wished would never end.  Experiences where you actually felt present in the company of others, and recognized as who are you really are.

Years ago I worked with a woman who fasted for one month out of the year. I didn't understand then, why, when our lunch break would come, she would drink a juice or water while I stuffed my face with that days craving. Now I know she was a practicing Muslim keeping Ramadan, the annual month long fast.

Ramadan is August 1 - August 30th. Thirty days of prayer for the Muslim World is a Christian international web based organization that encourages Christians around the world to pray specifically for Muslims to come to know Christ during the 30 day fast. 

Click here to see the 30-days of prayer August 1st prayer guide. 

Nataka is a Muslim woman who I spent a few hours with at her mosque in Cambridge, MA. I stumbled into the Mosque, unannounced and hoping to ask someone there what objections the Muslim faith has to Christianity. At the time, I was taking a class on Islam that helped prepare me for what answers I might hear. I didn't plan for this to happen, but as I was arriving so were a lot of taxis. Taxi drivers got out of their cars and began to greet one another and laugh together as they entered the mosque. I looked at the time and duh; it was time for the noon prayer that day. A little unsure of how I would be treated upon walking up to the main door unannounced and with my frizzy hair flowing down and exposed. It was the Imam who first welcomed me inside. After slipping my shoes off, he directed me to a staircase where a young woman, Nataka, was waiting to greet me.

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I enjoyed getting a glimpse into what all took place at the 2010 Lausanne Congress gathering and I hope you do too. 

Christians are called to be in the world, but not of it. I think that we often acknowledge this as true (perhaps even by putting a NotW sticker on our cars) but fail to recognize how hard it is to follow Jesus as Lord without caving in to the world’s way of thinking and doing… and thus slowly caving in to the world’s way of being.

The obvious examples are ones like sexual behavior, or greed, and so I’m not going to discuss those. Instead, I want to look at a more subtle pressure from the world: on our prayer lives.

Because of my writing, speaking, and study, over the past five years I’ve had the opportunity to pray and worship in a variety of settings, in different Christian traditions and with different styles of prayer: liturgical and structured, or extemporaneous; charismatic, or very low-key; low church, high church; with a pastor, with a priest, or with fellow lay people; in a beautiful church building, gathered in a community center, in a living room, or sitting on lawn chairs outdoors.

I’ve learned a great deal about prayer from all of this.

I’ve been pushed out of my comfort zone.

I’ve helped push other people out of their comfort zones.

And here’s something of what I’ve learned.

People who have a living, vibrant relationship with the Triune God are people who have living, vibrant prayer lives. People who truly know Jesus and are committed to following him on the way of the Cross pray in a different way than those who are just tagging along with Jesus without a radical commitment to following him.

Style of prayer is absolutely irrelevant to the level of seriousness. Depending on a person’s personality and circumstances, the best way to interact with God in prayer might be through praying the Daily Office using the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, or having a daily quiet time; it might be through blasting praise songs or walking in silence. What matters is taking Jesus seriously; taking the work of prayer seriously; immersing oneself in Holy Scripture and taking God’s Word seriously; this is what cuts across the lines of church tradition and personal preferences.

I repeated “taking it seriously” for a reason. Because another thing I’ve learned from seeing all these different prayer styles and worship traditions is this: no matter what style of prayer you use, the world will still press in and try to distract you from the work of prayer.

Here’s what the world says – at least a few of the whispers I’ve heard, and had to deal with:

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Recently I heard Brenda Salter McNeil say that Samaria is the place where you do not want to go. It’s the place where the people who you despise live. Samarians are hostile. Samaria is the place we build freeways around so we don’t have to drive through.

There are two significant passages of red letter scripture where Jesus is clear as newly washed glass windows regarding a place called Samaria and a people group called Samarians.

The first is the all too famous story of Jesus` encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4. Jesus is fully present with the woman at the well. He goes straight to her heart and penetrates her deepest well of her soul. The Samaritan woman is then quick to determine Jesus is who he says he is. Jesus is a credible witness to her in her life.

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Brian McLaren, heralded as one of America's 25 most influential evangelicals by Time magazine, is an author, speaker, social justice activist, and pastor. His work has been covered in the New York Times, and Christianity Today. In his newest book, Naked Spirituality, McLaren shares practical wisdom for living a truly spiritual life as he presents 12 exercises for beginning and sustaining a meaningful relationship with God. Brian was kind enough to answer 5 Questions posed by ConversantLife.com.

In Naked Spirituality, you list four typical answers to the question, “What do you mean by spiritual?” Since these are all generic answers to some degree, how do you nudge people from a general desire to be spiritual to Christianity, or more specifically, to Christ?

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