Returning to prayer

As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?

(Psalm 42 verses 1-2)

How do you feel when you haven't prayed for a while? Perhaps you've been exceptionally busy, or had no privacy to pray. You've said 'amen' to the prayers at church and murmured a few quick "arrow prayers", but you haven't spent significant time alone with God in prayer for days. And then, finally, you have the time and the space to get away and pray.

Do you feel like the psalmist, longing and thirsting to come before God and fill the emptiness within? Or do you feel guilty and distant and unsure of where to start? Perhaps, like me, you experience a mixture of both, as the new self in Christ battles with the old, fearful self. Part of me desperately wants to pray, but another part of me wallows in self-condemnation and I wonder how to approach the God I've been neglecting for so long.

Ironically, I find this sense of condemnation that comes with lack of prayer is one of the greatest barriers to prayer. But where does it come from? Why does our image of God start to change from that of our heavenly Father to something more like an irritable elderly relative waiting for a late Christmas card from us? Or worse?

Some of it comes from not understanding (or reminding ourselves) of the difference between real guilt and false guilt. Real guilt arises from something we've done that is not consistent with who we are as children of God. It causes us to feel concern for the person we've wronged, whether another human being or God. It produces what Paul called 'godly sorrow' and leads to repentance, both of which drive us towards God.

If we have been deliberately avoiding prayer, the Holy Spirit will keep prompting us to return and seek forgiveness from the God who grieves at our hardness of heart but does not condemn those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8.1).

False guilt, on the other hand, is based on fear. It arises because we're afraid of what others think of us and produces feelings of shame. It may be that we've done something which is actually sinful, but our concern is not that we've grieved God or another person. Instead we're afraid that we've done something for which God or others will condemn us. This fear then opens us up to the accusations of 'the great accuser'.

So, in the context of prayer, we'll experience shame that we're not living up to some human notion of how much time a 'good' Christian ought to spend in prayer. We'll then find all sorts of reasons provided to avoid praying. We're not good enough. It's too difficult. We'll never pray like this or that Christian, so we're a failure. We're not comfortable approaching a God who is surely angry and condemning towards us.

Instead we should thumb our nose at the accuser and approach God with the confidence of a child returning home after a busy day. Our confidence is not in our willingness or ability to pray, but in his willingness to accept us and make us welcome.