Personal Theology on Prayer

A capstone theological reflection essay and spiritual formation narrative exploring the relational architecture of prayer. Written for a Directed Study at Moody Bible Institute, this paper tracks a personal transition from a performance-based, performance-driven model of corporate discipline to an open, vulnerability-centered framework of responding to the Holy Spirit. By engaging with creation dynamics, the effects of the Fall, and personal burnout, this monograph serves as a transparent baseline for pastoral soul care and authentic spiritual leadership.

Introduction: The West and the Instinct of Powerlessness
To pray simply means to open the lines of communication up to speak directly with God. Most people in the Western world understand the basic concept of prayer. Even those who do not claim an active belief in God know how to pray conceptually and understand that prayer is simply speaking out loud to a higher power.

Most people will confess to praying to God in times of intense desperation or when there is some great, looming need. In those moments, there is a sudden, stark realization that they are completely powerless. That is the reality about humanity: we desperately desire to control our environments and build ourselves up to be great, but when sickness or sudden trauma enters our lives, we become acutely aware that we are powerless. We reach out to a higher power hoping that we can avoid pain or receive comfort.

Even the atheist who curses God day and night will find himself praying that his mother would be healed from cancer. This is not to say that the only time humanity prays is when we are desperate, but more often than not, we find God when we have completely lost hope. Even in deep desperation, an individual seeks out God because there is nothing else left.

The Image of God and the Relational Shift
We are fundamentally wired for prayer. This reality goes back to the very beginning of creation where God explicitly states that we are made in His image. We are created to be like God and to be dynamically connected to Him. God created us to be relational beings who ultimately find our relational fulfillment in Him. Consider what it was like before the Fall in Genesis 3. God walked closely with Adam and Eve in the garden. We were originally created to walk and talk with our Father who made us. Because of sin, everything was tainted—including how we relate and communicate with God. Now, because of sin, man desires to seek himself first and to pridefully reject God so that he might appear great. But even in man’s ignorance and rebellion, God actively seeks to restore the relationship.

God will always seek after the one lost sheep because that is what a loving Father does. A loving Father waits patiently for the prodigal to return home. A loving Father searches intentionally for His child that ran away: “For thus says the Lord God: 'Behold, I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out.'” — Ezekiel 34:11. This is ultimately why we pray in the first place. We naturally wander out of our own foolishness. We naturally cling to our own wisdom before we cling to God. This is precisely what sin has done: it has blinded us to our own foolishness, pride, and self-destruction. When we understand this truth, we can begin to comprehend our complete need for God. When we understand our natural broken desires, that is when we can finally go to God to be changed.

A Journey from Task to Relationship
For the majority of my Christian journey, I’ve been deeply curious about prayer. I was taught early on that prayer was absolutely vital to one's Christian walk. My father talked about his personal prayer life quite a bit and would reference its structural importance regularly. I learned how to pray in church, and as a child, my parents taught me how to speak to God.

When I say that my parents taught me how to pray, I mean that I learned to simply address God out loud. I knew prayer was important, that it was done at church during Bible studies, and that it should remain a part of a Christian’s daily practice. As I grew up, however, prayer simply seemed like a task you did. Prayer was important, but I could never seem to understand why I couldn’t just pray daily like a "good Christian" was supposed to do. I would often be frustrated with myself because I knew this was what I needed to do, but I just couldn't maintain it.

I believe this is the story for many modern Christians. Most believers would agree that prayer is important and that it should be executed regularly. But despite the structural acknowledgment of prayers' importance, many Christians share this exact frustration of struggling to pray for long amounts of time daily.

We are taught in church that we must pray. Pastors preach regular sermons on how we need to read Scripture and pray, but then they rarely provide actual tools to help Christians experience God alive in their prayer lives. We are told to pray because it is good for us. We are told to pray because it is an expected part of the Christian journey. While it is true that it is something we should do, to limit prayer to a mere task or a checklist completely minimizes what prayer actually is and the true purpose behind it.

When Christians limit prayer to a task, the entire point is missed. Prayer is ultimately, at its most basic understanding, an avenue of relational communication with God.

