The ongoing journey of prayer

I have been wanting to blog all week and it has been difficult to find time. As Bill Hybels said, Too busy not to blog. Okay, he said, too busy not too pray, and he didn't say it, it was a title of a book he wrote.

I was thinking the other day of my first experience with prayer beyond what my mother and father taught me. As a little boy I prayed "Now I lay me down to sleep...". I can't remember as a teenager what I prayed except when I had that "horrendous night" where I decided to give myself back to Jesus. That was a desperate prayer. I had been frightened by where my life was headed. God must have taken it seriously because I know he began to bless my life very quickly thereafter.

What I remembered the other day, that first experience, was when I returned home from my lifechanging experience at Red Rock Bible Camp. Christians my own age and who were sincere about Jesus! Go figure. I remember the 5 or 6 of us who had come from Winnipeg. We found it hard to leave each other. Coming down from a mountaintop experience is excruciatingly difficult. Our group of 30 some teenagers who had truly felt the Holy Spirit move among us thought that we had found something that would never die. So when we got off the bus at Braeside, my home church, we had one final prayer. And this is the thing: I can't remember what I prayed. Or how I prayed.

When I prayed recently and thought about what I said to God it occured to me that I had grown in my expression. How, I don't know. I think back then I asked for ridiculous things. But at the same time they were asked in such faith and such assurance that how I asked was not important. Now I have the words but sometimes I don't have the faith of those early days. And yet my faith is so theologically sound now. I wish I had the zeal of those early years, those early days. But I am so thankful that the words, the requests, the expression of praise, the petition is so much better. I just hope it is not eloquence that impresses me. God doesn't need fancy words, he needs the sincerity that I discovered at Red Rock.