After following Jesus for over 40 years, I still struggle with prayer. In fact, I think most Christians do. When I think of what prayer should be, I usually envision sweet and constant communion with God filled with eloquence and power.

But my prayers seem more like mumbling the confused and jumbled thoughts bouncing around in my head.

What I do know is that prayer is not prompt engineering nor feeding some divine algorithm or machine. Rather, prayer is the genuine conversation between friends. And like anything with God, it’s part of his overall desire to shape us into persons of love that he designed us to be — eternal co-reigners in his magnificent universe.

So what if prayer is about the slow, messy process of learning to reorient our lives to God within an environment optimally designed by God for that messy and mysterious process.

John Mark Comer provides a insight into this process.

“God’s will is one among many. And he’s patiently sorting through the messes of our lives, giving ample space for our free will and decisions, but graciously drawing good out of evil.”

With so many variables involved, including billions of active wills vying for their own interests, surely prayer specifically and spiritual formation generally are a messy and lengthy process as God provides the “ample space for our free will and decisions” to be slowly and humbly formed into his.

In that light, prayer isn’t simple. I talk with God about what he’s doing with people. But I’ll confess, I don’t have a clue most of the time.

For example, I have friends with different chronic illnesses. I love them and I keep praying for their healing. I don’t know all the variables that are involved. I don’t know if it’s God’s will to heal them now. But I do know my love for them that moves me to pray for their healing is God’s will. So I keep asking God to heal them, loving my friends and expecting their healing at any moment, while trusting God’s wisdom and timing in their lives. And I’m also praying that while they struggle through their disease, God will powerfully and abundantly meet their needs and extract good from everything they endure. Praying like this is confusing and frustrating at times.

But the alternative is simply to pray the generic “Your will be done.” While the words ring true, that kind of prayer lets apathy build in my heart. I become accustomed to their conditions and accept them as “normal.” I stop collaborating with God, seeking him for what he’s doing and what he wants to do.

I’ll be honest. I’ve prayed for people and they’ve gotten worse. Some have even died. It used to bother me that my prayers would go “unanswered” like that. But then I learned that God is responsible for outcomes, not me. I’m to apprentice myself with Jesus and learn from him how to be like him. And the murky waters of prayer are part of that apprenticeship.

There are so many theological and philosophical questions around prayer that I’m too tired to ask any more. But as I said above, I do know that prayer is not mechanistic or algorithmic. It’s a conversation with God, so it’s inevitably going to be wrapped in mystery. 

When I talk with God, it’s not to get something out of him. I just like being with him. Similarly, I don’t talk to my wife, kids or friends to get something out of them. I talk with them because I enjoy their company. Sometimes the conversations do lead to certain tasks being accomplished. But that’s a small part in a much larger conversation of love. My conversations with them are about sharing life through speaking, listening, understanding, empathizing, and mostly being present to each other.

That’s how I try to view prayer. I’m sharing life with God by being with him and talking with him, even if at times it’s just mumbling the confused and jumbled thoughts bouncing around in my head.