A Backbone of Prayer
Several years ago, I traveled with friends to a church just outside Atlanta. The speaker that night was a man from Africa who’d come to share what God had done in his life. His words spoke deeply to my heart and afterward, during a time of prayer, I knelt beside my chair. The speaker had a close, dynamic relationship with Jesus and had seen many miracles. I wanted that too.
The man began to make his way around the church praying for people here and there. As the music played, I lost all sense of time. One by one, people began to leave. The room grew still and quiet. After a while, I sensed someone by my side and felt a hand on my back. In a thickly, accented voice, a man began to pray. He prayed quietly for a few moments, then to me he said, “Prayer is your backbone.” That was it. He moved on.
Just between you and me, I was a little disappointed when I heard that. I’d hoped for something more exciting, more revelatory. After all, this man had seen many miracles. Yet, I knew immediately the words he spoke were true. More importantly, I knew they were exactly what I needed to hear.
As the years have passed, the call to prayer often comes back to me just a clearly as I heard it that night, more so here lately. The African pastor’s voice drums against my chest and echos in my head. “Pray-uh is your backbone.”
“But you, dear friends, carefully build yourselves up in this most holy faith by praying in the Holy Spirit.”
The benefits of prayer are endless, but what does it mean to have a backbone of prayer?
Through prayer, I find strength to stand when everything around me is shaken. As Jude 20 indicates, prayer builds our faith. By faith, I have confidence in the things God has said through his word and by his spirit even if I can’t yet see those things with my eyes. I trust God will do what he’s said he will do.
Prayer enables me to be flexible, bending my will to conform to God’s. I’m reminded of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane as he prayed. Regarding the death he knew he was about to face, he said, “If it’s possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless,” he prayed. “Not my will, but yours be done.”
When my spine is strong, I’m able exercise my body so that it stays healthy. Scripture tells us to walk by faith. Without a backbone, I cannot walk. Without prayer, I become weak and struggle to walk by faith.
My backbone protects my spinal cord (nerves that connect my brain to the rest of my body). Through prayer, I cultivate God-focused thoughts that enable me to experience peace, hope, joy, and contentment.
Isn’t it just like God to make me stand taller when I bow down, to give me strength when I yield, to bring clarity to all things by narrowing my focus onto Him?
I have not yet achieved the life of prayer I aspire to. Like everything else, there are good times and not-so-good times. It can be difficult to pray. Sometimes, I feel distant, at a loss for words, unable to utter anything more than a feeble, “Help me.” Though I didn’t think so at the time, God heard even those pitiful pleas.
I’ve often viewed a lifestyle of prayer as something difficult to achieve and more difficult to maintain. I mean, who has hours a day to lock themselves away in a closet? Lately though, I’ve come to think of prayer more like those times when I’m alone in the car and decide to call my mom. I enjoy filling that time sharing my heart with her, finding out what’s going on with her and my dad, and just chit-chatting about life in general.
A talk with someone I love and who loves me.