Too Dumb to Pray

I just had the privilege of being treated to lunch by Kurt Dillinger, President of Life International, a global ministry fighting for the unborn around the world. He invited me to contact him after finding out that I was a young Executive Director who may appreciate a little mentoring. I took him up on that offer, meeting at One Trick Pony in G.R. to chat about ministry and life.

It didn't take long for the discussion to turn to my unique situation of having three jobs (plus grad school plus a family). I shared with Kurt my situation, and the impending decision of choosing among the three careers, something I have yet to be convinced is a necessity. His first comment to me was "to be effective, you need to be focused." He's not the first person I've heard that from. I agree, but what is it that we are focusing on? Just the organization? The programs? It's true that these structures and ministries will grow more slowly without full-time focus. But what if we lift the transparency stenciled with our man-made ministry demarcations and just take a look at the raw terrain, the Kingdom of God? What if my focus is on people, growing them in the name of Jesus into everything they can be, wherever I find them? Could the focus be on that, something more nebulous and oozy than a single 501(c)3? Or by being split, am I not really serving anyone that well?

I didn't articulate this to Kurt and though he encouraged me to move towards focus, he refrained from telling which I should choose. Rather, he asked if I'd been praying about it. "How much time have you and your wife spent on your knees about this?" Um... Okay, how can I make it sound as spiritual as possible? "Several times a week," I said, hoping "several" sounded like more than "a couple" or "none". Nikki and I are growing in our prayer life. I can say that honestly, but I had to admit to him that for as big of a decision as this is, we haven't been praying like we should. What ensued was a very convicting and uplifting discussion about the need for prayer, especially for leaders, and a personal realization that I'm sometimes too dumb to pray.

"The greatest contribution a leader can make to an organization is to be disciplined in prayer, " Kurt said. His own life and ministry reflects this as the basement of his synagogue turned church turned abortion clinic turned office is set up as a place for people to gather and pray. "Prayer is totally underutilized in leadership today. It should be your first priority with anyone. It brings unity, peace, and clarity of vision," he said. He went on to share with me something his mentor had passed on to him, that all human problems can be traced to a lack of understanding God, which leads to a failure to understand self ending in a failure to understand each other. And the only remedy is to abide in Christ through the Word and prayer. The leader must devote consistent, intentional time to communicating with God.

As we chatted, thoughts of every significant follower of God in scripture (e.g. Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Elisha, David, the prophets, the disciples, Paul) and especially Jesus Himself ran through my mind. All prayers. The recent greats like Luther, Calvin, Moody, Wesley, et. al. prayed, prayed, prayed. I know intellectually this needs to happen in my life. I need to learn to pray and pray hard. If I'm wise, I'll start; if I'm dumb, I won't. Being dumb means that I fail to recognize the reality of the spiritual nature of existence; that I'm lazy; that I allow the feeling that praying is talking to the air dissuade me; that I think there's no need to pray since God will do what He wants anyway; that I mistake my own efforts as the key to success–all of this in direct disobedience to God's commands that we petition Him.

Prayer invites God into what I'm doing and if I'm trying to do God-size things, that's the only way they'll get done. It also takes the glory away from me and puts it on God. How can I take credit for something I asked God to do and He did? Do we write thank you notes to ourselves for our birthday presents? Prayer is a willing subjugation of one's ability and power to that of God's, and that humble state is where God moves.

I need to seek God in prayer for more than just this decision in my life right now. This is about more than figuring out which job I should take. It's about letting God focus my life, in whatever form that takes and then supplying the power needed to live it out. Pray that I will listen to Kurt and that I'm not too dumb to pray.