Don’t Skip It

My 5 year old son Isaac was in class one day, when his teacher asked a question. She asked the class, “What do we do when we come across a word that we can’t pronounce?” Isaac quickly responded, “Skip it.” Although hilarious, this was obviously not the right answer. They are supposed to sound the word out.

This reminds me of a story of an old Preacher friend of mine. He said anytime he came across a word or name in the Bible that he didn’t know how to pronounce that he would call his daughter over. He then would say, “You’ve got a college education, how do you pronounce that word?” He said she would pronounce it for him. One day though she responded, “How would you say it?” He responded the way he would say it. She then said, “Say it that way.”

These stories can be related to people and their prayers. I think often people don’t go to God in prayer because they think they don’t know what to say or how to say it. They think that they may pray wrong. They may not pray eloquently or fancy. Let me tell you as I’ve told friends of mine. I don’t pray pretty. Understand I don’t mean that as a negative comment to those that do. I sometimes admire how someone can deliver a public prayer and its very well put together and pretty for lack of a better way of saying it. I just don’t pray that way. I’m an old redneck and God knows exactly what and who I am. I talk to God like I’d talk to a friend, with reference of course. I do know that I’m speaking to the God of the universe. With that said though, I just talk to God and you can too. It doesn’t have to be pretty, it doesn’t have to be eloquent or have a bunch of five dollar words scattered throughout it. Just pray. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and stop keeping them away, because the kingdom from heaven belongs to people like these (Matthew 19:14 ISV).” Children don’t speak fancy, they just talk. Oftentimes it may even be hard to understand them. But Jesus wanted them to come to Him and said the kingdom from heaven belongs to people like these. Think about this. If you are a parent, you don’t care if your children string all their sentences together correctly. Making sure to cross every t or dot every i. No, you just want them to talk to you.

Peter didn’t pray pretty, nor did he go into a long exhortation when he began to sink. No, he just said, “Lord, save me” (Matthew 14:30).

I like the example that James gives.

James 5:15-18 NET 15 And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 So confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great effectiveness. 17 Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain and there was no rain on the land for three years and six months! 18 Then he prayed again, and the sky gave rain and the land sprouted with a harvest.

I like how he points out that Elijah was a human being like us. Look what happened when he prayed. It’s much more important that we pray rather than how we pray. So when you approach prayer and don’t know what to do or say, don’t skip it. Just press through and pray anyway, pray the way you pray.

Colossians 4:2 WEB Continue steadfastly in prayer, watching in it with thanksgiving.