The Vulnerability of True Communication
Prayer done out of mere duty rather than relationship is actually quite cringe-worthy when you think about it. If you were to get together with a close friend for coffee and conduct your conversation with that person out of mere duty just to check a box, the whole experience would be deeply uncomfortable. When we communicate with people because we feel like we have to and not because we want to, it simply isn’t enjoyable; the relationship becomes a job.

This is not how God intended our relationship with Him to be. God never intended for our communication to be a job. He never intended for our connection to be guarded and closed off. God presents Himself completely open for us to know Him. We must look to Scripture and the Holy Spirit from the perspective of a God who actively wants us to know Him. When we understand that God has opened Himself up to be known, this should become our example to do the exact same.

No relationship can survive without openness. In order for us to experience the full depth of the Father’s love, we must decide to be vulnerable within prayer. For if we choose to not pray with vulnerability, we are choosing to actively reject aspects of the Father’s love.

God’s love for us comes with radical acceptance in the midst of our deepest failures and insecurities. God’s love for us doesn’t stop when we sin. He does not love us more or less based on our performance as His children. This is the beauty of God’s love: even when I stop speaking to Him, even when I become cold and hard towards Him, His love just overflows for me. This kind of love can only be given by a good and Holy Father. This is the love that we so desperately crave: to be loved exactly as we are.

This is the starting place for an abundant prayer life. When we come to God in desperation and not out of mere duty—when we come to Him just as we are—then we finally possess the framework to actually experience God in prayer.

Numbing vs. Attuning: Moving Past Performance
I want to claim that this is precisely where we mess up as Christians: we teach prayer as a daily discipline to practice rather than as a relationship to press into and experience. Yes, there is discipline within prayer. Yes, to commit to praying for 30 minutes in the morning is a fundamentally good thing. However, I’ve seen time and time again many Christians pray to God without actually praying to God. What this means is that while they are verbally speaking words to God, they are not actually attuned to their relationship with Him.

For example, many of us have had conversations with people where you are talking but you are not really connecting. Perhaps one person is completely preoccupied with their phone, or one person is simply not interested in the other, but you keep talking for the sake of making small talk. These types of conversations are not beneficial. The ultimate achievement of prayer should be to stop having uncomfortable small talk with God. Instead of addressing God out of duty, we should address Him out of a genuine desire to know Him, coming to Him with our needs because we truly need Him.

Personally, I find it insulting when people want to spend time with me out of duty and not because they actually want to be with me. For example, if my dad wanted to take me out to the movies simply because that is what he "must do" as a father, the time spent together doesn't feel genuine. The reason it is not enjoyable is that I feel used in that relational interaction. The time spent together is not due to my father actually wanting to sit with me, but it is done so that he can feel like he is a good dad.

We do the exact same thing with God. We use Him, and we use prayer as a means to feel like we are "good Christians." Yet, more often than not, this is exactly how we are taught to conduct our prayers. We are told to simply pray more without being taught what prayer actually is and how we can actually enjoy it. This explains the great boredom Christians experience in prayer. They have been taught that steady prayer is boring because they have been trained to achieve a discipline rather than cultivate a relationship. For me, to pray means to actively engage in my relationship with God, and every single day that looks a little bit different.

Breaking the Guarded Patterns
As I stated earlier, I’ve always been curious about prayer because I always knew it should be more than just a duty. Before going to Moody Bible Institute, I found myself more and more frustrated with myself in regard to prayer because I could never discipline myself enough. I conducted my relationship with God as a way of personal achievement, viewing it as something I had to white-knuckle on my own.

The older I got, the less my family prayed together on a regular basis. It was as if I was taught that prayer was something you did strictly on your own and that it was your own private business. I was never taught the beauty of repentance within family prayer. For the most part, prayer was done alone, and repentance was seen as entirely personal. Your sin was your own heavy burden to carry.

My family members will ask one another to pray for each other from time to time, but we rarely actually stop and pray for one another in the moment. This has a lot to do with my family's natural sense of guardedness and protectiveness over vulnerability. Prayer naturally requires absolute vulnerability and openness. To stop and pray for someone right in the moment means to acknowledge vulnerability together on an entirely new level. It is incredibly easy to say, “Yes, I’ll pray for you,” but to stop and sit with a person in their raw vulnerability in the moment is completely different. My family struggles with this aspect of communication, which, in turn, is how I initially learned to pray. I basically learned that you pray completely alone and that you must figure it out on your own.

