We Have a Prayer Problem

“I want to live a radical life for God.” That’s how one college student responded when I asked why he was no longer planning to attend medical school. He was convinced that saving lives as a cardiologist was too mundane a calling for a Christian. Instead, like so many other young adults, he believed social activism was a higher calling.

“I want to go overseas and impact lives,” he said.

“How will you do that?” I asked.

“I don’t know yet,” he confessed. “

Maybe I’ll start a nonprofit, or a church, or something to transform a city.” His combination of enthusiasm and naïveté is why I enjoy students so much. “But whatever I do, it has to be something radical!”

It became evident through our conversation that the young man wasn’t just ambitious to improve the world, but to prove his significance. As we talked, the word radical was used repeatedly. He employed it as the antonym for ordinary. In fact, he not only wanted to transcend an “ordinary life,” he also carried a disdain for Christians who did not.

“Do you think Jesus lived a radical life?” I asked.

“Of course,” he laughed at my question. “Jesus changed the world.”

“Yes, but His ministry was only about three years. He spent most of His life—decades—as an obscure carpenter. Was that radical?” The young man looked confused. “If Jesus fails the definition of a radical life you’re applying to yourself,” I said, “could your definition be wrong?”

What Is the Radical Life?

I’ve had some variation of this conversation with dozens of young adults in recent years. My goal is never to extinguish their sense of mission or hunger for justice, but instead to redirect where they find their value, away from an external impact upon the world and toward an internal communion with God.

They’ve been told by the culture—both outside and inside the church—that a radical life is determined by visible influence. Our impact must be obvious, measurable, and shareable on social media. This definition, however, is betrayed by the word’s origin. Radical comes from the Latin radicalis meaning “root.” It speaks of the invisible part of the plant that gives it strength and life. The truly radical Christian is not the one whose life appears extraordinary, but the one whose unseen communion with God is extraordinary. Living radically is about prayer, not prominence.

“If prayer does not function as the root of our Christian life, something else will take its place.”

Through most of church history this has been understood. A very long tradition affirms the centrality of prayer, going back to the New Testament. It’s notable that the apostles did not ask Jesus about the proper way to heal the sick, organize a church, or teach the Scriptures. But they did ask Him how to pray (Luke 11:1). Although prayer was a common practice in their Jewish culture, they recognized something different about the way Jesus prayed.

Unlike other rabbis who employed prayer to control God or to display their piety, Jesus prayed to relate to His Father. For Him, prayer was intimate, unending, and the root from which His life found strength and power. That explains why He spoke so frequently to His followers about the importance and nature of prayer, and why His closest disciples desired to emulate His example. They recognized that apart from a life rooted in communion with God, nothing else Jesus commanded was possible.

Our Fraught Relationship With Prayer

This is also what makes our neglect of prayer so bewildering. In many Christian communities, language about having a “personal relationship with God” is ubiquitous, but the practice of prayer—which is how we actually have a personal relationship with God—is largely absent. And while Jesus’ disciples wanted to learn how to pray above all else, our priorities are precisely the opposite. A nationwide survey asked pastors to identify their highest ministry priorities. Among the top results were evangelism and outreach (46%) and preaching (35%). Prayer ranked dead last (3%).

This data fits my own experience, and maybe yours as well. As a teenager and young adult involved in a number of ministries, I was taught how to read and study the Bible. I was taught how to share my faith and debate nonbelievers. I was taught how to organize programs and lead ministry events. I was even taught how to manage my money and date girls. But no one taught me how to pray. Simply put, popular forms of Christianity are obsessed with teaching us how to live for God, but they rarely equip us to actually live with Him.

Rather than being the irreplaceable root from which every aspect of the Christian life is nourished and grows, prayer is an optional accessory in many places. It functions parenthetically. We attach prayer to the beginning and end of our event or meeting to provide an air of spirituality. In grammar, parentheses are used to insert an afterthought into a sentence or paragraph that is already complete without it. Anything within the parentheses is superfluous, nonessential.

Likewise many of us have been formed into a faith that puts prayer in parentheses. It’s an afterthought to a meeting, an addition to a worship service, or a custom before a meal. But in each case we suspect the meeting, service, or meal would have been just fine without it. The peripheral place of prayer in the life of the church may explain why it remains peripheral in the life of so many Christians.

But the soul, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If prayer does not function as the root of our Christian life, something else will take its place. Some try to replace prayer with knowledge. They believe a head full of theology, doctrine, or Scripture is a suitable substitute. They mistake mere intellect for communion with the indwelling Holy Spirit. And yet we all know some of the meanest religious people are those with the most knowledge. As the apostle Paul warned, “If I understand . . . all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Cor. 13:2).

Others, like the young man who wanted to move overseas and change the world, root their faith in activism. They believe meaning and significance will be found in their achievements. Very often their goals are admirable and the work they hope to accomplish is aligned with Christ’s kingdom, but when it takes the place of communion with Christ Himself—that’s when they’re in danger. Again Paul warns the activist: “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Cor. 13:3).

Our Calling to Prayer

Jesus was a brilliant teacher. He amazed the crowds with His knowledge and impressed the religious leaders with His wisdom. And Jesus was the activist par excellence who transformed lives and ignited a movement that changed history. Knowledge and activism are very good things—but neither was the root of Jesus’ life and neither should be the root of ours. Instead, we are called to find our truest self, our deepest calling, and unconditional love as we abide in communion with God through prayer.

To do that we need to recalibrate our mundane understanding of prayer to align again with Jesus’ truly radical vision. This means breaking it out of the parentheses popular Christianity has put it into, so that prayer can not only become the central practice that roots our faith, but also the practice that strengthens and nourishes all of the others.