Dear friend,

Thank you so much for sharing about your desires and disappointments with respect to being attentive to God’s presence while at work. Your reflections reminded me of my own wrestling with being present to God in prayer. I almost shared some reflections along those lines when we spoke, but I thought they might take too long to explain, so I held back, but I’d love to share them with you now, in case they are at all helpful or encouraging.

A couple of months ago during church, I had one ear on the sermon and one ear on my inward thoughts. I was reflecting on the fact that I had gotten off track in my practice of prayer, yet again. “I guess I’ll just have to try again this week,” I thought. And then, just as the thought ran through my head, it struck me that the very phrase “try again” was problematic for several reasons. First, the phrase emphasizes our failure (you only try again if you tried before and didn’t succeed). But, if there is no condemnation in Jesus, it probably is less helpful to dwell on our failures than to focus on the strength we gain by being allied with him.

Second, the phrase emphasizes our effort (“try again”). But, the New Testament seems to suggest that our faith and virtue and good works that we do are all gifts from God. Trying to muster them on our own through sheer will is likely to be a failure from the start. It seems likely better to approach our desires for greater devotion from the perspective of a request to our loving Father who wants to give us such good gifts.

Prayer isn’t something you finish—each opportunity is new.

Finally, the phrase suggests that prayer (or other spiritual acts) are something you achieve and then are done (“if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again” until you do and then can stop). But, prayer isn’t something we ever finish. We have a new opportunity every morning, each moment, to approach God again and anew, irrespective of whether we have failed 100 times before or are continuing a 100-time winning streak. Each opportunity is new. It’s like eating breakfast—each day is a new chance to have breakfast, and you shouldn’t necessarily think about today’s breakfast in light of all the breakfasts you have (or haven’t) had before.

In his book Opening to God, David Benner suggests that prayer is the practice of opening oneself to God. Benner emphasizes that the outcome and experience of prayer is a gift from God, and while we should expect that God shows up, Benner cautions against having any particular expectation about how that should look or what the experience will feel like. Along those lines, Benner also says we shouldn’t be too worried about “doing it right” or troubled by our feeble abilities—God wants to meet us where we are, and growth in those abilities is a gift from him. Our responsibility is merely to open ourselves to the extent of our current capacity, to wait for God, and to be thankful for however he chooses to act in any given moment. I found Benner’s book to be quite encouraging and drew from it a new phrase to frame my practice of prayer: “opening again.” I wish I could say I’ve had a deep and fervent practice of prayer in the couple of months since these reflections. I haven’t. But, I still desire to meet each new day by accepting God’s invitation to open myself again to him. By God’s grace, perhaps I’ll receive the gift of growing in this capacity. I pray the same for you in your desire to be present with God while at work.

I so very much appreciated talking with you about how you came to join our church and your experience buying your house. It’s a privilege and a delight to have the opportunity to know you and your family. I’m looking forward to more conversations and knowing you all better.