The Moody Shift: Discovering Partnered Prayer
While I was always curious about prayer and knew there was more, I never had a ton of examples of how to pray boldly. When I came to Moody, I came hungry and open to learn.

Through spontaneous prayer on dormitory floors, all-night prayer vigils, and deep leadership relationships, I slowly began to experience prayer differently. This is where I saw prayer in a new light of excitement and energy. This is what I always hoped prayer could be. Finally, I was surrounded by people who were genuinely excited to pray and who would partner with me—not because it was an item on a checklist, but because it was something we wanted to do. People wanted to simply be with God.

This has been my journey with prayer for the past four years at Moody. My prayer journey started with a combination of desperation and curiosity. Because of my natural leaning toward personal independence and people-pleasing, I tend to burn myself out regularly. As a foolish freshman, I reached absolute burnout in the middle of my very first semester because I thought I could work full-time and handle a full-time school schedule with no sweat. This is where I began to understand that I must radically depend on God in order to pursue my calling.

As God has worked through my stubborn independence, He has also shown me the vital importance of relationship and prayer. God has shown me the importance of vulnerability and repentance, and how good both of these things are in understanding His love. The more I allowed God to work through my vulnerabilities, the more I became healthily aware of myself. When I turn off my desire for human independence and respond directly to the Holy Spirit, I enjoy my relationship with God so much more.

Responding to the Good Shepherd
While it is true that I have an active part to play in my relationship with God, the reality of it is that prayer is God seeking after me. True prayer is responding to God’s gracious invitation to prayer. God, as our Good Shepherd, is always actively tending to His sheep and is always looking for the one who wanders. When I decide to enter into prayer with God, it is because God’s Spirit has already spurred my heart to come to Him. To live into this truth has been completely victorious for me.

My natural tendencies in my Christian walk are to want to “do.” My baseline temptation is to feel like I must achieve and execute great things for God. But the reality of prayer is that I don't have to do anything great. The reality of it is that I do nothing, God does everything, and I simply show up just as I am.

Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bid'st me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come! I come.

The Gift of Surrender

When I requested to execute this directed study, I did so with one single purpose: I wanted to understand prayer more so that I could enjoy prayer more, and ultimately pray more. I wanted to understand the structural theological reasons of why I should pray or need to pray. Cognitively, I knew that I should pray because this is what we are told to do in Scripture, but I wanted more. It wasn’t enough for me to be told something and then blindly obey like a robot. I wanted to fully understand the heart behind it so I could truly live into a lifestyle of prayer. I knew that if I could grasp the why, I would understand the purpose and ultimately tap into more depth in my prayer life. At least, this was the hope.

Interestingly enough, I don’t think we can 100% cognitively understand why we pray, because when we pray, we are actively responding to the Holy Spirit's mysterious call. I cannot say that I always understand why I pray. I don’t understand why I suddenly feel the urge to pray for random people on the street, or why God sends me to pray for specific people on my college dorm floor. I cannot say that I completely understand why God stirs my heart to come to Him at certain exact times during the day.

What I do understand is that this is a vital part of the surrender of prayer. This is part of the understanding that prayer cannot be controlled, managed, or boxed up like a commercial product. Prayer cannot be made into something that it is not—which is a duty rather than a relationship conducted by God.

I’ve learned that there is no right or perfect formula to meet God in prayer. Just like in any healthy human relationship, it can be done in a massive variety of ways: You can meet God completely alone in quiet, hidden places. You can meet God passionately with a large group of people. You can meet God through creative, artistic forms such as music, painting, or writing. Healthy relationships are never restricted to one single form of communication.

If I had to sum up this stage of my prayer journey, it would be that I am now completely different. I feel like God has met me exactly where I am, just as I am. I came into this directed study seeking more structural tools for prayer. I wanted to grow more comfortable in my relationship with God. In short, I simply enjoyed God more—which is absolutely fantastic. To say that I enjoyed God more is all that I could ever want, and I think that is all one could ever want within prayer.

At the end of the semester, after all the books, assignments, prayer exercises, and deep theology, I can confidently say that all I wanted was to enjoy God more—which is exactly what prayer is. Prayer is simply being alone with your Lord, and purely enjoying one another.