My prayer has been simple.

Lord,  Remove my pain.  Take away the hurt.  Fix my past.

I’m starting to realize that my past is what makes me me.  The pain, the hurt, the drama, the crazy, it all happened.  There is no undoing it.  There is no ‘fixing it’.  I think, as  I work through this junk, everything I hear and read is pointing me towards realizing that God won’t fix this.  He will use it, transform it, make it a tool, but he will not fix it.

What does that mean for me?  Well, it means that I have to always focus on my spirituality.  I have to grow spiritually, so my past can be transformed into a tool Jesus can use.  I need to make, as Dan Garrett said yesterday in church, my actions match my beliefs.  I have to ask for help, because I cannot do this alone.  I’ve tried for too long.

The fact is we all have muck.  We all have things we wish didn’t happen, or we feel made us have that complex.  The fact is, I’ve bought in to this worldly phrase, “Time heals all wounds.”  Not  true.  Jesus can take care of it, but I have to get my head right.  I have to get my heart right.  I have to get my spirituality right.  I have to work through the muck.

I feel like I’m well on my way, but I’ve become aware that this is not a 1 week fix.  It’s not something I work at for a couple of days, and voila, everything is better.  That’s just not how it works!  This is more than a quick fix, a brief prayer, or admitting my issues.

This is a life style change.  This is discipline.  This is growing of spiritual health.  This is finding Jesus, and loving him like his disciples did.  Being in Jesus, so much that my worldly tendencies are defeated.  I need to focus on the present, plan for the future, but not ignore the past.  I need to walk the walk.

1 John 2:3-6
³We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. ⁴The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. ⁵But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love^[a] is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him:⁶Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.

I’m really good with words.  I mean really good.  (or is it well? Doesn’t matter) <– see what I did there?

What I mean is, growing up, all I had were my words.  At first, it was defense.  I knew if my mom was going to hit me, if I could make her laugh, she wouldn’t.  At school, I realized that, if I could make kids laugh, they’d like me.  I quickly learned that, with my words I could diffuse any situation.  Teacher’s mad?  I’ll talk to her.  Mom’s grounding me, and not letting me go out? I’ll talk to her, I’ll go out tonight. 

It’s spilled over into my adult life. (As have 100,000 other things.) I can, when I want to, talk my way out of anything. 

So, this is how I pray a lot of time. I reason with God.  I say things like, “You know that bad thing I did, well, it was one time, and… I’m only human, but you know I love you, and you love me, so… we’re cool, right?”

Boom, like that, I try to relieve myself of all responsibility.  God and I talked about it. That’s it. It’s done.

Well, it’s not.  Maybe that’s where a lot of this anger is coming from.  Maybe that’s where a lot of my low self-esteem is coming from.  I think my ‘prayer life’ has been lacking, because of me.  I think I am on to something.  I think I’m scared of working on it.  I’m scared to press the publish button.  I’m scared to confront this.  But I have to or I’ll be right back here in 6 months. (Or still here.)

Another thought on unceasing prayer.

Community.  If I have a prayer that I’ve been praying, and I’m to pray unceasingly, how do I do this?

Perhaps that’s where community comes in?  If I ask you to pray for me. Maybe you’ll be praying for me in a time where I cease.  Maybe I fell asleep, got caught up in the day to day mess, or maybe I am even just feeling distant from God.

What’s scary is we can throw out the “I’m praying for you.” so easily, on later to be dismissing it, forgetting to, or just not meaning it at all.  This is a pretty big deal.  Praying for someone and not, could be the difference between unceasing and ceasing.  I know that’s a stretch, but my belief is Jesus put a pretty huge focus on community for a reason.  I do believe, with all of my heart, we were called to community, not to talk the controversy, not to talk about the other person is doing wrong, but to support each other, and help each other grow unceasingly.  I believe a big part of this is prayer.

Unceasingly praying is not something that is easy.  It’s not something to take lightly.  It’s not something to dismiss as, “I’m just not good at prayer.” or, “He never listens anyway.”.  It’s something to work towards, unceasingly, until you are there.  And when you fall, work at it again, until you are there again.

Thoughts?

So, how does one pray unceasingly?  I still don’t know.

Have you ever heard the phrase “Speak it into existence”?  I still am not 100% sure what that means.  But I know this, when I say things enough, it happens.  Especially things like, “Today is going to be a horrible day.” I don’t know that the day is actually horrible, or if that’s what I’ve placed in my mind/heart.

When I repeat a phone number, I memorize it.

So, what do I repeat, with my mouth, or in my mind to count as constant prayer? I don’t know the answer to that question, so I did what I know how to do.  I Googled it.  I simply typed “Jesus Prayer”.  The first result was Wikipedia, so I clicked on it, I found this.  It actually talks about Hesychasm, which I think means silent prayer, or something like that.  Not really sure.  Anyway. Turns out the “Jesus Prayer” is “Κύριε Ιησού Χριστέ, Υιέ του Θεού, ελέησόν με τον αμαρτωλόν” or “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

I started repeating this, whenever I can. (Yesterday)  I still do.  In my mind, mumble it out loud. whatever I can do.  I think the idea I have is, if I repeat this, it will embed itself into my heart. To where, my heartbeat will cry out, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!”  It seems like a far fetch.  It seems like it’s  a desperate attempt, which is what makes me believe it will work.

Another one I’ve been repeating is simply, “The Lord is my Shepherd.”  Repeating. Repeating, like a drum a rhythm in my body.  The more I repeat it, the more the imagery of that becomes real.  The more Jesus Christ actually being a Shepherd is a reality in my life.  Insane.  The reality shatters my soul.  The idea of declaring that, and that being embedded in my soul is really crazy.  I find myself, in moments of silence, realizing that instead of that song stuck in my head, I may mumble “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” or “The Lord is my Shepherd”.   I can’t say any real change has happened in the past few days, but I can say that I feel a little better.

I can say that, at least, in my mind, I have a prayer, that I try to repeat as much as possible.  My hope is that this prayer, will play in my mind like music enough to move to, and embed itself into my heart….. Unceasingly.

I’ve been almost forced in to thinking about addiction again lately.  It hasn’t been pretty, but I think I’ve realized a lot.  Andrea asked me a few weeks ago if I missed the old days.  I told her no.  I said there were still times when I think about them, and… Not crave anything, but I think about it.  I do miss smoking.  It’s a thorn in my side.  It bothers me.  Andrea said that God could remove that from me, and I believe he can. But.

I don’t think he will.  I found recently that I’ve lost patience for addicts.  I have the, “I did it, (quit) why can’t they?” mentality.  I get annoyed, and almost don’t even want to be there for people.  I believe that God gives me this thorn, to remind me.  To keep me on my toes.  Not to weaken me, but to make me stronger.

All of my friends are addicts, and I’d say most of them still use to this day.  When I see them, it breaks my heart.  But, my mind is saying, “Screw them, they’re idiots.  blah blah blah.”  That’s just how I am.  I think I disassociate, so when the inevitable happens, I won’t be too disappointed.  But, the truth is, I will.   I don’t want it to happen.

I don’t even know what to pray anymore for myself, or my friends.  I think I’ll always miss smoking, for reasons mentioned above.  I don’t know what to pray for my friends.  I pray they don’t die.  But I have a feeling some of them are going to have to (again) to get the point.

It’s depressing.  What do you pray when you don’t know what to pray?